The German doctor and scientist Philip Franz von Siebold
(1796-1866) played a major role in the development of Western scientific
disciplines in Japan, especially in medicine. Equally important were his
contributions to Western knowledge about Japan, which remained virtually closed
to the outside world until 1854. This work depicts the life of this impassioned
man whose love for Japan and its people resulted in the creation of several
definitive ethnographic, zoological and botanical collections.