Philipp Franz von Siebold

Philipp Franz von Siebold was a German doctor who studied medicine, zoology, botany, and ethnology, and also had a doctorate in surgery, obstetrics, and internal medicine. He wanted to study in a field unknown in Europe at that time and decided to go to Japan. He was appointed as the doctor for the Dutch Trade Mission to Japan an arrived in Dejima via Batabia (now Jakarta) in 1823. In Dejima he established the Narutaki School, where he taught Western medicine to the elite students who came from all over Japan. He married a Japanese, Toki, and had a daughter, Ine, by her. The so called Siebold incident, when a ship carrying his documents on Japan was shipwrecked off the coast of Nagasaki and was discovered by the bakufu officials, led to his deportation from Japan the next year. He loved Japan and continued his study of Japan in his homeland until his death, leaving behind many books on Japan.

●The Siebold Memorial Museum――15 minutes on the streetcar from Nagasaki Station.

Otakusa When Siebolt was first introduced to his wife to be Otaki-san, he mistook it for "Otakusa" and called her by this name ever after. He named the beautiful hydrangea plant which he saw for the first time "Otakusa" after his beloved wife. This is how the scientific name of this plant came to be called otakusa, now known worldwide.