page_title: Philipp Franz von Siebold
section_title: Writings
hierarchical_section_title: Philipp Franz von Siebold / Career / Writings
caption_attribution_description: Plate of Cephalotaxus harringtonii (syn. C. pedunculata) from book
context_page_description: Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold was a German physician, botanist, and traveler. He achieved prominence by his studies of Japanese flora and fauna and the introduction of Western medicine in Japan. He was the father of the first female Japanese doctor, Kusumoto Ine.
context_section_description: During his stay in Leiden, Siebold wrote Nippon in 1832, the first part of a volume of a richly illustrated ethnographical and geographical work on Japan. The 'Archiv zur Beschreibung Nippons' also contained a report of his journey to the Shogunate Court at Edo. He wrote six further parts, the last ones published posthumously in 1882; his sons published an edited and lower-priced reprint in 1887.
  The Bibliotheca Japonica appeared between 1833 and 1841. This work was co-authored by Joseph Hoffmann and Kuo Cheng-Chang, a Javanese of Chinese extraction, who had journeyed along with Siebold from Batavia. It contained a survey of Japanese literature and a Chinese, Japanese and Korean dictionary. Siebold's writing on Japanese religion and customs notably shaped early modern European conceptions of Buddhism and Shinto; he notably suggested that Japanese Buddhism was a form of Monotheism.
  The zoologists Coenraad Temminck (1777–1858), Hermann Schlegel (1804–1884), and Wilhem de Haan (1801–1855) scientifically described and documented Siebold's collection of Japanese animals. The Fauna Japonica, a series of monographs published between 1833 and 1850, was mainly based on Siebold's collection, making the Japanese fauna the best-described non-European fauna – "a remarkable feat". A significant part of the Fauna Japonica was also based on the collections of Siebold's successor on Dejima, Heinrich Bürger.
  Siebold wrote his Flora Japonica in collaboration with the German botanist Joseph Gerhard Zuccarini (1797–1848). It first appeared in 1835, but the work was not completed until after his death, finished in 1870 by F.A.W. Miquel (1811–1871), director of the Rijksherbarium in Leiden. This work expanded Siebold's scientific fame from Japan to Europe.
  From the Hortus Botanicus Leiden – the botanical garden of Leiden – many of Siebold's plants spread to Europe and from there to other countries. Hosta and Hortensia, Azalea, and the Japanese butterbur and the coltsfoot as well as the Japanese larch began to inhabit gardens across the world.
caption: Coloured plate of Cephalotaxus pedunculata in Flora Japonica, by Philipp Franz von Siebold and Joseph Gerhard Zuccarini
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