Tachibana Nankei

• Born: 1753/4/21
• Died: 1805/4/10
• Titles: Iwami-no-suke
• Other Names: 宮川春暉 (Miyagawa Haruteru; Haruakira)
• Japanese: 橘南谿 (Tachibana Nankei)

Tachibana Nankei was a Rangaku scholar and physician, known for his travel writings.

Early Life

He was born into the Miyagawa clan, a samurai family based in Ise province, which took their name from land granted to them by Sasaki Kyôgoku (1306-1373); the family, under Miyagawa Yasumoto, had moved to Ise in the fifth generation before Nankei's time. Originally known as Miyagawa Haruakira, Nankei was the fifth and youngest son of Miyagawa Yasunaga, also known as Kenbee, a samurai in the service of Hisai han. He had one older sister and four older brothers, the eldest of whom, Kanenosuke, died young; the second son, Yasukage, thus became the heir to the family.

Nankei (Haruakira), at age seven or eight, listened to his father's explanations of the writings of Mencius, and began studying the Analects of Confucius soon afterwards, setting his sights on becoming a scholar. At age nine, he began studying under a Confucian scholar in service to the domain, by the name of Sano Yûzan. Nankei's father died on 1766/8/6, when Nankei was 14.

Roughly five years later, at age 19, Nankei moved to Kyoto to study medicine. After studying under Kagawa Shûan and Yoshimasu Tôdô for a time, he remained in Kyoto (moving to Fushimi and Osaka for brief spells, but then returning to Kyoto) and took on students of his own. His mother came to Kyoto and lived with him for a time, but died on 1781/7/17.

He later took the surname of his wife's family, Tachibana, and took on the pseudonym Nankei.

Travels

Journey to the West

In 1782/4, at the age of 30, he left Kyoto for the western provinces and Kyushu along with his student Bunzô, traveling along the San'yôdô and returning the following summer via Shikoku.

On his journey west, he traveled through Osaka, Hyôgo, and Akashi, then took the Harima Road (Harima-ji) briefly, stopping to see the pines at Sone, passing through Himeji han, and eventually reaching Akô han. In Osafune (Bizen province), he stopped to visit a swordsmith. He then passed through Bitchû and Bingo provinces, offering medical care from time to time to peasants he met along the way. After passing through Hiroshima (Aki province) and Suô province, he made his way through Nagato han, and crossed over to Kyushu, reaching Kokura. From there, he made his way to Hakata and Fukuoka, where he met with Kamei Nanmei, among other prominent scholars and poets. Nankei then traveled to Kurume, Saga, and Ureshino, the latter known for its hot springs, and then, after passing through Ômura, he took a ship to Nagae.

Nankei arrived in Nagasaki around 6/20, and stayed there for more than twenty days. During his time there, he met with Isaac Titsingh and other agents of the Dutch East India Company, as well as with a number of Chinese traders, and Japanese Rangaku scholars such as Yoshio Kôsaku. Nankei marveled at Dutch technologies, especially optics (microscrope, telescope, periscope, etc.) and maps, and wrote that the Chinese differed from Japanese only in dress, language, and behavior; in other words, he recognized no ethnic or racial difference between the people of China and Japan. His treatments of ethnic/racial difference were tied into theories about the influence of geography and climate upon temperament. Since China and Japan are geographically and climatically quite similar, he described no ethnic difference between the two peoples; however, he described Dutchmen as "cold" (i.e. distant and reserved), and Ryukyuans as "too warm in personality to pass for [Japanese], although they resemble the Japanese physically," the result, in his thinking, it would seem, of their origins in climatically cold and warm places, respectively.

Leaving Nagasaki, he traveled to Shimabara castle and to Amakusa, and on the last day of the 7th month, recorded seeing the famed shiranui fires out over the Ariake Sea (aka Yatsushiro Sea). Commenting also on the widespread famine being suffered in Kyushu at the time, he entered Kagoshima on 8/15, remaining there until the New Year. While there, he visited various sites in Satsuma and Ôsumi provinces, including Yamakawa, Sakurajima, and Kajiki, where one of Satsuma's many sub-castles was located. Normally, it would have been quite difficult for an outsider to gain entry into Satsuma, due to the strict policies of the domain's government, but Nankei, along with his contemporary Furukawa Koshôken and a few other prominent scholar-travelers, were fortunate at this time, as Shimazu Shigehide, lord of Satsuma from 1755 to 1787, eased up considerably on these policies, opening up the domain to travelers and merchants to a greater extent.

writing particularly extensively about these two provinces in his Saiyûki, the travelogue of this journey which he would later publish in 1795.

Return

Following his return, in 1783, he and a group of scholars including Koishi Genshun took part in the dissection of a human body. He is also known to have constructed an electric dynamo, as Hiraga Gennai had also done.

Journey to the East

Two years later, in 1785/9, Nankei left for the east (Tôhoku), returning once again a summer after his departure, this time via the Sea of Japan coast. Having praised the spread of education (especially Confucian schools) into western Japan in his writings from that trip, he strongly criticized the relative lack of education he discovered in eastern Japan, including the relatively low levels of literacy compared to more central areas of Japan. Moving beyond Tôhoku into Ainu lands in Ezo, he spoke of the inferiority of the Ainu lifestyle, and unlike some other major travelers/writers of his time, advocated for the incorporation more fully of the Ainu into the Japanese cultural sphere.

After several experiences getting lost, or facing difficulties due to weather along with his traveling companion Yôken, Nankei composed a series of five rules for himself as a traveler: Do not ford a river on foot, do not eat strange foods, do not travel by night, do not travel by sea, and do not associate with low-class women.

His Saiyûki ("Journey to the West") and Tôyûki ("Journey to the East"), accounts of the two journeys, were both published in 1795. Unlike many other prominent scholar travelers of his time, who wrote for more private purposes, Nankei wrote with the intention of publishing. Several artists contributed to the illustrations of the Tôyûki, chief among them Maruyama Ôkyo, head of the Maruyama school, and his student Maruyama Ôzui.

Nankei had by this time gained some prominence; he was appointed an Imperial physician in 1786 and granted the title of Iwami-no-suke, and was invited to Emperor Kôkaku's investiture ceremony the following year. In addition to writing numerous books on medicine, Nankei also compiled a volume on Chinese poetry, and one on Japanese poetry. In 1796, he was called to official service, and took the tonsure shortly afterwards, continuing to write and to study medicine. Sequels to his Saiyûki and Tôyûki were published in 1796 and 1797 respectively. His travel writings are organized more thematically, rather than in a geographically chronological order. He does not focus on the narrative of his own travels so much as on the surprising and strange things he saw or found, and on ruminations about them. Despite being a physician and herbalist, he shows far less skepticism, or rational empiricism, than certain other travel writers (e.g. Furukawa Koshôken) when presented with local legends and other fantastic stories.

Nankei retired to Fushimi at the age of 50, and died two years later, in 1805.

References

• "Tachibana Nankei." Nihon jinmei daijiten 日本人名大辞典. Kodansha, 2009.
• Bolitho, Harold. "Travelers' Tales: Three 18th Century Travel Journals." Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 50:2 (1990). pp485-504.
• Munemasa Isoo 宗政五十緒, “Tachibana Nankei ‘Saiyūki’ to Edo kōki no kikō bungaku” 橘南谿『西遊記』と江戸後期の紀行文学, in Shin-Nihon koten bungaku taikei 新日本古典文学大系, vol. 98, (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1991), 437-459.
• Plutschow, Herbert. A Reader in Edo Period Travel. Global Oriental, 2006. pp75-88.
• Yonemoto, Marcia. Mapping Early Modern Japan. University of California Press, 2003. pp90-97.