Kaempfer's The History of Japan was the result of two years' research in Japan in the early 1690s and was published in London in 1727; it appeared in a total of ten editions of translations and reprints in the decade that followed - an extraordinary achievement for a work of this kind. It became required reading for all serious students of Japan for over a century, and was even on board Commodore Perry's ship in 1852. Today, it remains compulsory reading for anyone studying the Tokugawa period.
Kaempfer's The History of Japan was the result of two years' research in Japan in the early 1690s and was published in London in 1727; it appeared in ...
