Not all it Seems to be:
'Japan & the Dutch, 1600-1853'
As the year
2000 marked four hundred years of Dutch-Japanese relations, a variety
of seminars, meetings, exhibitions and publications were initiated in
commemoration of this milestone. With an attractive new book entitled
'Japan and the Dutch, 1600-1853', the renowned historian Grant K. Goodman
joined the party. This book is, however, not all it seems to be.
* By HENK DE GROOT
In fact, Goodman revised his monograph
The Dutch Impact On Japan,
which was first published in 1967, and this is duly noted in the introduction.
Unfortunately, and somewhat surprisingly, however, the current publisher,
Curzon Press, fails to mention the fact that this revised version of Goodman's
study has already been published in 1986 under the title Japan:
The Dutch Experience, and that 'their 'new' edition is, in
fact, a re-issue of the 1986 book, identical in every respect except for
its title.
For more than thirty years, Goodman's study on Dutch-Japanese
relations during the Edo period has been a standard work for students
of the history of Japan's international relations, and it has stood the
test of time well. With characteristic thoroughness, Goodman presents
a wealth of detail in clear prose. No work, however, no matter how high
the standard, is entirely without flaws and this work is no exception.
Its most obvious shortcoming is the fact that its bibliography is now,
more than thirty years after its first publication, becoming somewhat
out of date.
While for the 1986 (Athlone Press) edition the text was
updated and corrected in numerous places and the bibliography included
a healthy number of additions, no such process took place in preparation
for the Curzon edition. Despite the considerable amount of research that
has been published in the field of Rangaku
both inside Japan and elsewhere over the last twenty years or so, the
latest publication cited here is dated 1979. The all-important Y-ogakushi
jiten or Dictionary
of the History of Western Learning, published in 1984 under
the auspices of the Japan-Netherlands Institute, is completely ignored.
Sugimoto Tsutomu, who during the seventies produced five large and informative
(albeit somewhat verbose) volumes on the history of Dutch language studies
during the Edo Period, was apparently not consulted, nor is mention made
of any material produced after 1972 by key scholars Numata Jir-o and Katagiri
Kazuo, although both produced a considerable amount of important work
in the area of the Nagasaki interpreters and Dutch language studies.
A number of inaccuracies and omissions in the main text
of Goodman's work are the inevitable result of this failure to consult
more recent material. For example, Sugita Genpaku's famous assertion that
Goto 'Rishun's K-om-odan
(1765) was initially banned because it contained European alphabets (p.
85) has been largely discounted (Numata 1984: 138). O-tsuki Gentaku's
prowess as a Dutch-Japanese translator (p. 121) has also long since been
thrown into doubt (Sugimoto 1976: 467). While it is true that the influential
scholar Arai Hakuseki met Dutch opperhoofd
Cornelis Lardijn on a number of occasions in the years 1712-1714, these
encounters certainly did not take place in the Dutch trading post on Dejima,
but in Edo (p. 46). In some instances, Goodman's translations are also
less than reliable. A passage on page 122, for example, might (and probably
did) send some readers off on a search for an elusive Dutch book called
Samenspraak, whereas,
in fact, no such book exists: Gentaku was merely using the Dutch word
for 'conversation'.
Despite its flaws, Goodman's study remains a major and valuable
work in the English language on Japanese-Dutch relations. Publishing it
under a different title without so much as a hint of its earlier incarnation,
however, borders on the reprehensible. Furthermore, by blithely reissuing
the 1986 text of Goodman's study, both author and publisher passed up
an opportunity to update and correct this important study. Those already
in possession of either the original monograph The
Dutch Impact On Japan or its revised version Japan:
The Dutch Experience would do well to be aware that this 'new'
work is anything but, and save their money. *
Goodman, G.K., Japan and the Dutch 1600 1853, Richmond: Curzon Press (2000), 304 pp., ISBN 0-7007-1220-8
References
Goodman, G.K., The
Dutch Impact on Japan, Leiden: E.J. Brill (1967)
Goodman, G.K., Japan:
The Dutch Experience, London: The Athlone Press (1986)
Numata, J. et. al (eds), Yo¯gakushi
jiten, Tokyo: Y_sho¯do¯ (1984).
Sugimoto, T., Edo
jidai Rangogaku no seiritsu to sono tenkai, vol. II. Tokyo:Waseda
Daigaku Shuppanbu (1976)
Henk
de Groot is a PhD candidate at the Department of Asian Studies,
University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. The topic of
his thesis is the development of the Dutch language studies in Japan
during the period of national seclusion.
E-mail:
h.degroot@asia.canterbury.ac.nz