|
 
23-25 March 1998
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Japan-the Netherlands: Old Relationships, New Sources Old Relationships, New Sources: Contemporary Methodologies and Shifting Perceptions in 400 Years of Dutch-Japanese Interaction. This was the title of the two-day seminar held by the Historical Research Programme on Relations between Japan and the Netherlands through its bureau, the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation (RIOD), which was financed by the Government of Japan. The Research Programme commenced giving financial support for research and documentation projects representative of the 400 years of relations between these two countries, which is due to be celebrated in 2000. Rosemary Robson-McKillop
The initiative for the seminar was taken by His Excellency Mr. Tadashi Ikeda, Ambassador of Japan in the Netherlands, and Professor J.Th.M. Banks, Chairman of the Steering Committee. Much of the practical organization was in the hands of Dr E. Touwen-Bouwsma and Mariska van Bruggen.
The opening speeches, by Ambassador Ikeda (see page ##), Prof. Banks, and by Dr Blom, (director of the RIOD), were followed by presentations of the projects currently being funded and these cover the whole spectrum of the past four hundred years of interaction, illuminating all sorts of aspects of the sometimes tumultuous relationship. The first project under the supervision of Prof. G. Teitler and Prof. K.W. Radtke, is the project to translate extracts from the reports of Col. H.J.D. de Fremery of the Royal Netherlands Indies Army (KNIL). Col. De Fremery was asked by the General Staff of the KNIL, which had been observing the growing military strength of Japan with apprehension, to make reports on the course of the Sino-Japanese war. In all he wrote twenty-three reports between July 1937 and the beginning of 1939. The making available of these reports will cover an important gap in our knowledge of the period leading up to Second World War.
The next report by Dr F. Steijlen, the head of the Oral History Project on Indonesia in the Netherlands, covered the first year of this project which was launched in 1997. The aim is to collect the life stories of a thousand people who lived in Indonesia or parts of the Netherlands East Indies between 1940 and 1963. The project was established by nine research and documentation institutes and universities and is based at the Royal Institute for Linguistics and Anthropology (KITLV) in Leiden. The 210 interviews already conducted are available at the KITLV for researchers. The material will be recorded on minidisk, which combines digital recording facilities with potential random accessibility.
Closely allied to this oral history project is the Diary Project, which was outlined by Mariska van Bruggen. The aim of this project is to enable a wider public, especially in Japan, to become acquainted with the traumatic experiences suffered by Dutch war victims in Southeast Asia. This project has three aims. The first concerns the cataloguing, selection, and translation into Japanese of parts of diaries kept by prisoners in concentration and prisoner-of-war camps which are held in the collection of the RIOD. The second part will be to translate into Japanese and publish in Japan Dutch books about Dutch war victims. The goal of the third section will be to produce educational material for school pupils in Japan between the ages of 12 and 18. It will be in the form of written texts in combination with instruction sheets and CD-Rom.
Dr P. Koenders of the General State Archives in The Hague described the production of a new guide on the history of Japanese-Dutch relations being compiled by the State Archives. To ensure ready access to this much-used material, a database model has been developed on the structure of the General International Standard for Archival Description or ISAG(G). The guide, which is in English, is well equipped for future retrieval on the Internet.
The next presentation described two in a series of monographs which are being written to commemorate the anniversary. Ms Kayoko Fujita is preparing a study of the policy measures undertaken by the Dutch East India Company to deal with the transformation of Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate in the second half of the 16th century. The other monograph, being written by Ms Cynthia Viallé, makes a special art-historical study of Japanese lacquerware, which remained a top priority item of trade for the 220 years which the Dutch traded at Deshima. Both these studies are being prepared under the supervision of Dr Leonard Blussé.
The topic of the next presentation by F. Groenedijk was Japanese film propaganda during the Pacific War. The newly founded Netherlands Audiovisual Archives will locate and catalogue wartime Japanese propaganda films kept in Dutch archives. The Dutch Film Archives still holds (parts of) about 100 wartime films, produced either in Japan or in Indonesia, but unfortunately their existence is a well-kept secret.
Prof. E. Zürcher and Ms. E. Uitzinger described and gave a fascinating sample of their endeavours to collect, describe, and store in digitalized form visual materials pertaining to pre-1900 Dutch-Japanese relations. The main focus will be Deshima. This project is based at the Japanese Department of Leiden University.
The next two days were devoted to more detailed descriptions of various aspects of the projects. In these distinguished guests from Japan like Prof. Toru Haga of Tokyo University, Prof. Mitsuo Nakamura of Chiba University, Dr Shigemi Inaga of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, and Prof. Tadashi Yoshida of Tohuko University took a leading part.
The open day concluded with a reception offered by His Excellency Mr. Ikeda in the stately new premises of the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation on the Herengracht.
|