JapanMuseum SieboldHuis

Last Saturday I visited the Japanmuseum Sieboldhuis (Huis means House and Siebold is the name of a person, I will tell you a little more of him). It is located at Rapenburg 19, Leiden (http://www.sieboldhuis.org/).

The following information about Mr von Siebold can be found on the webpage og the museum (this is a sinopsis of what you can read there)

"Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold, who born in the Bavarian Würzburg, started Medicine studies in 1815. In 1822 he became surgeon-major Dutch East Indian army stationed in Batavia. There he soon attracted the attention of the Governor-General. He seemed the ideal person to send to Japan, a country with a central place in the changing world politics. Japan was until then an unknown power with strictly closed borders. Trade was allowed, but limited to a trading post on the purpose-built artificial island of Deshima. In this period, only Dutchs were allowed to trade with Japan.

In 1823 Siebold arrived at Deshima with the task to collect information on Japan, trade with Japan and the Japanese political system. Foreigners were not allowed to leave Deshima, but as a doctor were open to him other channels. After curing a local influential officer was opening it allowed a small practice outside the trade post and to make house calls on Japanese patients.

Also, as a physician, he earned a good reputation. He made many visits to the perimeter. He could do not receive payment, but instead he was often gifts from grateful patients. Thus laying the foundation of his ethnographic collection. acquire Following Jan Cock Blom Hoff (1779-1853), between 1818 and 1823, the Dutch commander of Deshima and bookkeeper Johannes van Overmeer Fisscher (1800-1848), he managed a large number of household objects, prints, materials and craft artifacts .
Siebold focused on collecting plants, animals and seeds and all utensils and took artists employed to capture animals, objects and use on paper. Siebold collected during his trips as much as possible natural materials. His disciples took him for plants, animals and rocks, and he hired three hunters to collect exotic animals for him.
In 1825 he was awarded two assistants from Batavia, the apothecary Heinrich Bürger and illustrator C.H. de Villeneuve. B¸rger was a great help in the collection, and from 1828 he was Siebold's successor. The natural history material was spread over the years of Siebold's stay in Japan, in four shipments to the Netherlands. The last mission he took away when he forced the end of 1829 left Japan. Bürger remained on Deshima and sent in the following years three more runs. In the Netherlands, the shipments, which all together comprise about 10,000 items, to this day the Japanese collections of the National Museum of Natural History and the National Herbarium of the Netherlands.
On the basis of the large number of animals Siebold and Bürger sent to the Netherlands, the zoologists were Temminck (Coenraad Jacob, 1778-1858), Schlegel (Hermann, 1804-1884) and De Haan (Wilhelm, 1801-1855), the Japanese fauna describe. When their research was published in the "Fauna Japonica" (published between 1833 and 1850), this work was the Japanese fauna almost unknown in one of the best-described fauna of all non-European countries.
After a month-long trip to Edo, today's Tokyo, where Siebold besides many objects came into the possession of maps of Japan, he would leave to return to Deshima directly to Java. The objects were already sent to Deshima. The maps were discovered and Siebold was accused of spying for the Russian state. Possession of maps was indeed strictly prohibited. After a period of house arrest and investigate Siebold was in October 1829 forever banished from Japan. At that moment he did not know that this ban would be lifted later.
Parts of his collection were stored until then in Leiden, Ghent, Antwerp and Brussels. Siebold decided to settle in Leiden Rapenburg number 19. From 1831 Siebold presented his collection open to the public and after some urging, King William I in response to its previously expressed interest in the Siebold collection. The Hague Collection "Royal Cabinet of Curiosities," the collections of Blom Hoff and Overmeer Fisscher, and the collection of Siebold, were eventually merged. Siebold's collection was purchased by the state for this purpose and the new museum in Leiden, the forerunner of today's National Museum of Ethnology.
Siebold continued to play an important role as adviser on Japanese affairs. In 1859 he traveled to Japan one more time, as a diplomat."

So, as you have read, the museum shows a lot of plants, animals and objects (maps, clothes...) that Siebold got in Japan and sent to The Netherlands. The museum is amazing, specially if you enjoy Japanese culture, because this is a great opportunity to see how the 19th century Japan looked like.

There it can be found enormous animals as well as miniatures of houses and boats, traditional clothes and other daily stuffs.

Besides, all the explanations are in Japanese, Dutch and English, so as long as you are able to understand one of them (at least English) you can learn everything from the Museum. The only exception for this is the temporary exposition of Mount Fuji, which is entirely in Dutch.

The ticket is completely affordable for students, only 4,5 euro, which is a really good price compared with the rest of Museums, around 20 euro. However, if you are into Museums you can get a Museumkaart for 50 euro in any Museum and then entrance in all of them is free. (Gratis in Dutch)

If you want to know my opinion, SieboldHuis is a Museum you should visit, It is cheap and very interesting.