Von Siebold established himself and his private collection in Leiden in 1832. This collection was considered a branch of the cabinet in The Hague, initially known as Rijks Japansch Museum Von Siebold. Conrad Leemans, then director of the Rijksmuseum voor Oudheden (National Museum of Antiquities), took over the management from Von Siebold in 1859. In 1864, the name changed to Rijks Ethnographisch Museum (National Museum of Ethnography). Leemans concentrated on the Netherlands East Indies, present-day Indonesia. His successor, Serrurier, who took over in 1880, was the first director with an ethnological background. Meanwhile, The Royal Cabinet in The Hague was popular with the public until its closure in 1883 when the ethnographic collections were finally united in Leiden, and where they still form the basis of the National Museum of Ethnology. Rudolf Effert studied Cultural Anthropology in Leiden and obtained his Ph.D. in 2003. His research concerns the history of Dutch Ethnography and Cultural Anthropology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, on which he has published several monographs and articles, including Vol. 7 in the CNWS Publications Series. This book is based on extensive research in the archives of the Royal Cabinet of Rarities. In this book, Effert proposes new perspectives on the relationship between the three main collectors in Japan in the first half of the nineteenth century and he argues that the scholarly contributions of two of them, Cock Blomhoff and Overmeer Fisscher, have been seriously underestimated.