1 - Transmission of Plants and Botanical Knowledge from Joseon Korea to Tokugawa Japan

This presentation examines the channels of transmission and circulation of plants as well as of botanical and horticultural knowledge that entered Tokugawa Japan (1603–1867)  from the Korean Joseon dynasty (1392–1910). 
We first consider the plants requested by the Tokugawa shogunate and various domains. In particular under the reign of Tokugawa Yoshimune (r. 1716–1745), medicinal plants—including Korean ginseng, ephedra, and hawthorn—were imported to be cultivated in governmental pharmaceutical gardens. In the presentation I will discuss the reasons for this governmental policy to be followed by the investigation of textual knowledge transmission. 
Along with the introduction of plants, books on botanical and horticultural knowledge were brought to Japan from Korea, such as Geumyang Japrok (1492) and Chungju Guhwang Jeolyo (1541), and medical books, such as Dongui Bogam (1610), which explained therapeutic methods using hardy plants and herbs. These works were heavily cited in contemporaneous Japanese publications on related topics, and attracted widespread interest in Korean plants. Close investigation of Korean books that are cited by Japanese scholars interested in horticulture reveals the specific process of knowledge transmission related to books on botanical and horticultural knowledge from Joseon to Japan.
Together these two channels, plants and texts, invite us further to consider the circulation of knowledge between the two countries from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.