STEENACKERS Francis-Frédérik (EN)
Childhood and First Trip to Japan
Francis-Frédérik Steenackers was born in Paris on May 11, 1858. He was the son of Marie-Léontine Pargoud (dates unknown) and Joseph-François Frédéric Steenackers (1830-1911) [Archives du Ministère des Affaires étrangères (AMA), Dossiers personnels, 2e série, 394QO/1451]. The latter, a recognised sculptor, was also a member of the Republican Party, director general of the post office, and deputy of Haute-Marne. Francis-Frédérik grew up in this well-to-do family, between Paris and the Château d'Arc-en-Barrois, which the Steenackers rented from 1862 (AMA, Dossiers personnels, 2e série, 394QO/1451). The family also resided temporarily in Tours and then in Bordeaux during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. After studying at the lycée Bonaparte (present-day lycée Condorcet), Francis Steenackers performed a brief stint of military service, between 1879 and 1880 (AAMA, Dossiers personnels, 2e série, 394QO/1451). He left France for Japan the following year, without having taken the time to pursue higher education. This first stay was originally planned as a fifteen-month trip to Japan and India. In this context, he sent several requests for mission to Jules Ferry (1832-1893), Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts, from 1880 (AMA, Dossiers personnels, 2e série, 394QO/1451). The first request was granted to him on a voluntary basis in October 1881 and lasted until 1885. During his research, which focused on Japanese fish, he discovered several species. He donated the fish collections to the state;now these are kept at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris. This expedition and the resulting donations earned Steenackers the appointment to officier d’Académie by the Minister of Public Instruction in 1884 (AN, F/17/2885).
This appointment was a springboard for Steenackers’s career. On his return to France in 1885, he expressed his wish to obtain a post of consulate chancellor in the Far East, indicating his preferencefor Japan, which he knew well by now. He had a distinct interest in the culture of the archipelago. In 1885, Steenackers published a book with the Japanese writer Ueda Tokunosuke (上田得之助著, dates unknown), published by Leroux (Paris), titled Cent Proverbes japonais. This anthology of proverbs was illustrated with woodblock prints by Kawanabe Kyosai (河鍋暁斎,1831-1889). The same year, a French vice-consulate had been created in Kobe, and he was appointed there as a chancery clerk. Through Francis Steenackers’s start of a diplomatic career, on May 28, 1885, his stay in Japan was extended. It was "out of taste and vocation that Mr. Steenackers embarked on the career of the consulates" (AMA, Dossiers personnels, 2e série, 394QO/1451). The young man had enough fortune to avoid pursuing a career. He had a pension of 6,000 francs coming from his mother, as well as another inalienable and non-transferable pension of 5,000 francs (AMA, Dossiers personnels, 2e série, 394QO/14511).
Career in Japan
Once his diplomatic career was launched, Francis Steenacker began to climb the ladder ostensibly through Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929). Clemenceau, who was then deputy of the Var, sat with the young diplomat's father in the National Assembly. As early as 1888, he interceded with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Francis Steenackers and supported his request to be appointed vice-consul on availability in Kobe (AMA, Dossiers personnels, 2e série, 394QO/1451). Through Clemenceau’s help, he obtained this post in June 1888. At the same time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs placed him at the disposal of the Ministry of Public Instruction, which consequently entrusted him with a second mission in Japan, still on a voluntary basis (AN, F/17/3008). He filled the role until 1891, where he pursued research in biological anthropology. On July 13, 1888, he was named Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, at the prompting of Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau, professor at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris (AN/LH/2548/15). This nomination recognised the importance of the collections he donated to the state. He never stopped collecting goods in order to enrich the museum’s anatomical collections, even when they were not commissioned by the Ministry of Public Instruction (AN, F/17/3008) .
On several occasions, his research for the Ministry of Public Instruction nourished his ambitions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Accordingly, the Minister of Public Instruction Léon Bourgeois (1851-1925) interceded for Steenackers with his colleague from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in May 1890. In a letter dated May 3, 1890 (AN, F/17/3008 ), Bourgeois emphasised the great importance of the anthropology collections brought together by Steenackers and his perfect knowledge of Japanese customs and language. He asked his colleague to place him "in more active functions" and proposed to appoint Steenackers’s vice consul of Kobe or chancellor at the consulate of Yokohama. In January 1891, Francis Steenackers was appointed vice consul of France in Nagasaki. The same year, he married Emilia-Berthe Frique (1872-1892), a young woman of Egyptian origin. She died at age twenty on March 17, 1892 (AMAE, Dossiers personnels, 2e série, 394QO/1451).
Steenackers became a second-class consul in Nagasaki in 1896. He maintained good relations with the population and with the local authorities, as well as with the monks at a number of Buddhist monasteries (AN, F/17/3008). Because of his network, he managed to bring together the collections that he sent to the Ministry of Public Instruction. His links with local authorities were also essential from a diplomatic point of view. Thus, in a 1901 letter addressed to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the leader of the French delegation in Tokyo wrote: "Monsieur Steenackers […] always knew how to maintain relations with the local authorities which enabled him to gather precise information, particularly at the time of the Sino-Japanese war and at other times to prevent difficulties from arising in the ports of his residence, either with the warships or the locals” (AMAE, Dossiers personnels, 2e série, 394QO/14511). Alongside his post as French consul in Nagasaki, Francis Steenackers was also in charge of the consulate in Yokohama in the absence of the titular consul, beginning in 1900.
Steenackers became an Officier de la Légion d’honneur, on May 17, 1901 (AN/LH/2548/15). The following years were full of success. He was appointed first class consul in July 1903, and in March 1904, he obtained the post of French consul in Yokohama. Three years later, in February 1907, Francis Steenackers was promoted to the rank of consul general. This new position, however, was temporary and marked the end of his nearly twenty-six year long stay in Japan.
Return to Europe
The diplomat was appointed consul general in Frankfurt in October of the same year. Without hesitation, he then returned to Paris since the Minister of Public Instruction Aristide Briand (1862-1932) appointed him an honorary member of the historical and scientific works on July 18, 1907 (Travaux historiques scientifiques) (AN, F/17/2885). On May 17, 1907, Steenackers began his second marriage with Aimée-Margueritte Toussaint (dates unknown). The couple had a daughter in 1911 (AMA, Dossiers personnels, 2e série, 394QO/1451).
In 1909, Francis Steenackers left Frankfurt to take the post of consul general in Naples. Soon thereafter, in 1910, he was appointed consul general in Zurich; his return to Europe was his own choice. We know that as early as 1902, while still consul in Nagasaki, he had expressed the desire to occupy a post in the Mediterranean, but his wish had not been granted at the time (AMA, Dossiers personnels, 2e série, 394QO/1451). Steenackers was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary Second Class by Foreign Minister Aristide Briand. However, in Zurich the consul faced difficulties, which would mark the end of his career. The first dates back to the end of the summer of 1915. He was accused of having his assistant sign certificates in his name without authorizing a delegation of signature. Thus, the certificates indicated the name of the consul but the signature of another, without mentioning this quality. They did not bear the seal of the post and were not registered anywhere. This delegation was described as “irresponsible” (AMAE, Dossiers personnels, 2e série, 394QO/1451) by the Directorate of Political and Commercial Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A few months later, at the beginning of 1916, Francis Steenackers was once again in trouble. The Danish Minister for Foreign Affairs complained about the way his envoy was received by the Consul General of France in Zurich. The envoy was responsible for delivering a diplomatic pouch but was refused information by Steenackers on the pretext that it was Sunday He was therefore obligated to spend another 24 hours in Zurich. This complaint followed that of another Danish envoy who had also reported a poor receptiona fortnight earlier. Consequently, in 1916, Francis Steenackers was replaced in Zurich, without any further post of consul general available to accommodate him (AMA, Dossiers personnels, 2e série, 394QO/1451). He then returned to Paris where he died of an illness the following year at the age of fifty-eight.
The Collection
Alongside his career as a diplomat, Francis Steenackers responded to two successive collecting missions in Japan from the Ministry of Public Instruction (AN, F/17/3008). The first, carried out pro bono, took place from 1881 to 1885. Although its title was "Scientific mission to Japan and the Indies in order to collect scientific collections", Steenackers devoted himself exclusively to Japan. The objects he collected were extremely varied. He first devoted himself to ichthyological research, which resulted in a large shipment of shells and fish in 1882 to the Ministry of Public Instruction. He had to wait until the summer of 1884 for a second shipment. This included six boxes containing “masks, books, and ethnographic objects” (AN. F/17/3008). Subsequently, human remains constituted the bulk of the collections that the diplomat assembled. After the end of his first mission, he sent hundreds of human remains to the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris, this time without an official request. He then requested a new pro bono mission from the Ministry of Public Instruction with the objective of continuing this anthropological research. This request was granted to him in July 1888, when the minister tasked Francis Steenackers with "research relating to anthropology", and his mission lasted until 1891 (AN, F/17/3008).
Steenackers managed to obtain a large number of objects and continued to send them until 1898, even though he had completed his mission several years prior. These anthropological collections now occupy 524 reference numbers in the inventory of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle. The many acquisitions responded to the needs of Professor Armand de Quatrefages (1810-1892), chair of anthropology at the Muséum d'Histoire naturelle, then to his successor Ernest Théodore Hamy (1842-1908) (AN, F/ 17/3008). The method of collection was particularly well-documented by the consul himself in his correspondence with the professor (AN, F/17/3008). In a letter to Armand de Quatrefages, he mentions removing the human remains by night from cemeteries (AN. F/17/3008). 524 numbers in the inventory of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris come from these exhumations. They were carried out in recent graves and the bones were then smuggled out of Japan. As part of his research, Quatrefages sought to use physical criteria to distinguish groups within the human species; human remains from the Japanese population, however, were very rare in European collections.
In addition to these objects, which made up the bulk of his acquisitions, Steenackers also acquired an important collection of Korean headgear, now kept at the Musée du Quai-Branly – Jacques Chirac. This collection comprising 98 pieces was donated to the Musée Guimet in 1898. The manner in which the diplomat obtained them is not well documented. He only indicates, in the letter accompanying the objects, to have benefited from the assistance of Mr. Rospopoff (dates unknown), vice consul of Russia and close to the Korean king (AN, F/17/2885). The last shipments described in his correspondence with the Ministry of Public Instruction (F/17/2885) concern Japanese sculptures. In February and March 1900, he sent two stone sculptures, representing a female form of Kannon Bosatsu, the Japanese name of the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, and a rakan, a Japanese word which designates the enlightened Arhats. These works came from the treasury of a Buddhist temple, the Kotai-ji in Nagasaki. According to Francis Steenackers, they were made by the sculptor Kobayashi Kentei (1680-1684) in the second year of the Tenna era, i.e. in 1682. The existence of documents written by the superior of the temple, still preserved in the Musée Guimet, suggests that Francis Steenackers was able to buy these works directly from those responsible for the monastery (Archives du musée Guimet).
