From Tea to Ginkgo: Pre-Linnaean Studies and Illustrations of Japanese Flora in European Publications

Abstract

After a period of cultural exchanges developed during the Namban period (1543-1639), the Japanese government decided to close borders to Westerners, making an exception for the Dutch East India Company. This isolationism occurred at a time when illustrated publications of botanical studies on non-European regions were widely received by Western readers and physicians. In the following work we will study the books and prints on Japanese flora published in Europe due to the researches of several workers of the Dutch company, who were allowed to visit the archipelago at the end of the Seventeenth century. Thanks to these botanists, several descriptions of Japanese plants could be edited in the West for the first time, before the publication of Carlos Linnaeus’s Systema naturæ (Leiden, 1735) and Species Pantarum (Stockholm, 1753).