Fauna Japonica

Fauna Japonica is a series of monographs on the zoology of Japan.[1] It was the first book written in a European language (French) on the Japanese fauna,[2] and published serially in five volumes between 1833 and 1850.[3]

Fauna Japonica
An illustration of a russet sparrow pair from the Fauna Japonica
Publication date
1833

The full title is Fauna Japonica sive Descriptio animalium, quae in itinere per Japoniam, jussu et auspiciis superiorum, qui summum in India Batava imperium tenent, suscepto, annis 1825 - 1830 collegit, notis, observationibus et adumbrationibus illustravit Ph. Fr. de Siebold. Conjunctis studiis C. J. Temminck et H. Schlegel pro vertebratis atque W. de Haan pro invertebratis elaborata.

Based on the collections made by Philipp Franz von Siebold (who edited the text) and his successor Heinrich Bürger in Japan, Fauna Japonica's vertebrate volumes were authored by the Leyden Museum naturalists Coenraad Jacob Temminck and Hermann Schlegel. Wilhem de Haan, also at the Leyden museum wrote the invertebrate volumes assisted by the Japanese artist naturalists Keiga Kawahara, Kurimoto Masayoshi and others. The volumes were a rare chance for European naturalists to learn about the wildlife in isolationist Japan.[3]

Contents of Fauna Japonica
Volume Title
I Crustacea
II Pisces
I

I

 Reptilia
IV Aves
V Mamalia


Publication

The 5 volumes that make up Fauna Japonica were published by P. F. von Siebold and Lugduni Batavorum between 1833 and 1850. Originally intended to include all Japanese fauna, the published volumes pertain to Vertebrates and Crustacea only. Though a lot of the content was based on his own collections of specimen, von Siebold was the editor and publisher, not the writer of Fauna Japonica. C. J. Temminck and H. Schlegel authored the Vertebrata volumes, for which von Siebold did write an introduction, and W. de Haan wrote the volume on the Crustacea. While an 1849 letter between Temminck, then director of the Leiden Museum, and the Netherlands Ministry of Internal Affairs, indicates that J. A. Herklots studied the other invertebrates in von Siebold's collection, no volume of his was published in this series.[4]

Dating Difficulties

The publication of the each volume was done in the form of several fascicles called "Decades" over many years. This process poses many problems for modern scientists trying to keep track of the nomenclature of Japanese wildlife, because both text and plates often introduced nomenclature and described new taxa with inconsistent priority. For example, the volume devoted to bird, "Aves," was published in 12 livraisons ("deliveries" in French). The problem is or special concern for de Haan's Crustacea volume, in which many new genera and species were described. The problem arises because of uncertain dating on each component of these volumes.[5] For a sense of how widley dispersed in time the publication of even a single volume can be, the following table records the different dates of publication for the different "Decades" of the first volume of Fauna Japonica, Crustacea.

Dating the Crustacea Volume's Fascicles[5]
Deca Publication Year
I 1833
II 1835
III 1837
IV 1839
V 1841

Reception

Fauna Japonica was considered important for its comprehensiveness, specifically of relevance to carcinologists. The Crustacea volume especially is consulted by those researching Decapods and Stomatopods. The work was influential on Philipp Franz von Siebold's reputation as a scientist in Europe and Japan. Numerous reprints and facsimiles have been issued since, some including unpublished artwork by collaborator Keiga Kawahara. Von Siebold's collection is now housed at the Horus Botanicus Leiden, the botanical garden in Leiden.

References
  1. Archives of Natural History. Society for the Bibliography of Natural History. 1982.
  2. Charlotte Sleigh (8 March 2017). The Paper Zoo: 500 Years of Animals in Art. University of Chicago Press. pp. 63–. ISBN 978-0-226-44712-4.
  3. L. B. Holthuis; Tsune Sakai (1970). Ph. F. von Siebold and Fauna japonica: a history of early Japanese zoology. Academic Press of Japan.
  4. Holthuis, L. B. (1953). "On the Dates of Publication of W. De Haan's Volume on the Crustacea of P. F. von Siebold's "Fauna Japonica" (PDF). The Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History. 3 Part 1: 36-46.
  5. Mlíkovský, Jiří. (2012). The dating of Temminck & Schlegel’s “Fauna Japonica: Aves”, with implications for the nomenclature of birds. Zoological Bibliography. 2. 108-117.
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