The Furthest Goal: Engelbert Kaempfers Encounter with Tokugawa Japan

Kaempfer’s The History of Japan was the result of two years’ research in Japan in the early 1690s and was published in London in 1727; it appeared in a total of ten editions of translations and reprints in the decade that followed - an extraordinary achievement for a work of this kind. It became required reading for all serious students of Japan for over a century, and was even on board Commodore Perry’s ship in 1852. Today, it remains compulsory reading for anyone studying the Tokugawa period. Yet, little has been published about the author, his personal encounter with late-17th-century Japan and the way this experience came to reach the public in the form of his three-volume history. This volume, therefore, brings together some of the best current research on Kaempfer and includes a close analysis of six key topics - from the writing of the History to an interpretation of the interpreter.