The Most Magnificent Monastery and Othet Famous Sights : The Japanese Paintins of Engelbert Kaempfer

The German scholar Engelbert Kaempfer (1651-1716) came to Japan during the Genroku period as physician to the trading settlement of the Dutch East India Company at Nagasaki. During the two years of his visit he not only took a great amount of scholarly notes and produced a number of sketches but also succeeded in purchasing various small objects, books and maps, as well as a set of fifty finely painted watercolours of famous sights (meisho e). This article attempts to place these description and drawings of Chion-in and the large Buddha of Kyoto as an example, it is argued that these paintings, in line with other contemporary depictions, were when he wrote his famous work on Japan, and when on occasion he forgot that they were stylized portrayals only, he committed errors in his otherwise meticulous description.