Introduction
This year marks 400 years of Dutch-Japanese relations, an anniversary that is being celebrated in both countries with many special exhibitions and events. While such celebrations may seem to gratify national pride, it is also an undeniable fact that these relations constitute a unique and long-lasting contact between East and West. This was neither a relationship between colonizer and colonized, nor was this contact without effect. The sources marking the history of these old ties can help us gain greater insights into the dealings between foreign cultures.
By IVO SMITS & MARGARITA WINKEL
During the first centuries, the main stage for Dutch-Japanese interaction was Japan. The period between 1600-1868 is known as the Tokugawa, or Edo, period as the Tokugawa shogunate then established its political centre in the city of Edo (present-day Tokyo). The government measures regarding foreign policy included regulations on foreign access to Japan and a prohibition on Japanese going abroad. The last of such measures were taken in 1639. Between the middle of the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, Japan was characterized by a stable political pattern in which representatives of the Dutch East India Company, or VOC, were the only Europeans with a right to trade in Japan. The VOC jealously guarded this exclusive position.In the course of this period, the Japanese evaluation of the Dutch changed from regarding them as commercial agents to seeing them as importers of European knowledge. Modern academic research has focused on the latter half of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century and is especially concerned with the influence of the so-called 'Dutch Studies' (rangaku) on the early modernization of Japan, especially with regard to medicine, the natural sciences, and art. Much of this research is based on Japanese sources, such as the Japanese translations of European books. In his essay, Henk de Groot follows the method and implications of the study of the Dutch language in Japan in the early modern period.
Recently, other types of sources are being explored. Very important, in this respect, are the trade reports of the VOC. Three contributors make ample use of these sources. Kayoko Fujita considers two types of Dutch VOC sources evaluating the information they gave on Dutch understanding of the shogunal foreign policy, the information flow within the VOC, and the role of the colonial elite in Batavia in this process. Martha Chaiklin and Cynthia Viallé make use of similar records to trace the flow of objects to and from Japan. Chaiklin looks at the import of European items to Japan, using tobacco utensils as an example. Viallé focuses on the export of Japanese products, specifically considering the role of Japanese lacquerware. Her interest lies not so much in the export activities to Europe, about which relatively much is already known, but in the Asian markets to which the VOC catered as well.
The VOC may have had exclusive European trading rights in Japan, but the Chinese were much more important trading partners to the Japanese. The Chinese traders in Nagasaki were not official representatives of their country but, like the Dutch, they were members of private companies. The Chinese also keenly observed the movements and imports of their competitors and, in his paper, Yoneo Ishii points out the relevance of the Chinese trade reports for an understanding of VOC activities in Japan.
Although this interaction is usually described as an exclusively Dutch-Japanese affair, many of the VOC employees in fact came from other European countries. Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey describes the legacy of the seventeenth-century VOC physician Engelbert Kaempfer, who first took interest in Japan while in Java and whose descriptions, originally written in German, have (until recently) long been misrepresented by bad translations and distorted modifications. Kaempfer can be considered a pioneer in his attempts at catalyzing change in European attitude towards other areas. Following the period of commercial expansion, an academic interest in the natural and cultural characteristics of these areas increased and private travel accounts, like the one by Kaempfer, as well as the collection of objects became an important goal in itself for travelers. In his research on the origin of ethnographic collections and museums in The Netherlands, Fifi Effert focuses on the collections of three early nineteenth-century employees of the Dutch factory in Japan. The first King of the Netherlands, William I, played a significant role in this process. Following the period of French occupation, the Netherlands was tranformed from a republic into a kingdom.
Japan's rapid period of opening up, which started in the 1850s, became a process in which the position and importance of the Dutch in Japan declined, while the Japanese became very important players in the international arena. Herman J. Moeshart's case-study of a Dutch diplomat's misbehaviour in the Meiji period (1868-1912) shows the later arrogance of the West towards Asian countries and also reveals the essentially minor role played by the Dutch after the opening up of Japan.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, the central stage for Dutch-Japanese relations moved from Japan to the Dutch East Indies (roughly equivalent to present-day Indonesia). The growing numbers of Japanese immigrants to the Indonesian archipelago and the increased economic interests of Japan in Southeast Asia culminated in the occupation of the former Dutch colony during the Pacific War. In his contribution, Remco Raben tackles the complex issue of the effects and especially after-effects of the war, and shows how the Indonesians, the Japanese and the Dutch still construct their separate individual and collective memories. *
Ivo Smits and Margarita Winkel both teach at Leiden University. They can be reached at: i.b.smits@let.leidenuniv.nl and m.winkel@let.leidenuniv.nl respectively.