Kaempfer's Amoenitates Exoticae

1712

Engelbert Kaempfer, a German physician who had spent two years (1690-92) at the Dutch trading post on Dejima, published Amoenitates Exoticae in Lemgo, nineteen years after returning to Europe. Its Japanese chapters gave Europe an illustrated account of acupuncture and moxibustion, a treatise on Japanese tea, and an essay on Japan's closure to foreigners, which a Japanese translator later rendered as sakoku, "closed country". His fuller History of Japan appeared in English only after his death, in 1727.