Paper short abstract:

During his lifetime, Shimazu Shigehide strived to foster botanical knowledge within his domain as an effort to produce materia medica on a large scale. This paper will discuss how Satsuma's naturalists gathered, identify, cultivate, and commercialized plant species.

Paper long abstract:

In the 1770s, Shimazu Shigehide, 8th Lord of Satsuma, founded several institutions (a fief school, a medical institute, an astronomical observatory, and a botanical garden) aimed at developing scientific knowledge. The newly created Yoshino Garden of Medicinal Plants in Kagoshima thus became a centre for the construction of botanical knowledge and the production of materia medica for commercialization. In a previous survey of natural resources in Satsuma and Ryûkyû, Shigehide had had to call upon experts from Edo (Tamura Ransui) or Ôsaka (Kimura Kenkadô) in order to analyse the samples and publish the results. But this time he intended to develop botanical skills and knowledge on a local level, by sending doctors to train with Ransui or inviting naturalists to Kagoshima. Botanical activities centred on Yoshino Garden under the patronage of Shigehide were a laudable scientific endeavour in itself as much as a desire to control and commercialize regional resources, and most notably the production of materia medica.

The link between the development of botanical knowledge (here understood as bussangaku) and the transition in the provincial domains from subsistence to commercial economy is well known. But little attention has been paid so far to the concrete practices of naturalists. What kinds of plants have they exactly been studying? How did they identify them? And correlate field experience with previous textual knowledge? How have certain species been acclimatized? In short, what is really going on between the initial surveys and the production of medicinal plants in botanical gardens?

Based on a close reading of the botanical manuscripts written under the auspices of Shimazu Shigehide (Ryûkyû sanbutsu shi, Shitsumon honzô, Seikei zusetsu in particular) and other documents, this presentation aims at shedding some new light on naturalists' ways of doing things in late Edo period, from field surveys to commercialization.