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Paper short abstract:

Antiquarian and other data as building blocks in evidential scholarship were exchanged, appeared in books and changed meaning in the course of their scholarly existence. A ms. collection of 'raw' data from late 18th/early 19th century shows the breadth and scope of topics and practitioners.

Paper long abstract:

Ryūkan Hyakuzu, a manuscript with 'raw' data on various items of material culture basically from the late 18th and early 19th centuries collected by Ōta Nanpo (1749-1823), is the point of departure here to look into the way data collection and exchange actually worked and what topics were considered worthy of collecting. Nanpo's ten scrolls contain a wide array of items, from historical to contemporary, and from Japanese to exotic. It includes elaborate pictures and comments on historic specimen of samurai armour and horse-gear, as well as a detailed description of 'Dutch' (European) horse saddles and bridles for example. Besides this interest in horsemanship that relates to traditional court interests, the collection shows Nanpo's apparent interest in animals, and includes detailed descriptions and graphic representations of imported exotic animals, donkeys for example, as well as of more familiar but still remote animals such as seals from Hokkaido. Then it also contains a detailed and graphic description of deer and wild boar as found in explications of (samurai) hunting records in pre-Tokugawa manuscripts. The sources for his exotic topics include his own stay in Nagasaki and his contacts with members of the Chinese delegation, but also his exchange with Japanese rangaku (Dutch studies) scholars. Antiquarian and historical objects owned by temples and private owners represent another important topic in this collection. A major source of inspiration in this respect was high-ranking Matsudaira Sadanobu's antiquarian collection Shūko jisshu (1800), part of a larger project on collecting and preserving court information and traditions. This wider interest in local traditions also reveals an increasing awareness of rural traditions and history and the discovery of rural Japan. Through object history of case studies, this presentation reviews how 'raw' data were exchanged, appeared in books and changed meaning in the course of their scholarly existence and how topics of interests were informed by new developments in travel, infrastructure, and new forms of foreign scholarship, Chinese as well as European, but also kept a strong tie with earlier practices developed in court scholarship.