KAEMPFER, Engelbert. The History of Japan together with a Description of the Kingdom of Siam 1690-92. Glasgow, James MacLehose and Sons, 1906.
Three volumes, 8vo. Original red cloth, lotus flower embossed in gilt to upper cover of each, gilt-decorated spines, lettered in gilt, top edges gilt; pp. lxxxix, 336, [2]; ix, 396, [3]; viii, [2], 385; photogravure portrait frontispiece of Hans Sloane to vol. I, 16 plates including some folding, 8 maps including some folding, illustrations to text; extremotoes with light wear;
Limited edition, one of 100 copies printed. Kaempfer (1651-1716), a surgeon with the Dutch East India Company, arrived in Japan in 1690 at Nagasaki and remained there for almost 4 years. His account of that stay, first published in Britain in 1727, has long been recognised as the most authoritative guide to virtually all aspects of Japan and the Japanese at that time. Kaempfer's effects were purchased after his death by Sir Hans Sloane and it was Sloane's librarian, John Gaspar Scheuchzer, who translated the manuscript and saw it into publication. The present finely printed edition, the first full reprint since the work's 1727 publication, contains an introductory note by Sir Archibald Geikie on the Scheuchzer family.
#2119818