Архив статей журнала
Nikolai Fedorovich Katanov (1862–1922), a Russian scholar of Turkic origin (Khakas), was a valuable Orientalist who wrote important works in the field of Russian Oriental studies. The framework of his scientific work was formed by various fields such as linguistics, ethnography, folklore, culture, history, archaeology and museology related to various Turkic tribes and peoples living in Siberia and Central Asia at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th c. His works made a great contribution to the development of studies on the ethnography and culture of Turkic peoples in Siberia and Central Asia. Further research, study, classification, promotion and publication of the material cultural heritage consisting of unpublished archival and visual materials of Katanov, an exemplary representative of the Khakass people and Turkic-speaking peoples of Eurasia, remains important today. Currently, the personal museum funds and collections of Katanov are stored in Kazan, St. Petersburg, Abakan, Minusinsk and Askiz. In this study, a brief review and description of the Katanov’s collections, which are preserved in the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, but which are little known today, will be made. These collections were collected by Katanov during his scientific expeditions to Siberia and East Turkestan2 between 1889 and 1892 in the Minusinsk region, Uryanhai region and East Turkestan. These collections, exhibited at the Kunstkamera, are published for the first time. In the future, an overview and catalog of N. F. Katanov’s Buddhist museum collections (sculpture, painting and ritual objects) will be presented at the National Museum of the Republic of Tatarstan, the State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Tatarstan and the Ethnographic Museum of Kazan Federal University.
This article examines the first volume of Roshia Ibun 魯西亜異聞 [Unusual Narrative about Russia], a unique handwritten manuscript which depicts the story of a Japanese guard, Torizō. He was one of four Japanese guards who spent the winter of 1806 on the Sakhalin island monitoring the situation at Kushunkotan settlement. Lieutenant Nikolai Aleksandrovich Khvostov visited this settlement during his first expedition to Sakhalin in 1806. In his logbook he gave it an interesting name “Lyubopytstvo”, which can be translated into English as “Curiosity”. Curiously enough, this was the place where Khvostov and the four Japanese guards met for the first time. It is considered to be the first military clash between the countries and a turning point of Russian-Japanese relations, since Russia subsequently began to be perceived as a dangerous enemy. The first volume of the source gives especially valuable information about these events. It provides a detailed description of the voyage of the four Japanese captives to Kamchatka on board of a Russian ship, contains important information about the events during the second expedition of Khvostov and Davidov to Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in 1807 and relates the trip of the four Japanese guards back to Japan. The first volume of Roshia Ibun, which has never been translated into Russian nor published yet, gives us answers to the following questions. Who was the guard Torizō? How did he perceive the meeting with the Russians in 1806? Were there any official messages or demands from Russian officers? How did Torizō manage to get back to Japan and did he have a chance to share his story with anyone else along the way?