Philipp Franz von Siebold's Japan story starts on Dejima, the Dutch trading island at Nagasaki, where the physician arrived in 1823. From there it runs to his Narutaki school, his 1826 court journey to Edo and his museum home in Leiden.
The route follows Siebold from Nagasaki to Edo, then to the SieboldHuis in Leiden and his grave in Munich. Nagasaki's Siebold Memorial Museum and Leiden's SieboldHuis can still be visited. The Edo stop is a general marker, not a single building.
Hashima, nicknamed Gunkanjima or Battleship Island, lies about 15 km off Nagasaki, and its coal mine grew from the same story as Glover Garden, the Kosuge Slip Dock and the Takashima mine.
The route follows Nagasaki's industrial rise from 1859: the Scottish merchant Thomas Blake Glover, Japan's first western-style dock, a pioneering coal shaft, the Mitsubishi shipyard and finally Hashima, packed with 5,259 people in 1959 and empty after 1974. It also records the wartime forced labour of Korean civilians and Chinese prisoners of war on Hashima.
The Shimabara Rebellion of 1637–38 was fought at Tomioka and Shimabara Castle and ended at Hara Castle, with roots in the martyrdoms of Nagasaki and a legacy of hidden Christians.
The route starts on Nishizaka Hill in Nagasaki, follows the revolt through Amakusa, Shimabara and Hara Castle, and ends at Dejima, where seclusion pushed Christianity underground.
Engelbert Kaempfer travelled from Dejima in Nagasaki to the shogun's court in Edo in 1691, via Shimonoseki, Osaka and the Tokaido road near Lake Ashi. He was a German physician with the Dutch trading post.
The route follows his 1691 trip in five stops, from the island of Dejima to his audience with the shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. The exact spots in Shimonoseki, Osaka and Hakone are not known, so those pins are approximate.
