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podcasts. Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, Episode 248, Family Matters.

Now, before our slight scheduling snafu, I'd originally intended this episode to follow

directly on the heels of our Englebert Kempfer one, and for a very good reason.

The story begins in a very similar way, with a German who took a job

with the VOC, the Dutch East India Company, and who went to Nagasaki as a result.

This week's story is not exclusively that man's story, but it's a story that begins with him,

so it behooves us to spend some time on it. His name was Philip Franz von Siebold, and he was born in Bavaria,

specifically a little chunk of it that was, at the time, called the Bischopricks of

Wirtzburg, in 1796.

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