A handwritten copy of the Mémoire sur l'histoire ancienne du Japon : d'après le Ouen Hien Tong Kao de Ma-Touan-Lin written by the Marquis d'Hervey de Saint Denys, President of the Society of Ethnographie, originally published in 1872. This version was copied for Ernest Mason Satow by the 'Ph. [Society] Japaniste' in 1876.
It is a small bound volume with red cover and bearing the bookplate for Ernest Mason Satow, Yedo, on the inside cover.
Marie-Jean-Léon Lecoq, Baron d'Hervey de Juchereau, Marquis d'Hervey de Saint-Denys was a French sinologist also known for his research on dreams. In 1851 D'Hervey published his Recherches sur l'agriculture et l'horticulture des Chinois , in which considered plants and animals that might be able to acclimatize to Western countries. He translated Chinese texts and stories. He also published works concerning oneirology.
Ernest Mason Satow was a British diplomat, scholar and Japanologist. Satow was influential in East Asia and Japan, particularly in Bakumatsu (1853–1867) and the Meiji-period (1868–1912). He also served in China after the Boxer Rebellion (1900–1906), in Thailand, Uruguay and Morocco, and represented Britain at the Second Hague Peace Conference in 1907. Satow was a linguist, a traveller, a writer of travel guidebooks, a dictionary compiler, a mountaineer, a keen botanist (chiefly with Frederick Dickins) and a major collector of Japanese books and manuscripts on all kinds of subjects. He authored A Diplomat in Japan and, in retirement, published A Guide to Diplomatic Practice .
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The source of acquisition is unknown.
The volume was catalogued by Nancy Charley, RAS Archivist, in 2023.
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The volume was copied for Ernest Mason Satow in 1876. Its further custodial history is unknown.
