Siebold House

To further express the long and special ties between the Netherlands and Japan, a number of parties established the SieboldHuis Foundation with the goal to reopen the SieboldHuis. This house was the location where Siebold showed his collections of Japanese objects and artefacts as early as 1837 to an interested public. And now, after 150 years, his former house is the location of the first official Japan centre. The reinstatement of the SieboldHouse has been generously supported by the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry and the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, by Dutch and Japanese companies, including the JCC and by the city of Leiden. The National museum for Ethnology and the National Museum of Natural History Naturalis partake in the project on the bases of their internationally known Japanese collections. The 19th century Japanese objects in these two museums are unique in the world, including the collections in Japan itself. Leiden University, which also participates in the SieboldHouse, has close ties to Japan. Both because of the department for Japanese language and culture and because of its important Japanese collections, housed at several academic institutions. A large part of these collections have been brought to Leiden by Siebold or have later been compiled by him.