Mogami Tokunai’s wood collection from Hokkaido, Japan: an early record of Ainu wood culture

What is it about?

This paper describes a unique wood collection from Hokkaido, Japan preserved in the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, The Netherlands. The samples are decorated with paintings of leaves and branches of the tree from which they were collected by the scholar Mogami Tokunai around 1800, and donated to the great naturalist and Japan explorer Philipp Franz von Siebold in 1826. Annotations on the samples paint a picture of the rich wood culture of the Ainu people - the original inhabitants of Hokkaido. The collection is discussed in the context of botanical and wood scientific networks in 19th century Japan, and the contributions of Japan to early World Expositions in Vienna, Paris and Philadelphia.

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