Japan and the Japanese

ISAAC TITSINGH. 42b
though Titsingh knew enough of Japanese for the purposes of con-
versation, he does not seem to have acquired the written language,
nor to have been able to read Chinese, of which the characters are
largely, and, indeed, chiefly, employed in most Japanese works of
much pretensions.
" I found," he "
says, among the interpreters
belonging to our factory, four individuals sufficiently well-informed
for my purpose ; a fifth had devoted himself chiefly to medicine, in
which he had made rapid progress, in consequence of the instruc-
tion given to him by Dr. Thunberg.
Far from finding them suspi-
cious and reluctant, as Europeans are usually pleased to represent
these persons, in order to palliate their own indolence, they mani-
fested, on the contrary, an eagerness to procure for uie every prac-
ticable information, to consult, in various matters beyond their
capacity, the best informed individuals among the magistrates and
clergy, and to furnish me with books which might serve as a guide
to my labors."
After leaving Japan, Titsingh was governor at the Dutch factory
at Chinsurah, in Bengal, where he became acquainted with Sir
William Jones. In 1794 he was sent, with Van Braam, on a Dutch
embassy to Pekin, with the design to counterwork the English em-
but this residence in China was limited
bassy of Lord Macartney ;
to a few months.
Returning to Europe, after a residence in the East of thirtythree
years, Titsingh designed to publish the result of his Japanese
researches, in both Dutch and French ; but, before having done it,
he died at Paris, in 1812, leaving his large fortune and his collections
and manuscripts to an only child of his, by an Eastern woman,
by whom the fortune was soon spent, and the manuscripts and curi-
osities sold and scattered, though some of them ultimately fell into
appreciating hands.*
* See a notice of Titsingh's collection, by Remusat, in Nouveau Melanges
Asiatique, vol. i. It included, besides tbe works since published, a manu-
script history of Japan, in eighty volumes (Japanese volumes are quite
thin), also, a Chinese Japanese encyclopaedia, several copies of a large map of
Japan, colored drawings of plants, several botanicnl treatises, with wood cuts,
very well done, &c., &c. The encyclopaedia was presented to the Biblotheque
au Roy, and Remusat has given a full analysis of it in Notices et Extracts
des Manuscripts, vol. xi.
36*