11Story

08 May 2009

The Siebold Collection 1889

Made in Japan

Contents - The Early Collections before the Opening of Japan - The Austro-Hungarian East Asia Expedition 1868-1871 - The Vienna World Exhibition 1873 - The Drasche-Wartinberg Collection 1877 - The Troll Collection 1886 - The Siebold Collection 1889     - Este Collection 1893 - The Kreiner Collection 1964, 1966 and 1969 - The Haga Collection 1965 and 1969 - The Kubō Collection 1987−1989 - The Collections of Curators - HARU – SPRING

 

 

The Siebold Collection 1889

 

Heinrich von Siebold (1852−1908) was the second son of the renowned German doctor Phillip Franz von Siebold, who spent many years during the Edo period in Dutch service in Nagasaki and is considered one of the co-founders of Japanese studies. Born in Boppard am Rhein, Heinrich von Siebold spent his youth in Bonn and Würzburg. Following his father’s example he went to Japan, without completing secondary school or university study, a year after the Meiji Restoration in 1869. There he worked for thirty years as a translator and diplomat, in the service of the Austro-Hungarian embassy in Tōkyō.   The Siebold Collection is thus essentially one of the so-called “consular collections,” which were assembled by affiliates of the foreign agencies abroad. Several European museums have profited from Siebold’s insatiable passion for collecting, including the Imperial and Royal Court Natural History Museum, to whom he made a generous donation in 1889 of over 5,100 inventory numbers. Today the Siebold collection comprises more than forty percent of the Japanese objects in the Museum of Ethnology. In gratitude, the previously stateless Siebold was conferred Austrian citizenship and the title of baron. Siebold served many of the state visitors to whom he attended as a purchasing advisor, including the heir to the Austrian throne Franz Ferdinand when the latter visited Japan in 1893 during his world voyage.

 

 

A wood box containing various kinds of ingredients for food. Siebold Collection 1889 © Museum of Ethnology, Vienna

 

 

Among the highlights of the Siebold Collection are a number of Buddhist sculptures; following the Meiji government’s decision to construct a new State Shinto and to close many Buddhist temples, these were readily available. This statue of a Buddhist monk is, unusual as it depicts an individual. The ink inscription on the inside of the statue informs us that it depicts the founding abbot, Chizonin Nikkei (1535-1620), of the Honmyoji temple in Edo (modern-day Tokyo). Perhaps dating from as early as the turn of the seventeenth century, the statue was presented to the temple in 1620 on the anniversary of the death of Chizonin Nikkei by a member of a highly respected samurai family. In 1672, to commemorate the fifty-third anniversary of the monk’s death, the polychrome decoration was renewed and the statue displayed in a new shrine.

 

 

Statue of a Nichiren Buddhist Monk 16th/17th Century Inv.-no.: 36802 Siebold Collection 1889 © Museum of Ethnology, Vienna

 

 

 

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