Sekka Zusetsu: A Book of Snowflakes (1832)

Doi Toshitsura, the fourth daimyō of Koga Domain started observing snowflakes as his hobby and this book is considered the first Japanese figure collection of snowflakes Via publicdomainrevue.org

Titled Sekka Zusetsu (雪華図説), this 1832 book of woodblock prints by Doi Toshitsura (1789–1848) reflects twenty years of a life devoted to “snow flowers” (sekka). An Edo-era feudal lord (daimyō), who ruled the Koga Domain in what is today’s Shimōsa Province, he was perhaps the first person in Japan to observe ice crystals under a microscope.
Sekka Zusetsu contains eighty-six firsthand observations of snowflakes as well as a dozen reproduced from J. F. Martinet’s Katechismus der natur (1779). Doi Toshitsura’s process for making his sketches was simple: on a suitably chilly evening, he would place a black cloth outside to pre-cool it with cold air. Then, gathering freshly fallen snow on the blanket, he transferred each flake individually using tweezers to a lacquerware tray for microscopic observation, being careful not to exhale toward his specimens lest they dissolve.

Learn more! The National Diet Library in Tokyo has scanned a copy of the book of snow crystals observed and recorded by Doi Toshitsura. See it here!

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