Japan and the Japanese

CHAPTER XXVII.
ENGELBERT KAMPFER. HIS VISIT TO JAPAN. DESIMA AXD ITS INHABIT-
ANTS AS DESCRIBED BY HIM. A. D. 1GGO.
ENGELBERT KAMPFEE was the first scientific and systematic observer
who visited Japan. Of those who have since followed him, but one
or two had either his zeal, his assiduity, or his qualifications, and
it is to him that we remain indebted for no inconsiderable part of
what we yet know of that country, especially of its natural history,
and its social, religious and political institutions. Subsequent vis-
itors, correcting him in some few particulars, have generally con-
firmed him. The Japanese, according to the most recent observa-
tions, appear to have little changed very since his time.
Kiimpfer was born Sept., 1051, in the north-west of Germany, in
the county of Lippe, at Lcmgow, a small town of which his father
was minister. He was early destined for the profession of physic,
and, after the best school education his father could give him, spent
three years at the university of Cracow, in Poland, and four years
more at that of Koningsburg, in Prussia. Thence he passed to
Sweden, where, inspired with a desire of seeing foreign countries,
he obtained the place of secretary to an embassy about to be sent
to the king of Persia. That country he reached by way of Moscow,
Astracan and the Caspian Sea, arriving at Ispahan in 1684. Dur-
ing his residence there, he employed himself chiefly in researches
into the natural history of the country ; and for the sake of con-
tinuing those researches, when the embassy was the next year about
to return home, he obtained, through the recommendation of the
Swedish ambassador, the place of chief surgeon to the Dutch East
India Company's fleet, then cruising in the Persian Gulf. "It
agreed best with my inclination," so he says in the preface to his
\vork on Japan, " to undertake a further journey, and I chose