The Deshima Diaries 1641-1660

The present volume of The Deshima Diaries consists of the journals that were kept by the chiefs of the Dutch trading post in Japan during the first two decades of the so called seclusion period (1640-1868). The employees of the Dutch East India Company – from 1640 the only Europeans in Japan - had to give up their relatively free life in the port of Hirado and were forced to move to the tiny island of Deshima in the Bay of Nagasaki. Continually surrounded by Japanese guards, spies, cooks, concubines and interpreters they were eager to continue their trading activities with their Japanese hosts. Every year, with a few exceptions, the chief of the factory and two or three staff members travelled to Edo to pay obeisance to the Shogun. The diaries in this volume describe in detail how the Dutch merchants grappled with the severe restrictions that were imposed on them, but their writings also shed surprising light on social and economic life in Nagasaki and beyond.

Cynthia Vialle, Leiden University, has published on a variety of topics related to the VOC, such as the Company’s gift-giving practices, its trade in Japanese lacquerware, Chinese and Japanese porcelain, and other goods. Currently she is preparing a transcription of the correspondence of the Dutch factory in Hirado, Japan (1609-1633) with an English translation for publication.

Isabel Tanaka-van Daalen is Associate Researcher at the Historiographical Institute, Tokyo University. She is preparing a PhD thesis on the role of the Japanese interpreters in information gathering and the formation of new knowledge and has published various articles on different interpreter families and their dealings with the Dutch on Deshima. She has also been an editor of the Kodansha’s Nederlands-Japans Woordenboek (1994) and the Yogakushi Kenkyu Jiten (Encyclopedia for the Study of the History of “Western Learning”), Kyoto: Shibunkaku, 2021.

Leonard Blussé, Ph.D. (1986), Leiden University, is Professor emeritus of the History of Asian-European Relations at that university. He has published monographs, translations, Dutch and Chinese source publications and many articles on East and Southeast Asia, including The Chinese Annals of Batavia, The Kai Ba Lidai Shiji (开吧 历代史纪) and other stories 1610-1795 (Brill, 2018).