Nagasaki and Dejima: Connecting Goods, Languages and Overseas News

Dejima was a small artificial island in Nagasaki’s harbour, connected to land by a bridge. Ships brought goods and information to a place where entry was restricted and commerce operated under rules.

Contact with the outside world nevertheless continued. Asking who lived there, who mediated languages and what crossed the sea makes the connection more concrete than the image of an island alone.

The Netherlands’ National Archives introduces the trading-post records of Hirado and Dejima as resources for their shared history. Establishing that trade existed and verifying individual transactions from those records remain different stages of inquiry.

In 1639, Portuguese people were expelled and their arrival was prohibited. That changed the use of the recently built island. Two years later, the Dutch trading post moved there from Hirado.

Construction in 1636 and the move in 1641 were not the same event. Describing the island as intended only for Dutch residents from the outset would erase this change.

The role of Dejima developed with government policy. The dates identify stages rather than one unchanging purpose fixed at construction and retained throughout its history.

The island’s work involved more than the head of the trading post and its clerks. Doctors, carpenters and cooks contributed to life there, while Japanese interpreters also worked within the system.

The National Diet Library explanation includes people brought from Java and elsewhere as servants. The personnel therefore cannot be reduced to a self-contained miniature Dutch country.

People of different positions and origins were involved, while Dutch movement beyond the island and Japanese entry were restricted. A shared place did not erase those differences in position or freedom.

Exports from Japan also changed. Silver and gold were important earlier, while copper later took a central place. Ceramics and lacquerware were among the other goods shipped abroad.

The National Diet Library explanation dates the prohibition of silver exports from 1668 and gold exports to 1763. A single list without a date would hide changes in the conditions of trade.

The apparent continuity of the island’s outline should not imply identical cargoes across its whole history. What could be loaded and the arrangements governing it changed over time.

Dutch interpreters supported trade by interpreting speech and translating documents. Questions about quantities and conditions made language work part of negotiation itself.

Some interpreters also studied subjects such as medicine and physics, taught other Japanese people and translated Dutch books. Knowledge did not spread simply because a vessel had unloaded; people had to read and convey it.

Dictionary work offers another example. The National Diet Library describes translation begun by the trading-post head Doeff and completed by Nagasaki interpreters in 1833 as Dufu Haruma after his departure. The work connected an individual beginning with later completion by others.

Trading-post heads also travelled to Edo, met the shogun and offered gifts in acknowledgement of continued trade. The National Diet Library describes these journeys as initially annual and later once every four years.

Doctors and other participants travelled with Japanese attendants. Contacts along the route and in Edo created occasions for questions from scholars and domain lords within an otherwise regulated system of movement.

People interested in the West visited Nagasakiya, the party’s lodging in Edo. A prescribed itinerary could still create opportunities for knowledge to be conveyed through particular questions and responses.

Ships were not the only means connecting Dejima with the wider world. There were arrangements for handing over goods, interpreters negotiating meanings and routes by which reports reached officials.

People, commodities and information did not all circulate with the same freedom. Who could enter, what could be traded and who received a report were matters subject to control.

The island first made for Portuguese residents became the site of the Dutch trading post, while cargoes and forms of contact also changed. Following those distinctions reveals specific ways in which a small place remained connected across the sea.