Illustrations of Japan

The book surveys Japanese history, customs, and ceremonies during the Tokugawa shogunate and is a notable early account of Japan by a Western observer.

The book recounts the observations of Titsingh during his stay in Dejima from 1779 to 1784 in his position as Dutch East India Company (VOC) senior official (opperhoofd).

[2] Within this scope he wanted to only include original sources in translations by himself into the collection, as he believed this would distinguish his work from other Japanese travel accounts and stories.

As a consequence it took Titsingh an enormous amount of time to translate the sources and he could only edit some manuscripts or polish over, due to the lack of his fluency in Japanese.

This posthumous work collection was a clear success and therefore an English edition was published in 1822 by Rudolph Ackermann, translated by well-known journalist Frederic Shoberl.

[11] The chapter on the division of the year among the Japanese depicts the counting of the days, months and seasons as well as Chinese zodiacs in tables.

[13] The description of plans of the Dutch and Chinese factories include the history of these two and describe the conditions and positions of certain buildings, the islands and the area.