Nine Years in Nipon: Sketches of Japanese Life and Manners

The Scottish doctor Henry Faulds (1843-1930) is best remembered for his role in the history of fingerprinting. His strong religious faith had first led him to missionary work in India and then, from 1874, in Japan. He worked there as a surgeon in the mission hospital at Tsukiji, near Tokyo, where he also established a medical school and a school for the blind. It was his discovery of the impressions of thumbprints on ancient Japanese pottery which led to his development of a fingerprinting system and his championing of it as a forensic tool. The present work, part-travelogue, part-journal, was first published in 1885. It remains an engaging account of Japanese life, customs, geography and natural history, interwoven with discussions of topics such as education, language, and the future of the country. There are characterful line drawings throughout. Faulds’ Dactylography (1912) is also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection.