Japan and the Netherlands have maintained a special relationship for about 300
years since the adoption of the National Seclusion policy, the so-called sakoku by
the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1867). The Dutch began trading with Japan and
engaging with Japanese society in 1600, when a Dutch ship, De Liefde, arrived in
Kyushu. The Tokugawa government measures regarding foreign policy included
regulations on foreign access to Japan and a prohibition on Japanese going
abroad. Between the middle of the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century,
Japan was characterized by a stable political pattern in which representatives
of the VOC (Dutch East India Company), were the only Europeans with a right
to trade in Japan. 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. This paper is especially concerned with the
influence of the so-called ?Dutch Studies? (rangaku) on the early modernization
of Japan, especially with regard to medicine and the natural sciences. This
research examines the development of rangaku and the trading between Japan
and VOC at Dejima
