| Izaak (Isaac) Titsingh (1745-1812) was born in Amsterdam to a
distinguished burgher family of physicians with close ties to the Dutch East India management, obtained a doctorate in law at Leiden
University in 1765, and went early to India. There he entered the service of the Dutch East India Company and raised himself
to the post of counsellor. After a residence of seventeen years at Batavia,
he was in 1778 despatched to Japan as chief of the Dutch factory for three periods between 1779 and his retirement to Europe in
1784. This was, of course, at Deshima in the port of Nagasaki where the Hollanders
were almost prisoners. He proceeded several times as ambassador from the Company to Yedo, to compliment the Shogun, supreme
civil and military chief of Japan, to whom Europeans improperly gave the title of "secular emperor." By his prepossessing
manners, Titsingh succeeded in making friends amongst a people steeled with distrust towards foreigners. Amongst those with
whom he formed an intimacy was a prince, the father-in-law of the emperor who reigned from 1780 to 1786. Even after he quitted
Japan, Titsingh still kept up a regular correspondence with this eminent personage and other Japanese of rank, which supplied him
with many valuable facts respecting a country so little known as Japan. He left Nagasaki in November 1784, after a stay of
seven years. He had acquired the spoken language, but it does not appear that he ever was able to read a book written in
Japanese or Chinese. He was the first director of Deshima to interest himself deeply in Japanese science and letters or, at
least, to pass on any information by publication in Europe or by bringing important collections. He brought away with him,
however, a variety of curious articles, and a vast number of translations made from the language by the medium of Japanese
interpreters belonging to the Dutch factory at Deshima. Soon after his return to Batavia, he was appointed director of the East India factory at Chinsurah, in Bengal; and, during his residence there, he became acquainted with Sir William Jones, who formed a high estimate of the materials he had brought from Japan. Titsingh returned from Chinsurah to Batavia. He happened to entertain the British envoy Macartney when the latter visited Batavia on his way to China in the spring of 1793. The following year, Titsingh himself proceeded as ambassador from the Dutch to Peking, where he arrived on the 19th January of the following year. After several audiences at the court of the Qianlong emperor, he left the Chinese capital on the 15th March and came back to Macao. Titsingh returned to Europe, after a residence of thirty-three years in the East, where he had accumulated a vast fortune. He employed his leisure time in planning extensive publication of the Japanese art, maps, prints, and books which he had collected, accompanied in part by free translations into Dutch in Holland and, simultaneously, in French at Paris. The latter place he often visited and at length took up his residence there. Titsingh died in Paris, however, with most of his designs unaccomplished. Leaving no legitimate children, he bequeathed his immense property to a natural son whom he had had in India by a native woman. This wretched young man was able so expeditiously to dissipate his inheritance at the gambling-table and in the society of a female opera-dancer that, only two years after his father's death, he was forced to dispose of, for trifling considerations, the collections and MSS. which had cost so much toil and expense to accumulate. These valuable articles were entirely dispersed, although now and then fragments were discovered at public sales where they fetched high prices. Some of the papers did end up in the possession of appreciative owners 1 |
| Illustrations
of Japan (1822):
One of Titsingh's specimens, a
short poem upon the murder of Yamasiro, a councillor of state, is rather
more poetical, containing allusions to old stories or legends, and exemplifying
the play upon words said to be characteristic of Japanese poetry.
The President, or, rather his French translator, has added to his Dutch
a Latin version, professedly literal, and no longer than the original,
for which reason we shall give our English version from the latter.
It should be premised, that the constituent parts of the murdered person's
name being yama, "mountain," and siro, "castle," afford a
happy opportunity for punning.
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1 Bartlett, Harley
Harris and Hide Shohara Japanese Botany During the Period
of Wood-block Printing (Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop; 1961. Reprinted
from ASA GRAY BULLETIN, N.S. 3: 289-561, Spring, 1961), pp. 7.
2 Siebold,
Dr. Philipp Franz von Manners and Customs of the Japanese
[in the Nineteenth Century from the accounts of Dutch residents in Japan
and from the German work of] (Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle Company;
1973. Second printing 1977. First edition, 1841 by Harper &
Brothers, New York), pp. 215-216. There is a Sanno Pass which lies
northwest of Mt. Nantai, west of Nikko. (Same as Sano no Watari,
a ford in Yamato?) A village named Sano is southeast of Mt. Fuji
between Mt. Ashidaka and Mt. Hakone near the Kisegawa river.
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