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Japan and the Netherlands have maintained a special relationship for about 300years since the adoption of the National Seclusion policy, the so-called sakoku bythe Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1867). The Dutch began trading with Japan andengaging with Japanese society in 1600, when a Dutch ship, De Liefde, arrived inKyushu. The Tokugawa government measures regarding foreign policy includedregulations on foreign access to Japan and a prohibition on Japanese goingabroad. Between the middle of the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century,Japan was characterized by a stable political pattern in which representativesof the VOC (Dutch East India Company), were the only Europeans with a rightto trade in Japan. In the course of this period, the Japanese evaluation of theDutch changed from regarding them as commercial agents to seeing them asimporters of European knowledge. This paper is especially concerned with theinfluence of the so-called ?Dutch Studies? (rangaku) on the early modernizationof Japan, especially with regard to medicine and the natural sciences. Thisresearch examines the development of rangaku and the trading between Japanand VOC at Dejima |
