_Exploration of the Northern Japanese Seas—First Russian Mission
to Japan—Professorship of Japanese at Irkutsk—New Restrictions
on the Dutch—Embarrassments growing out of the War of the French
Revolution—American Flag at Nagasaki—Captain Stewart—Ingenuity of
a Japanese Fisherman—Heer Doeff, Director at Deshima—Suspicious
Proceedings of Captain Stewart—Russian Embassy—Klaproth’s Knowledge
of Japanese—Doeff’s First Journey to Yedo—Dutch Trade in 1804 and
1806—An American Ship at Nagasaki—The British Frigate “Phaeton”—No
Ships from Batavia—The Dutch on Short Allowance—English Ships
from Batavia—Communication again suspended—Dutch and Japanese
Dictionary—Children at the Factory—A. D. 1792-1817._
Till comparatively a recent period Europe was very much in the dark
as to the geography of northeastern Asia. Through the explorations
and conquests of the Russians, Kamtchatka (long before visited by
the Japanese) first became known to Europeans, about the year 1700.
The exploration of the Kurile Islands, stretching from the southern
point of that peninsula, led the Russians towards Japan. In 1713, the
Cossack Kosierewski reached Kunajiri (the twentieth Kurile, according
to the Russian reckoning, beginning from Kamtchatka), close to the
northeastern coast of Yezo, and claimed by the Japanese. In 1736,
Spagenburg, a Dane in the Russian service, visited all the southern
Kuriles, coasted the island of Yezo, made the land of Nippon, and
entered several harbors on its eastern coast. These explorations were
renewed by Potonchew in 1777; but it was not till 1787 that La Perouse
obtained for Europe the first distinct knowledge of the outline of the
Sea of Japan, of the relative situations of Sakhalin and Yezo, and of
the strait between them, which still bears his name.
In 1791, the “Argonaut,” an English ship employed in the fur trade
on the northwest coast of America, made the western coast of Japan,
and attempted to trade; but she was immediately surrounded by lines
of boats; all intercourse with the shore was prevented, and she was
dismissed with a gratuitous supply of wood and water. In 1795-97,
Captain Broughton, in an English exploring vessel, coasted the southern
and eastern shore of Yezo, sailed among the southern Kuriles, and
touched at several places on the southern part of Sakhalin. Besides the
natives, he found a few Japanese, who treated him with much attention,
but were very anxious for his speedy departure. Japanese officers came
from Yezo, expressly to look after him, to restrict his communications,
and to send him off, with all civility indeed, but as speedily as
possible.
Previous to Broughton’s voyage, Russia had already made a first attempt
at a commercial and diplomatic intercourse with Japan. The crew of a
Japanese vessel, shipwrecked in the Sea of Okhotsk, had been saved by
the Russians, about 1782, and taken to Irkutsk, in Siberia, where they
lived for ten years. At length the governor of Siberia was directed, by
the empress Catherine II, to send home these Japanese, and with them an
envoy, not as from her, but from himself. Lieutenant Laxman, selected
for this purpose, sailed from Okhotsk in the autumn of 1792, landed
on the northern coast of Yezo, and passed the winter there. The next
summer he entered the harbor of Hakodate, on the northern coast of
the Strait of Sangar. From that town he travelled by land to the city
of Matsumae, three days’ journey to the west, and the chief Japanese
settlement on the island, the authorities of which, after communicating
with Yedo, delivered to him a paper to the following effect: “That
although it was ordained by the laws of Japan, that any foreigners
landing anywhere on the coast, except at Nagasaki, should be seized and
condemned to perpetual imprisonment; yet, considering the ignorance of
the Russians, and their having brought back the shipwrecked Japanese,
they might be permitted to depart, on condition of never approaching,
under any pretence, any part of the coast except Nagasaki. As to the
Japanese brought back, the government was much obliged to the Russians;
who, however, were at liberty to leave them or take them away again, as
they pleased, it being the law of Japan that such persons ceased to be
Japanese, and became the subjects of that government into whose hands
destiny had cast them. With respect to commercial negotiations, those
could only take place at Nagasaki; and a paper was sent authorizing
a Russian vessel to enter that port for that purpose; but as the
Christian worship was not allowed in Japan, any persons admitted into
Nagasaki must carefully abstain from it.”
Laxman was treated with great courtesy, though kept in a sort of
confinement; he was supported, with his crew, by the Japanese
authorities, while he remained, and was dismissed with presents and an
ample supply of provisions, for which no payment would be received.
Here the matter rested for several years, but into a school for
teaching navigation, which Catherine II established at Irkutsk, the
capital of Eastern Siberia, she introduced a professorship of the
Japanese language, the professors being taken from among the Japanese
shipwrecked from time to time on the coast of Siberia. Meanwhile,
even the Dutch commerce to Japan had undergone some new restrictions.
Whether from the prevalence of the “frog-in-a-well” policy, or from
apprehensions, as it was said, of the exhaustion of the copper mines,
the Dutch in 1790 were limited to a single ship annually, while to
accommodate their expenditures to this diminished trade, the hitherto
yearly embassy to Yedo was to be sent only once in four years, though
annual presents to the emperor and his officers were still required as
before.
The occupation of Holland by the French armies not only exposed Dutch
vessels to capture by the English, it cost Holland several of her
eastern colonies, and thus placed new obstacles in the way of the
Japanese trade. It was no doubt to diminish the danger of capture by
the British, that, in the year 1797, the ship despatched from Batavia
sailed under the American flag, and carried American papers, while the
commander, one Captain Stewart, though in reality an Englishman from
Madras or Bengal, passed for an American, and his ship as the “Eliza,”
of New York. That the crew of this vessel spoke English, and not Dutch,
was immediately noticed by the interpreters at Nagasaki, and produced a
great sensation among the Japanese officials; but at last, after vast
difficulty, they were made to understand that though the crew spoke
English, they were not “the English,” but of another nation, and, what
was a still more essential point, that they had nothing to do with the
trade, but were merely hired to bring the goods in order to save them
from capture; as a result of which explanation it was finally agreed
that the “Eliza” should be considered as a Dutch ship.
The same vessel and captain returned again the next year; but in
leaving the harbor for Batavia, loaded with camphor and copper, she
struck a hidden rock, and sunk. The first scheme hit upon for raising
the vessel was to send down divers to discharge the copper; but two
of them lost their lives from the suffocating effect of the melting
camphor, and this scheme had to be abandoned. Heavily laden as she was,
every effort at raising her proved abortive, till at last the object
was accomplished by a Japanese fisherman, who volunteered his services.
He fastened to each side of the sunken vessel some fifteen of the
Japanese boats used in towing, and a large Japanese coasting craft to
the stern, and, taking advantage of a stiff breeze and a spring tide,
dragged the sunken vessel from the rock, and towed her into a spot
where, upon the ebbing of the tide, she could be discharged without
difficulty. For this achievement the fisherman was raised, by the
prince of Hizen, to which province he belonged, to the rank of a noble,
being privileged to wear two swords, and to take as his insignia or
arms a Dutch hat and two tobacco pipes.
[Illustration: THE CULTIVATION OF GRAIN: THRESHING AND CLEANING GRAIN;
COOLIES IN A RICE FIELD; WOMEN CARRYING RICE]
When repaired and reloaded, the “Eliza” sailed again; but being
dismasted in a storm, returned to refit, by reason of which she
was detained so long, that the ship of 1799, also under American
colors, and this time it would seem a real American, the “Franklin,”
Captain Devereux, arrived at Nagasaki, and was nearly loaded before
Captain Stewart was ready to sail. In this ship of 1799 came out,
to be stationed as an officer at the factory, Heer Hendrick Doeff,
who remained there for the next seventeen years, and to whose
“Recollections of Japan,” written in Dutch, and published in Holland
in 1835, we are greatly indebted for what we know of the occurrences
in Japan during that period. It was, however, a very unfortunate
circumstance, tending considerably to diminish the value of his book,
that all his papers were lost by the foundering of the ship in which
he sailed from Batavia for Holland, in 1819, the crew and passengers
escaping barely with their lives; after which he allowed near fifteen
years more to pass before he drew upon his memory for the materials
of his book, which was only published at length to correct some
misapprehensions, upon matters personal to himself, likely to arise, as
he feared, from publications which preceded his own. His book, indeed,
is mainly devoted to the defence of the Dutch nation and the affairs
of the factory, against the strictures of Raffles and others, throwing
only some incidental light upon the Japanese, the knowledge of whom, so
far as it is accessible to residents at Deshima, had indeed been pretty
well exhausted by previous writers.
Captain Stewart, refusing to wait for the other ship, set sail at once;
but he did not arrive at Batavia. He reappeared, however, the next year
at Nagasaki, representing himself as having been shipwrecked, with the
loss of everything; but as having found a friend at Manila, who had
enabled him to buy and lade the brig in which he had now come back, for
the purpose, as he said, of discharging, out of the sale of her cargo,
his debt due to the factory for the advances made for the repairs of
his lost vessel. Heer Wadenaar, the director, saw, however, or thought
he saw, in this proceeding, a scheme for gaining a commercial footing
at Nagasaki, independent of the regular trade from Batavia. He caused
the goods to be sold and applied to the discharge of Stewart’s debt;
but he declined to furnish any return cargo for the brig, and he
arrested Stewart, and sent him a prisoner to Batavia; whence, however,
soon after his arrival there, he made his escape. He reappeared again
at Nagasaki in 1803, still under the American flag, but coming now
from Bengal and Canton, with a cargo of Indian and Chinese goods. He
solicited permission to trade and to supply himself with water and oil.
With these latter he was gratuitously furnished, but liberty to trade
was refused, and he was compelled to depart; nor was anything further
heard of him. Doeff seems to have supposed him a real American, and his
last expedition an American adventure; but in a pamphlet on Java and
its trade, published at Batavia in 1800, by Heer Hagendorp, and quoted
by Raffles in his history of Java, Stewart is expressly stated to have
been an Englishman from Madras or Bengal,—a statement which seems to be
confirmed by his coming from Bengal on his last arrival at Nagasaki,
and a fact as to which Hagendorp, who held a high official position,
would not have been likely to be mistaken.[81]
The next circumstance of importance mentioned by Doeff was the arrival
in October, 1804, in the harbor of Nagasaki, of a Russian vessel,
commanded by Captain Krusenstern, and having on board Count Resanoff,
sent as ambassador from the Czar, in somewhat late prosecution of
the negotiation commenced by Laxman in 1792. This vessel brought
back a number of shipwrecked Japanese,[82] and her coming had been
notified to the governor of Nagasaki, through the medium of the Dutch
authorities at Batavia and Deshima. There are two Russian narratives
of this expedition, one by Krusenstern, the other by Langsdorff, who
was attached to the embassy. Both ascribe the failure of the mission to
the jealous opposition of the Dutch. Doeff, on the contrary, insists
that he did everything he could—for by this time he was director—to aid
the Russians, and that they had only to blame their own obstinacy in
refusing to yield to the demands of the Japanese.
The dispute began upon the very first boarding of the Russian ship,
on which occasion the Japanese officers took the Dutch director with
them. Resanoff consented to give up his powder, but insisted upon
retaining his arms; he also refused those prostrations which the
boarding-officers demanded as representatives of the emperor. These
points were referred to Yedo; but, meantime (Doeff says, through
his solicitations) the ship with the arms on board was permitted to
anchor. The Dutch and Russians were allowed to pass the first evening
together, but afterwards they were jealously separated, though they
contrived to keep up an occasional intercourse through the connivance
of the interpreters. The annual ship from Batavia, this year Dutch,
then at Deshima, was removed to another and distant berth. When she
left, no letters were allowed to be sent by the Russians, except a bare
despatch, first inspected by the governor, notifying the ambassador’s
arrival, and the health of his company. Nor were the Dutch allowed
in passing even to return the salutation of the Russians. The Dutch
captain put his trumpet to his lips, but was under strict orders from
the director not to speak a word,—a discourtesy, as they thought it,
which the Russians highly resented. Of the Russians, none were allowed
to land till two months and a half after their arrival, the matter
having first been referred to Yedo. Finally, a fish-house, on a small
island, closely hedged in with bamboos, so that nothing could be seen,
was fitted up for the ambassador. All the arms were given up, except
the swords of the officers and the muskets of seven soldiers who landed
with the ambassador, but who had no powder. The ship was constantly
surrounded by guard-boats.
After a detention of near six months, a commissioner from Yedo made
his appearance, with the emperor’s answer. The ambassador, having been
carried on shore in the barge of the prince of Hizen, was conveyed to
the governor’s house in the norimono of the Dutch director, borrowed
for the occasion; but all his suite had to walk, and, in order that
they might see nothing, the doors and windows of the houses, wherever
they passed, were closed; the street gates were fastened, and the
inhabitants were ordered to keep at home. A second interview took place
the next day, when a flat refusal was returned to all the ambassador’s
requests, and even the presents for the emperor were declined.
In the midst of all these annoyances everything was done with the
greatest show of politeness. The emperor’s answer, which Doeff was
called upon to assist in translating into Dutch, placed the refusal to
receive the ambassador or his presents on the ground that, if they were
received, it would be necessary to send back an ambassador with equal
presents, to which not only the great poverty of the Japanese was an
obstacle, but also the strict law, in force for a hundred and fifty
years past, against any Japanese subject or vessel going to foreign
countries. It was also stated that Japan had no great wants, and little
occasion for foreign productions, of which the Dutch and Chinese
already brought as much as was required, and that any considerable
trade could only be established by means of an intercourse between
foreigners and Japanese, which the laws strictly forbade.
The ambassador did not depart without bitter reproaches against Doeff,
whom he charged as the author of his miscarriage. He arrived at Okhotsk
in May, 1805, afterwards passed over to Sitka, on the American coast,
and the next year, having returned again to Okhotsk, despatched two
small Russian vessels to make reprisals on the Japanese. They landed
on the coast of Sakhalin, in the years 1806 and 1807, plundered a
Japanese settlement, loaded their vessels with the booty, carried off
several Kurile and two Japanese prisoners, and left behind written
notifications, in Russian and French, that this had been done in
revenge for the slights put upon Resanoff.[83]
In 1805 and 1806, Klaproth, the learned Orientalist, passed some months
at Irkutsk, as secretary to a Russian embassy to China. He found the
Japanese professorship, established there by Catherine II, filled by a
Japanese, who had embraced the Greek religion, and, from him and the
books which he furnished, Klaproth acquired such knowledge as he had of
the Japanese tongue.
In the spring of 1806, Deoff made his first journey to Yedo. In the
arrangements of the journey and the audience, there seems to have
been no change since the time of Thunberg. While he was at Yedo a
tremendous fire broke out. It began, at a distance from his lodgings,
at ten in the morning. At one the Dutch took the alarm, and began to
pack. At three they fled. “On issuing into the street,” says Doeff,
“we saw everything in flames. There was great danger in endeavoring
to escape before the wind, in the same direction taken by the fire.
We, therefore, took a slanting direction, through a street already
burning, and thus succeeded in reaching an open field. It was studded
with the standards of princes whose dwellings had been destroyed, and
whose wives and children had fled thither for refuge. We followed their
example, and marked out a spot with our Dutch flags. We had now a full
view of the fire, and never did I see anything so terrific. The terrors
of this ocean of flame were enhanced by the heart-rending cries of
the fugitive women and children.” The fire raged till noon the next
day, when it was extinguished by a fall of rain.[84] The Dutch learned
from their host, that, within five minutes after they left, the fire
took his house, and destroyed everything—as an indemnity for which,
the Dutch East India Company allowed him annually for three years from
twelve to fourteen hundred-weight of sugar. The palaces of thirty-seven
princes had been destroyed. The weight of fugitives broke down the
famous Nihonbashi, or bridge of Japan, so that, besides those burned to
death, many were drowned, including a daughter of the prince of Awa.
Twelve hundred lives were said to have been lost.
On this occasion the Dutch were greatly aided by a wealthy Japanese
merchant, who sent forty men to assist them in removing. He lost his
shop, or store, and a warehouse, containing a hundred thousand pounds
of spun silk, yet the day after the fire was engaged in rebuilding his
premises.
The Dutch, burnt out of their inn, were lodged at first in the house
of the governor of Nagasaki; but, four days after, procured a new inn.
This was in a more public place than the old obscure lodging. The
appearance of the Dutch on the balcony attracted crowds of curious
spectators, and soon drew out an order, from the governor of Yedo, that
they should keep within doors. But Doeff refused to obey this order, on
the ground that, during their entire embassy, the Dutch were under the
authority only of the governor of Nagasaki; and in this position he was
sustained by that personage.
After the audience the Dutch received many visits, particularly from
physicians and astronomers. On the subject of astronomy Doeff was
more puzzled than even Thunberg had been, for, since Thunberg’s time,
the Japanese would seem to have made considerable advances in that
science. They had a translation of La Lande’s astronomy, and the chief
astronomer, Takaro Sampei (?) (to whom Doeff, at his special request
for a name, gave that of _Globius_, and who proved, on subsequent
occasions, a good friend of the Dutch), could calculate eclipses with
much precision. To a grandson of one of Thunberg’s medical friends,
who was also a physician, Doeff gave the name of _Johannis Botanicus_.
The honor of a Dutch name, exceedingly coveted by the Japanese, was
solicited even by the prince of Satsuma and his secretary. Being
attacked with colic on his return from Yedo, Doeff submitted to the
Japanese remedy of acupuncture; but he does not give any high idea of
its efficacy.
Two accounts current of the trade of Japan for the years 1804 and 1806,
published by Raffles, will serve to show its condition at this time.
The articles sent to Japan were sugar, spices, woollens, cottons, tin,
lead, quicksilver, sapan-wood, saffron, liquorice, elephant’s-teeth,
catechu, and ducatoons, sugar forming about half the cargo in value.
The prime cost at Batavia was, in 1804, 211,896, in 1806, 161,008 rix
dollars, to which were to be added freight and charges at Batavia,
amounting in 1804 to 150,000, in 1806 to 106,244 rix dollars, making
the whole cost in 1804, 361,807, in 1806, 266,252 rix dollars. The
sales at Deshima amounted in 1804 to 160,378, in 1806 to 108,797 rix
dollars; but this included, in 1804, 3,333 rix dollars from old goods,
and, in 1806, 5,428 rix dollars borrowed of the Japanese to complete
the cargo. From these amounts were to be deducted the expenses of
the establishment at Deshima, and loss in weight on the sugar, viz.,
in 1804, 67,952,[85] and in 1806, 39,625 rix dollars, leaving to be
employed in the purchase of copper and camphor, in 1804, 92,426, in
1806, 69,172 rix dollars, to which were added 13,125 rix dollars
from the sale of old goods. The copper brought back by the ship of
1804 having been coined at Batavia, the entire profit of the voyage
amounted to 507,147 rix dollars, but the larger part of this profit
belonged, in fact, to the mint, the copper being coined at a rate
above its intrinsic value. In 1808, the copper being sold, the balance
in favor of the voyage was but 175,505 rix dollars, deducting the
amount borrowed in Japan. It was only the low rate at which copper was
furnished by the Japanese government that enabled these voyages to pay.
[Illustration: THE PROCESSES OF WEIGHING AND POUNDING RICE]
In 1807, the “Eclipse,” of Boston, chartered at Canton by the Russian
American Company, for Kamtchatka and the northwest coast of America,
entered the bay of Nagasaki under Russian colors,[86] and was towed to
the anchorage by an immense number of boats. A Dutchman came on board,
and advised them to haul down their colors, as the Japanese were much
displeased with Russia. The Japanese declined to trade, and asked what
the ship wanted. Being told water and fresh provisions, they sent on
board a plentiful supply of fish, hogs, vegetables, and tubs of water,
for which they would take no pay. Finding that no trade was to be had,
on the third day the captain lifted his anchors, and was towed to sea
by near a hundred boats.
In October, 1808, about the time that the annual Dutch vessel was
expected, a ship appeared off Nagasaki, under Dutch colors, and,
without any suspicion, two Dutchmen of the factory, followed by the
usual Japanese officers in another boat, proceeded to board her. The
Dutchmen were met by a boat from the vessel, and were requested in
Dutch to come into it. Upon their proposal to wait for the Japanese
boat, the strangers boarded them with drawn cutlasses, and forced them
on board the ship, which proved to be the English frigate “Phaeton,”
Captain Pellew. The Japanese rowed back with the news of what had
happened, by which Nagasaki and all its officers were thrown into a
state of the greatest agitation.
While the governor of Nagasaki was exchanging messages with director
Doeff as to what could be the meaning of this occurrence, Captain
Pellew, who was in search of the annual Dutch ship, stood directly into
the harbor, without a pilot. The director, fearing to be himself taken,
fled, with the other Dutchmen, to the governor’s house. “In the town,”
he says, “everything was in frightful embarrassment and confusion. The
governor was in a state of indescribable wrath, which fell, in the
first instance, upon the Japanese officers for having returned without
the Dutchmen, or information as to what nation the ship belonged to.
Before I could ask him a question, he said to me, with fury in his
face, ‘Be quiet, director; I shall take care that your people are
restored.’ But the governor soon learned, to his consternation, that
at the harbor guard-house, where a thousand men ought to have been
stationed, there were only sixty or seventy, and those uncommanded.”
After a while came a letter from one of the detained Dutchmen, in these
words: “A ship is arrived from Bengal. The captain’s name is Pellew;
he asks for water and provisions.” The governor was little disposed
to yield to this demand, and, about midnight, his secretary waited on
Doeff to inform him that he was going to rescue the prisoners. Being
questioned as to the manner how, he replied, “Your countrymen have been
seized by treachery; I shall, therefore, go alone, obtain admission on
board by every demonstration of friendship, seek an interview with the
captain, and, on his refusal to deliver his prisoners, stab him first,
and then myself.” It cost Doeff a good deal of trouble to dissuade the
secretary and the governor from this wild scheme. The plan finally
adopted was to manage to detain the ship till vessels and men could be
collected to attack her.
The next afternoon one of the detained Dutchmen brought on shore the
following epistle from the English captain: “I have ordered my own
boat to set Goseman on shore, to procure me provisions and water; if
he does not return with such before evening, I will sail in to-morrow
early, and burn the Japanese and Chinese vessels in the harbor.” The
provisions and water were furnished, though the Japanese were very
unwilling to have Goseman return on board. This done, the two Dutchmen
were dismissed.
The governor, however, was still intent upon calling the foreign ship
to account. One scheme was to prevent her departure by sinking vessels,
laden with stones, in the channel. The prince of Ōmura proposed to
burn her, by means of boats filled with reeds and straw, offering
himself to lead; but while these schemes were under discussion, the
frigate weighed and sailed out of the harbor. The affair, however,
had a tragical ending. Within half an hour after her departure, the
governor, to save himself from impending disgrace, cut himself open, as
did several officers of the harbor-guard. The prince of Hizen, though
resident at Yedo at the time, was imprisoned a hundred days, for the
negligence of his servants in the maintenance of the guard, and was
also required to pay an annual pension to the son of the self-executed
governor, whom Doeff, on again visiting Yedo in 1810, found to be in
high favor at court.[87]
Up to 1809,[88] the ships from Batavia had arrived regularly; but
from that time till 1818 neither goods nor news reached the lonely
Dutchmen at Deshima. The first and second failure they bore with some
resignation, looking confidently forward to the next year; “but, alas!”
says our by this time very thirsty, and somewhat ragged, director,
“it passed away without relief or intelligence, either from Europe or
Batavia! All our provision from Java was by this time consumed. Butter
we had not seen since the supply of 1807, for the ship “Goede Frouw”
(good wife, but not good housewife) “had brought us none in 1809. To
the honor of the Japanese, I must acknowledge that they did everything
in their power to supply our special wants.... The inspector, Shige
Dennozen, among others, gave himself much trouble to distil gin for
us, for which purpose I supplied him with a still-kettle and a tin
worm, which I chanced to possess. He had tolerable success, but
could not remove the resinous flavor of the juniper. The corn spirit
(whiskey), which he managed to distil, was excellent. As we had also
been without wine since the supply of 1807, with the exception of a
small quantity brought by the “Goede Frouw,” he likewise endeavored
to press it for us from the wild grapes of the country, but with less
success. He obtained, indeed, a red and fermented liquor, but it was
not wine. I myself endeavored to make beer; and, with the help of the
domestic dictionaries of Chaud and Bays, I got so far as to produce
a whitish liquor, with something of the flavor of the white beer of
Haerlem, but which would not keep above four days, as I could not make
it work sufficiently, and had no bitter with which to flavor it. Our
great deficiency was in the articles of shoes and winter clothing.
We procured Japanese slippers of straw, and covered the instep with
undressed leather, and thus draggled along the street. Long breeches we
manufactured from an old carpet which I had by me. Thus we provided for
our wants as well as we could. There was no distinction among us. Every
one who had saved anything threw it into the common stock, and we thus
lived under a literal community of goods.”
Great was the delight of our disconsolate director, when, in the spring
of 1813, two vessels appeared in the offing of Nagasaki, displaying
the Dutch flag, and making the private signals agreed upon in 1809. A
letter was brought on shore, announcing the arrival from Batavia of
Heer Waardenaar, Doeff’s predecessor as director, to act as warehouse
master, of Heer Cassa, to succeed Doeff as director, and of three
assistants or clerks. A Japanese officer and one of the Dutch clerks
were sent on board. The Japanese speedily returned, saying that he had
recognized Waardenaar, who had declined, however, to deliver his papers
except to Doeff personally, and that all the officers spoke English,
whence he concluded that the ships must be chartered Americans. Doeff
went on board, and was received by Waardenaar with such evident
embarrassment, that Doeff declined to open the package of papers
which he presented, except at Deshima, whither he was accompanied by
Waardenaar. This package being opened was found to contain a paper
signed “Raffles, Lieutenant-governor of Java and its Dependencies,”
appointing Waardenaar and a Dr. Ainslie commissioners in Japan. In
reply to his question, “Who is Raffles?” Doeff learned that Holland
had been annexed to France, and Java occupied by the English. But
the annexation of Holland to France, Doeff patriotically refused to
believe, and, in spite of all the efforts of Waardenaar to shake his
resolution, he declined obedience to an order coming from a colony in
hostile occupation.
His mind thus made up, Doeff called in the Japanese interpreters, and
communicated to them the true state of the case. Alarmed for their
own safety, they made to Waardenaar frightful representations of the
probable massacre of the crews and burning of the vessels, should this
secret go any further,—especially considering the hostile feelings
towards the English, excited by the proceedings of the “Phaeton” in
1808; and finally the commissioners were persuaded to enter into an
arrangement by which Doeff was to remain as director, and was to
proceed to dispose of the cargoes as usual, first paying out of the
proceeds the debt which, since 1807, the factory had been obliged to
contract for its sustenance. Ainslee was also to remain as factory
physician, but passing as an American.[89]
The cost of the cargoes, as given by Raffles, with freight and
charges, amounted to two hundred and seventy-three thousand one
hundred and fifty Spanish dollars. Out of the proceeds in Japan had
to be paid forty-eight thousand six hundred and forty-eight dollars,
debts of the factory; and twenty-five thousand dollars for copper to
make up the cargo, bought of Doeff at a higher rate than was paid the
Japanese. There were left at the factory four thousand six hundred and
eighty-eight dollars in cash, and fifteen thousand dollars in woollens,
and advances were made to persons on board, to be repaid in Batavia,
to the amount of three thousand six hundred and seventy-eight dollars;
thus swelling the whole expenses to three hundred and seventy thousand
one hundred and sixty-four dollars; whereas the copper and camphor of
the return cargo produced only three hundred and forty-two thousand one
hundred and twenty-six dollars, thus leaving an outgo on the voyage
of twenty-eight thousand and thirty-eight dollars, which the credits
in Japan and Batavia were hardly sufficient to balance. These ships
carried out an elephant as a present to the emperor; but, though it
excited great curiosity, the Japanese declined to receive it, alleging
the difficulty of transporting it to Yedo.
In 1814, a single ship was sent from Batavia with Heer Cassa again on
board. He brought tidings of the insurrection in Europe against France,
and relied upon the probable speedy restoration of Java as an argument
for inducing Doeff to submit temporarily to the English,—an object
which Sir Stamford Raffles had very much at heart. When Doeff refused,
Cassa resorted to intrigue. He gained over two of the interpreters,
through whom he endeavored to induce at Yedo a refusal to allow Doeff
(whose term of office had already been so unusually protracted)
to remain any longer as director. Doeff, however, got wind of this
intrigue, frightened the two interpreters by threatening to tell the
whole story to the governor of Nagasaki, and finally carried the day.
He paid, however, rather dearly for his obstinacy, as Raffles sent no
more ships, and director Doeff was obliged to pass three years more
without either goods or news, cooped up and kept on short allowance
in his little island, with the satisfaction, however, that there, if
nowhere else in the world, the flag of Holland still continued to wave.
The Japanese government, obliged to advance the means for the support
of the factory, did not leave the director entirely idle. He was set to
work, with the aid of ten Japanese interpreters, in compiling a Dutch
and Japanese dictionary, for the use of the Japanese men of science
and the imperial interpreters. A copy of this work was deposited in
the imperial library at Yedo; another, made by Doeff for his own use,
lost, with all his other papers and effects, on his return to Europe.
The original rough draft of the work was found afterwards, however, at
Deshima, by Herr Fisscher, and having made a transcript, though less
perfect than the original, he brought it home in 1829, and deposited it
in the royal museum at Amsterdam.[90]
[Illustration: A COOLIE WITH STRAW RAINCOAT]
Thunberg, as we have seen, could hear nothing of semi-Dutch children
born in Japan. There were such, however, in Doeff’s time; and it
appears, from an incidental remark of his, that although no birth was
allowed to take place at Deshima, yet that the Japanese female inmates
of the factory were permitted to nurse their infants in the houses
of their Dutch fathers. At a very early age, however, these children
were taken away to be educated as pure Japanese, being allowed to
visit their fathers only at certain specified intervals. The fathers,
however, were expected to provide for them, and to obtain for them, by
purchase, some government office.