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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how people in Edo Japan engaged imaginatively with exotic animals exhibits (misemono). Viewers attributed medical, social, and protective benefits to animals and their byproducts, revealing contested processes of knowledge creation and exchange.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores the different ways that people interacted with exotic animals during the Edo period. Focusing on prints and literature about animal exhibitions (misemono), it contends that people were not passive observers of exotic animals but engaged in imaginative exchanges with the animals on display. These exchanges extended beyond entertainment into the realms of health care, relationships, and disasters. Stones that had passed through the digestive tract of cassowary birds were sold as charms for safe childbirth, camel urine was sold as an ointment against skin complaints, and the act of viewing exotic animals or their images were thought to bestow the viewer with different benefits.

Although most exotic animals were transported by the Dutch, the imagined benefits and uses of these creatures and their byproducts seem to have emerged within Japan. An interesting tension emerges here: contemporary Japanese sources claim Dutch or Chinese points of origin for their knowledge, which cannot be traced. In other words, the lineage of knowledge about exotic animals appears to have been important for lending it credence. At the same time, we can observe that Japanese officials often questioned more fantastical claims made by the Dutch, such as the idea that they were selling unicorn horn. The example of exotic animal exhibits therefore speaks to wider questions about the creation and contestation of knowledge, and about Japan’s trade in both goods and knowledge with other countries during the Edo Period.

The paper will describe and analyse contemporary sources, including single sheet prints related to misemono and popular literature such as Wagō: Rakuda no sekai (1825), to create a cultural history focused on human-animal relationships and knowledge creation during the 19th century.