Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits. LACMA is the largest art museum in the western United States, it attracts nearly a million visitors annually. It holds more than 150,000 works spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present. In addition to art exhibits, the museum features concert series; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was established as a museum in 1961. Prior to this, LACMA was part of the Los Angeles Museum of History and Art, founded in 1910 in Exposition Park near the University of Southern California. Howard F. Ahmanson, Sr. Anna Bing Arnold and Bart Lytton were the first principal patrons of the museum. Ahmanson made the lead donation of $2 million, convincing the museum board that sufficient funds could be raised to establish the new museum. In 1965 the museum moved to a new Wilshire Boulevard complex as an independent, art-focused institution, the largest new museum to be built in the United States after the National Gallery of Art.
The museum, built in a style similar to Lincoln Center and the Los Angeles Music Center, consisted of three buildings: the Ahmanson Building, the Bing Center, the Lytton Gallery. The board selected LA architect William Pereira over the directors' recommendation of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the buildings. According to a 1965 Los Angeles Times story, the total cost of the three buildings was $11.5 million. Construction began in 1963, was undertaken by the Del E. Webb Corporation. Construction was completed in early 1965. At the time, the Los Angeles Music Center and LACMA were concurrent large civic projects which vied for attention and donors in Los Angeles; when the museum opened, the buildings were surrounded by reflecting pools, but they were filled in and covered over when tar from the adjacent La Brea Tar Pits began seeping in. Money poured into LACMA during the boom years of the 1980s, a $209 million in private donations during director Earl Powell's tenure. To house its growing collections of modern and contemporary art and to provide more space for exhibitions, the museum hired the architectural firm of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates to design its $35.3-million, 115,000-square-foot Robert O. Anderson Building for 20th-century art, which opened in 1986.
In the far-reaching expansion, museum-goers henceforth entered through the new roofed central court, nearly an acre of space bounded by the museum's four buildings. The museum's Pavilion for Japanese Art, designed by maverick architect Bruce Goff, opened in 1988, as did the B. Gerald Cantor Sculpture Garden of Rodin bronzes. In 1999, the Hancock Park Improvement Project was complete, the LACMA-adjacent park was inaugurated with a free public celebration; the $10-million renovation replaced dead trees and bare earth with picnic facilities, viewing sites for the La Brea tar pits and a 150-seat red granite amphitheater designed by artist Jackie Ferrara. In 1994, LACMA purchased the adjacent former May Company department store building, an impressive example of streamline moderne architecture designed by Albert C. Martin Sr. LACMA West increased the museum's size by 30 percent when the building opened in 1998. In 2004 LACMA's Board of Trustees unanimously approved a plan for LACMA's transformation by architect Rem Koolhaas, who had proposed razing all the current buildings and constructing an new single, tent-topped structure, estimated to cost $200 million to $300 million.
Kohlhaas edged out French architect Jean Nouvel, who would have added a major building while renovating the older facilities. The list of candidates had narrowed to five in May 2001: Koolhaas, Steven Holl, Daniel Libeskind and Thom Mayne. However, the project soon stalled. In 2004 LACMA's Board of Trustees unanimously approved plans to transform the museum, led by architect Renzo Piano; the planned transformation consisted of three phases. Phase I started in 2004 and was completed in February 2008; the renovations required demolishing the parking structure on Ogden Avenue and with it LACMA-commissioned graffiti art by street artists Margaret Kilgallen and Barry McGee. The entry pavilion is a key point in architect Renzo Piano's plan to unify LACMA's sprawling confusing layout of buildings; the BP Grand Entrance and the adjacent Broad Contemporary Art Museum comprise the $191 million first phase of the three-part expansion and renovation campaign. BCAM is named for Edy Broad, who gave $60 million to LACMA's campaign.
BCAM opened on February 2008, adding 58,000 square feet of exhibition space to the museum. In 2010 the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion opened to the public, providing the largest purpose-built lit, open-plan museum space in the world; the second phase was intended to turn the May building into new offices and galleries, designed by SPF Architects. As proposed, it would have had flexible gallery space, education space, administrative offices, a new restaurant, a gift shop and a bookstore, as well as study centers for the museum's departments of costume and textiles and prints and drawings, a roof sculpture garden with two works by James Turrell. However, construction of this phase was halted in November 2010. Phase two and three were never completed. In October 2011, LACMA entered into an agreement with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences under which the Academ
Emperor Ling of Han
Emperor Ling of Han, personal name Liu Hong, was the 12th emperor of the Eastern Han dynasty. Born the son of a lesser marquis who descended directly from Emperor Zhang, Liu Hong was chosen to be emperor in 168 around age 12 after the death of his predecessor, Emperor Huan, who had no son to succeed him, he reigned for about 21 years until his death in 189. Emperor Ling's reign saw another repetition of corrupt eunuchs dominating the Han central government, as was the case during his predecessor's reign. Zhang Rang, the leader of the eunuch faction, managed to dominate the political scene after defeating a faction led by Empress Dowager Dou's father, Dou Wu, the Confucian scholar-official Chen Fan in 168. After reaching adulthood, Emperor Ling was not interested in state affairs and preferred to indulge in women and a decadent lifestyle. At the same time, corrupt officials in the Han government levied heavy taxes on the peasants, he exacerbated the situation by introducing a practice of selling political offices for money.
Mounting grievances against the Han government led to the outbreak of the peasant-led Yellow Turban Rebellion in 184. Emperor Ling's reign left the Eastern Han dynasty weak and on the verge of collapse. After his death, the Han Empire disintegrated in chaos for the subsequent decades as various regional warlords fought for power and dominance; the Han dynasty ended in 220 when Emperor Ling's son, Emperor Xian, abdicated his throne – an event leading to the start of the Three Kingdoms period in China. Liu Hong was a hereditary marquis – the Marquis of Jiedu Village. In the Han dynasty, a village marquis's marquisate comprised only one village or, in rarer cases, two or three villages, he was the third person in his family to hold this title. His great-grandfather, Liu Kai, the Prince of Hejian, was the sixth son of Emperor Zhang, the third emperor of the Eastern Han dynasty, his mother, Lady Dong, was Liu Chang's formal spouse. When Emperor Huan died in 168 without a son to succeed him, his empress, Empress Dou, became empress dowager, she examined the genealogy of the imperial clan to choose a candidate to be the next emperor.
For reasons unknown, her assistant Liu Shu recommended the Marquis of Jiedu Village. After consulting with her father Dou Wu and the Confucian scholar-official Chen Fan, Empress Dowager Dou installed a 12-year-old Liu Hong on the throne, continued ruling on his behalf as regent; the newly enthroned Emperor Ling bestowed posthumous titles on his grandfather and grandmother, honouring them as emperors and an empress respectively. His mother, Lady Dong, did not become empress dowager and instead received the title of an Honoured Lady. Dou Wu and Chen Fan, who became the most important officials in the central government, sought to purge the eunuch faction. In 168, they proposed to exterminate all the powerful eunuchs, a proposal that Empress Dowager Dou rejected. However, word of the plot was leaked, the eunuchs, after kidnapping the empress dowager and taking the young emperor into custody arrested and executed Chen Fan. Dou Wu resisted but was defeated and forced to commit suicide; the Dou clan was slaughtered.
The powerful eunuchs, led by Cao Jie and Wang Fu, became the most powerful individuals in the central government. After the destruction of the Dou clan, in 169, Emperor Ling promoted his mother to the position of empress dowager, though he continued honouring Empress Dowager Dou, now under house arrest, as empress dowager as well. Members of the Dong clan did not have substantial influence; that year, the eunuchs persuaded Emperor Ling that the "partisans" were plotting against him, a large number of partisans were arrested and killed. Empress Dowager Dou died in 172. Despite suggestions by eunuchs to have her only buried as an imperial consort and not be honoured as Emperor Huan's wife, Emperor Ling had her buried with full honours befitting an empress dowager in Emperor Huan's mausoleum. In the aftermaths of her death, a vandal wrote on the palace gate: "All, under the heaven is in upheaval. Cao and Wang murdered the empress dowager; the key officials only know how to be officials and had nothing faithful to say."
The angry eunuchs ordered an investigation which led to over 1,000 arrests, but nothing conclusive was found. In that year, the eunuchs falsely accused Emperor Huan's brother, Liu Kui, the Prince of Bohai, of treason and forced him to commit suicide; the members of his entire household, including his wife, children and principality officials, were all rounded up and executed. As the Han government became more corrupt, the people received heavier tax burdens; as Emperor Ling grew older, he not only took no remedial action, but continued to tolerate the eunuchs' corruption for the most part. A major defeat of the Han army by the Xianbei tribes in 177 further drained the imperial treasury. In 178, Emperor Ling's wife Empress Song, whom he made empress in 171 but did not favour, fell victim to the eunuchs' treachery, her aunt, Lady Song, was Liu Kui's wife, so the eunuchs were worried that she would seek vengeance on them. Thus, by collaborating with other imperial consorts who wanted to replace the empress, the eunuchs falsely accused Emp
Nihon Ōdai Ichiran
Nihon Ōdai Ichiran, The Table of the Rulers of Japan, is a 17th-century chronicle of the serial reigns of Japanese emperors with brief notes about some of the noteworthy events or other happenings. According to the 1871 edition of the American Cyclopaedia, the 1834 French translation of Nihon Ōdai Ichiran was one of few books about Japan available in the Western world; the material selected for inclusion in the narrative reflects the perspective of its original Japanese author and his samurai patron, the tairō Sakai Tadakatsu, daimyō of the Obama Domain of Wakasa Province. It was the first book of its type to be brought from Japan to Europe, was translated into French as "Nipon o daï itsi ran". Dutch Orientalist and scholar Isaac Titsingh brought the seven volumes of Nihon Ōdai Ichiran with him when he returned to Europe in 1797 after twenty years in the Far East. All these books were lost in the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, but Titsingh's French translation was posthumously published; the manuscript languished after Titsingh's death in 1812.
The Paris-based philologist and orientalist Julius Klaproth was engaged to shepherd the text into its final printed form in 1834, including a Supplément aux Annales des Daïri, which mirrors the pattern of Titsingh's initial Annales des empereurs du Japon. This became the first Japanese-authored historical account of its sort to be published and circulated for scholarly study in the West, it is fitting that this rare book was selected as one of the first to be scanned and uploaded for online study as part of an ongoing international digitization project which has now been renamed the Google Books Library Project: Titsingh, Isaac, ed.. Nipon o daï itsi ran. Paris: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland.--Two copies of this rare book have now been made available online: from the library of the University of Michigan, digitized January 30, 2007. Click here to read the original text in French. Work on this volume was complete in 1783 when Titsingh sent a manuscript copy to Kutsuki Masatsuna, daimyo of Tamba.
Masatsuna's comments on this text were lost in a shipwreck as the edited manuscript was being forwarded from Japan to India in 1785 where Titsingh had become head of the Dutch East Indies Company trade operations at Hoogly in West Bengal. The final version of Titsingh's dedication of the book to his friend Masatsuna was drafted in 1807, a little more than a quarter-century before the book was published; the original multi-volume text was compiled in the early 1650s by Hayashi Gahō. His father, Hayashi Razan, had developed a compelling, practical blending of Shinto and Confucian beliefs and practices. Razan's ideas lent themselves to a well-accepted program of samurai and bureaucrat educational and testing protocols. In 1607, Razan was accepted as a political advisor to Tokugawa Hidetada. Sometime thereafter, he became the rector of Edo's Confucian Academy, the Shōhei-kō; this institution stood at the apex of the country-wide educational and training system, created and maintained by the Tokugawa shogunate.
In the elevated context his father engendered, Gahō himself was accepted as a noteworthy scholar in that period. The Hayashi and the Shōheikō links to the work's circulation are part of the explanation for this work's 18th and 19th century popularity. Gahō was the author of other works designed to help readers learn from Japan's history, including the 310 volumes of The Comprehensive History of Japan, published in 1670; the narrative of Nihon Ōdai Ichiran stops around 1600, most in deference to the sensibilities of the Tokugawa regime. Gahō's text did not continue up through his present day. In Keian 5, 5th month, Nihon Ōdai Ichiran was first published in Kyoto under the patronage of one of the three most powerful men in the Tokugawa bakufu, the tairō Sakai Tadakatsu. In supporting this work, Sakai Todakatsu's motivations appear to spread across a range anticipated consequences. Gahō's book was published in the mid-17th century and it was reissued in 1803, "perhaps because it was a necessary reference work for officials."
Contemporary readers must have found some degree of usefulness in this chronicle. Post-Meiji scholars who have cited Nihon Ōdai Ichiran as a useful source of information include, for example, Richard Ponsonby-Fane in Kyoto: the Old Capital of Japan, 794-1869; the American poet Ezra Pound, writing to a contemporary Japanese poet in 1939, confirmed that his reference library included a copy of Nihon Ōdai Ichiran. At that time, Pound explained that "as far as time to re
Hirosaki
Hirosaki is a city located in western Aomori Prefecture, Japan. As of 1 December 2017, the city had an estimated population of 174,171 in 71,823 households, a population density of 330 persons per km2; the total area of the city is 524.20 square kilometres. Hirosaki developed; the city is a regional commercial center, the largest producer of apples in Japan. The city government has been promoting the catchphrase "Apple Colored Town Hirosaki", "Castle and Cherry Blossom and Apple Town" to promote the city image; the town is noted for a large number of western-style buildings dating from the Meiji period. Hirosaki is located in western Aomori Prefecture, in the Tsugaru plains of southern Tsugaru Peninsula, south of Mount Iwaki and bordering on Akita Prefecture. Mount Iwaki is within the city borders, the Iwaki River flows through the city. Aomori Prefecture Tsugaru Hirakawa Nakatsugaru District – Nishimeya Minamitsugaru District – Ōwani, Inakadate Kitatsugaru District – Itayanagi, Tsuruta Nishitsugaru District – Ajigasawa Akita Prefecture Ōdate Per Japanese census data, the population of Hirosaki has grown over the past 40 years.
Hirosaki uses a Buddhist manji as its official emblem. This came from the flag emblem of Tsugaru clan, the daimyōs of Hirosaki Domain during the Edo period. Hirosaki has a cold humid continental climate characterized by warm short summers and long cold winters with heavy snowfall; the average annual temperature in Hirosaki is 10.1 °C. The average annual rainfall is 1357 mm with September as the wettest month; the temperatures are highest on average in August, at around 23.7 °C, lowest in January, at around -2.3 °C. The area around Hirosaki formed part of the domains of the Northern Fujiwara in the Heian period. During the Sengoku period a local retainer of the Nambu, Ōura Tamenobu, declared his independence and seized local castles, he pledged fealty to Toyotomi Hideyoshi at the Battle of Odawara in 1590, was confirmed in his holdings with revenues of 45,000 koku. He changed his name to "Tsugaru". After siding with Tokugawa Ieyasu at the Battle of Sekigahara, he was re-confirmed in his holdings with a nominal kokudaka of 47,000 koku and he began construction of a castle in Takaoka.
This marked the start of Hirosaki Domain under the Tokugawa shogunate. His successor, Tsugaru Nobuhira, completed the castle in 1611, but its massive 5-storey donjon was lost to lightning in 1627; the domain's kokudaka increased to 100,000 koku in 1628. The Tsugaru clan sided with the Satchō Alliance in the Boshin War of the Meiji Restoration, was rewarded by the new Meiji government with an additional 10,000 koku. However, with the abolition of the han system on August 29, 1871, Hirosaki Domain was abolished, replaced by Hirosaki Prefecture; the prefecture was renamed Aomori Prefecture in October of the same year, the prefectural capital was relocated to the more centrally located Aomori. Chōyō Elementary School was established on October 1, 1873. Apple horticulture was introduced to Hirosaki from 1877 and the 59th National Bank, the predecessor of Aomori Bank opened in March 1878. Hirosaki was proclaimed a city on April 1, 1889 with the establishment of the modern municipalities system and was thus one of the first 30 cities in Japan.
It was the third largest city in the Tōhoku region after Sendai and Morioka at the time. The Ōu Main Line connected Hirosaki with Aomori on December 1, 1894. Hirosaki became the home garrison town for the Imperial Japanese Army's IJA 8th Division from October, 1898; the division was prominently active in the Russo-Japanese War. Hirosaki City Hospital was established in 1901, Hirosaki City Library in 1906; the first telephone service in the city stated from 1909. The first Cherry Blossom Festival was held in 1918. In 1927, the Kōnan Railway connected Hirosaki with Onoe. Hirosaki University was established in 1949. On March 1, 1955, Hirosaki expanded through annexation of neighboring villages of Shimizu, Toyoda, Chitose, Niina, Takasugi and Higashimeya. Nishimeya became an enclave; the city further expanded on September 1957, through annexation of neighboring Ishikawa Village. The first Chrysanthemum and Maple Festival took place in 1964, the first Hirosaki Castle Snow Lantern Festival in 1977. In 1979, the city was connected to the Tōhoku Expressway by a spur road named "Apple Road".
On November 15, 2006, old Hirosaki city, the town of Iwaki, village of Sōma were merged into the new and expanded city of Hirosaki. Hirosaki has a mayor-council form of government with a directly elected mayor and a unicameral city legislature of 28 members; the city, together with the neighbouring village of Nishimeya, contributes six members to the Aomori Prefectural Assembly. Hirosaki is the regional commercial center for southwest Aomori Prefecture; the main agricultural crops include apples and rice, with Hirosaki accounting for 20% of the total production of apples in Japan. Hirosaki University Tohoku Women's College Hirosaki Gakuin University Hirosaki University of Health and Welfare Tohoku Women's Junior College Hirosaki University of Heath and Welfare Junior College Hirosaki has 36 public elementary schools and 15 public junior high schools operated by the city government. There is one national public elementary school and public junior high school, one private combined elementary/junior high school and one private junior high school.
The city has six public high schools operated by the Aom
Emperor Kanmu
Emperor Kammu was the 50th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. Kammu reigned from 781 to 806. Kammu's personal name was Yamabe, he was the eldest son of Prince Shirakabe, was born prior to Shirakabe's ascension to the throne. According to the Shoku Nihongi, Yamabe's mother, Yamato no Niigasa, was a 10th generation descendant of Muryeong of Baekje. After his father became emperor, Kammu's half-brother, Prince Osabe was appointed to the rank of crown prince, his mother was a daughter of Emperor Shōmu. After Inoe and Prince Osabe were confined and died in 775, Osabe's sister – Kammu's half-sister Princess Sakahito – became Kammu's wife; when he ascended to the throne in 781, Kammu appointed his young brother, Prince Sawara, whose mother was Takano no Niigasa, as crown prince. Hikami no Kawatsugu, a son of Emperor Tenmu's grandson Prince Shioyaki and Shōmu's daughter Fuwa, attempted to carry out a coup d'état in 782, but it failed and Kawatsugu and his mother were sent into exile.
In 785 Sawara was died in exile. Kammu had 16 empresses and consorts, 32 imperial sons and daughters. Among them, three sons would ascend to the imperial throne: Emperor Heizei, Emperor Saga and Emperor Junna; some of his descendants took the Taira hereditary clan title, in generations became prominent warriors. Examples include Taira no Masakado, Taira no Kiyomori, the Hōjō clan; the waka poet Ariwara. Kammu is traditionally venerated at his tomb. Kammu was an active emperor who attempted to consolidate government functions. Kammu appointed Sakanoue no Tamuramaro to lead a military expedition against the Emishi. 737: Kammu was born. 773: Received the title of crown prince. April 30, 781: In the 11th year of Kōnin's reign, he abdicated. Shortly thereafter, Emperor Kammu is said to have ascended to the throne. During his reign, the capital of Japan was moved from Nara to Nagaoka-kyō in 784. Shortly thereafter, the capital would be moved again in 794. July 28, 782: The sadaijin Fujiwara no Uona was involved in an incident that resulted in his removal from office and exile to Kyushi.
Claiming illness, Uona was permitted to return to the capital. In the same general time frame, Fujiwara no Tamaro was named Udaijin. During these days in which the offices of sadaijin and udaijin were vacant, the major counselors and the emperor assumed responsibilities and powers which would have been otherwise delegated. 783: The udaijin Tamaro died at the age of 62 years. 783: Fujiwara no Korekimi became the new udaijin to replace the late Fujiwara no Tamaro. 793: Under the leadership of Dengyō, construction began on the Enryaku Temple. 794: The capital was relocated again, this time to Heian-kyō, where the palace was named Heian no Miya. November 17, 794: The emperor traveled by carriage from Nara to the new capital of Heian-kyō in a grand procession; this marks the beginning of the Heian period. 806: Kammu died at the age of 70. Kammu's reign lasted for 25 years; the years of Kammu's reign are more identified by more than one era name. Ten'ō Enryaku Earlier Imperial sponsorship of Buddhism, beginning with Prince Shōtoku, had led to a general politicization of the clergy, along with an increase in intrigue and corruption.
In 784 Kammu shifted his capital from Nara to Nagaoka-kyō in a move, said to be designed to edge the powerful Nara Buddhist establishments out of state politics—while the capital moved, the major Buddhist temples, their officials, stayed put. Indeed, there was a steady stream of edicts issued from 771 right through the period of Kūkai's studies which, for instance, sought to limit the number of Buddhist priests, the building of temples; however the move was to prove disastrous and was followed by a series of natural disasters including the flooding of half the city. In 785 the principal architect of the new capital, royal favourite, Fujiwara no Tanetsugu, was assassinated. Meanwhile, Kammu's armies were pushing back the boundaries of his empire; this led to an uprising, in 789 a substantial defeat for Kammu's troops. In 789 there was a severe drought and famine—the streets of the capital were clogged with the sick, people avoiding being drafted into the military, or into forced labour. Many disguised themselves as Buddhist priests for the same reason.
In 794 Kammu shifted the capital again, this time to Heian-kyō, modern day Kyoto. The new capital was started early the previous year, but the change was abrupt and led to more confusion amongst the populace. Politically Kammu shored up his rule by changing the syllabus of the university. Confucian ideology still provided the raison d'être for the Imperial government. In 784 Kammu authorised the teaching of a new course based on the Spring and Autumn Annals based on two newly imported commentaries: Kung-yang and Ku-liang; these commentaries used political rhetoric to promote a state in which
Isaac Titsingh
Isaac Titsingh FRS was a Dutch scholar, merchant-trader and ambassador. During a long career in East Asia, Titsingh was a senior official of the Dutch East India Company, he represented the European trading company in exclusive official contact with Tokugawa Japan, traveling to Edo twice for audiences with the shōgun and other high bakufu officials. He was the Dutch and VOC governor general in Bengal. Titsingh worked with his counterpart, Charles Cornwallis, governor general of the British East India Company. In 1795, Titsingh represented Dutch and VOC interests in China, where his reception at the court of the Qing Qianlong Emperor stood in stark contrast to the rebuff suffered by Britain's ambassador George Macartney in 1793, just prior to celebrations of Qianlong’s sixty-year reign. In China, Titsingh functioned as ambassador for his country at the same time as he represented the Dutch East India Company as a trade representative. Isaac Titsingh was born in Amsterdam, the son of Albertus Titsingh and his second wife, Catharina Bittner.
His baptism took place at the Amstelkerk in Amsterdam on 21 January 1745. His father was a prominent Amsterdam surgeon, he thus possessed the means for Titsingh to be brought up with an ‘enlightened education’ of the 18th century. Titsingh became a member of the Amsterdam Chirurgijngilde and received the degree of a Doctorate of Law from Leiden University in January 1765. In March 1764, Titsingh was appointed as 1766 went within his employment to Batavia. Titsingh was the commercial Opperhoofd or chief factor in Japan between 1779–1780, 1781–1783, in 1784; the singular importance of the head of the VOC in Japan during this period was enhanced by the Japanese policy of sakoku—imposed isolation. Because of religious proselytizing by Europeans during the 16th century, the Tokugawa shogunate introduced a policy in the early 17th century that no European or Japanese could enter or leave the Japanese archipelago on penalty of death; the sole exception to this "closed door" was the VOC "factory" on the island of Dejima in Nagasaki Bay, on the southern Japanese island of Kyūshū.
During this period of seclusion, Titsingh is believed to have been the first Freemason in Japan. In this controlled context, the traders became the sole official conduit for trade and for scientific-cultural exchanges between Europe and Japan; the VOC Opperhoofd was accorded the status of a tributary of the shōgun. Given the scarcity of such opportunities, Titsingh's informal contacts with bakufu officials and Rangaku scholars in Edo may have been as important as his formal audiences with the shōgun, Tokugawa Ieharu. During the 18th century there was an improvement of the social position of the Dutch merchants and the treatment of the Dutch vis-à-vis the Japanese, who showed a higher degree of respect and recognition than in the centuries before; the average Opperhoofd was not interested in the customs or culture of the Japanese. Titsingh showed an incredible interest and distinguished himself as an attentive observer of Japanese civilization for a European of his time when compared to his colleagues in Dejima.
Titsingh arrived in Nagasaki on 15 August 1779, where he took over the factory from Arend Willem Feith. He established amicable relations between the interpreters and Japanese. During his first audience with Ieharu in Edo from 25 March 1780 until 5 April 1780, he met a lot of Japanese nobles with whom he established vivid letter correspondence, he became prominent within the elite society of Edo and became friends with several daimyōs and retired daimyōs of the area. After a short return to Batavia in 1780, Titsingh returned to Nagasaki on 12 August 1781, due to his successes with the Dutch-Japanese trade in Dejima. There were no Dutch shipments from Batavia in 1782 due to the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War and thus the trading post in Dejima was cut off from communication with Java during this year. In this year Titsingh stayed in his position as Opperhoofd and concerned himself with befriending Japanese scholars, deepening relations with Japanese friends and researching on all scopes of Japanese customs and culture.
He achieved, due to the absence of Dutch shipping that year, important trade talks and great concessions with the Japanese on a long-debated increase to copper exports from Japan to the Dutch traders. Titsingh stayed a total of three years and eight months in Japan before leaving Nagasaki at the end of November 1784 to return to Batavia, where he arrived on 3 January 1785. In 1785, Titsingh was appointed director of the trading post at Chinsurah in Bengal. Titsingh was described by William Jones, the philologist and Bengal jurist, as "the Mandarin of Chinsura". Titsingh’s return to Batavia led to new positions as Ontvanger-Generaal and as Commissaris ter Zee. While at Batavia, he met with Lord Macartney, en route to China. Titsingh's comments were important factors in McCartney's decision to abandon a planned expedition to Japan in 1793. Mccartney's report to London explained: "... the expediency of attempting an intercourse with the Japanese subsists in its full force. Tho from the conversations I had at Batavia with a Dutch Gentleman of a liberal disposition, several years resident in Japan, Isaac Titsingh, I collected nothing that could induce m
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