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.

He was born into the Miyagawa clan, a samurai family 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.

Nankei moved to Kyoto at age 19 to study medicine. After studying under Kagawa Shûan and Yoshimasu Tôdô for a time, he remained in Kyoto and took on students of his own.

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

While in Nagasaki, he met with Isaac Titsingh and other agents of the Dutch East India Company, as well as with a number of Chinese traders. He 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.

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.

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.
• 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.