The is an illustrated

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

ese ''

leishu The ''leishu'' () is a genre of reference books historically compiled in China and other East Asian countries. The term is generally translated as "encyclopedia", although the ''leishu'' are quite different from the modern notion of encyclopedi ...

'' encyclopedia published in 1712 in the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

. It consists of 105 volumes in 81 books. Its compiler was Terashima or Terajima (), a doctor from

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...

. It describes and illustrates various activities of daily life, such as

carpentry Carpentry is a skilled trade and a craft in which the primary work performed is the cutting, shaping and installation of building materials during the construction of buildings, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc. Carpenters tr ...

and

fishing Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment, but may also be caught from stocked bodies of water such as ponds, canals, park wetlands and reservoirs. Fishing techniques inclu ...

, as well as

plants Plants are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic eukaryotes of the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all curr ...

and

animals Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and go through an ontogenetic stage in ...

, and

constellations A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The origins of the earliest constellation ...

. It depicts the people of "different/strange lands" (''ikoku'') and "outer barbarian peoples". As seen from the title of the book ( wa , which means Japan, and kan , which means China), Terajima's idea was based on a

Chinese encyclopedia Chinese encyclopedias comprise both Chinese-language encyclopedias and foreign-language ones about China or Chinese topics. There is a type of native Chinese reference work called ''leishu'' (lit. "categorized writings") that is sometimes transla ...

, specifically the

Ming The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last ort ...

work ''

Sancai Tuhui ''Sancai Tuhui'' (, ), compiled by Wang Qi () and his son Wang Siyi (), is a Chinese ''leishu'' encyclopedia, completed in 1607 and published in 1609 during the late Ming dynasty, featuring illustrations of subjects in the three worlds of heaven ...

'' ("Pictorial..." or "Illustrated Compendium of the Three Powers") by

Wang Qi Wang Qi is the name of: * Wang Qi (footballer, born October 1993), Chinese midfielder * Wang Qi (footballer, born November 1993), Chinese goalkeeper * Wang Qi (physician) (born 1943), Chinese andrologist See also * Qiwang (disambiguation) {{h ...

(1607), known in Japan as the . Reproductions of the ''Wakan Sansai Zue'' are still in print in Japan.

References

External links

Scans
of the pages are available in th

of the

National Diet Library The is the national library of Japan and among the largest libraries in the world. It was established in 1948 for the purpose of assisting members of the in researching matters of public policy. The library is similar in purpose and scope to ...

, Japan.
Samples on the human body from the Japanese encyclopedia
* Scans of copies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are available at the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

: volume
1-89-1516-3637-4748-6066-7272-7778-8788-9596-105 with index
Edo-period works Japanese encyclopedias 18th century in Japan 1712 books 18th-century encyclopedias Leishu {{ref-book-stub