Dejima (1641): The Dutch Trading Post in Nagasaki Harbour

Dejima was a small artificial island in Nagasaki harbour that served as the trading post of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) from 1641 to 1859. During the long period of Tokugawa maritime restrictions it was the only place where Western Europeans were permitted to live and trade in Japan. Through this tiny, closely guarded settlement passed silk, copper and porcelain, and also the books and ideas that gave rise to Japan’s tradition of “Dutch learning”.

Building an island for the Portuguese

Portuguese merchants and Jesuit missionaries had been active in Nagasaki since the 1570s. As the Tokugawa shogunate turned against Christianity, it sought to separate the Portuguese from the Japanese population. In 1634 it ordered the construction of an artificial island just off the city, financed by a group of wealthy Nagasaki merchants who received rent from the occupants.

The island was completed in 1636. It was fan-shaped, built on landfill behind stone sea walls, and joined to the shore by a single small bridge with a guarded gate. Its area is usually given as roughly 1.3 hectares, about the size of two football pitches, although sources differ on the exact figure. The name Dejima means “projecting island”.

The Portuguese stayed only three years. After the Shimabara Rebellion of 1637–1638, which the shogunate blamed on Christian influence, Portuguese ships were banned from Japan in 1639, and the island stood empty.

The Dutch move in

The Dutch had traded from Hirado, an island off north-western Kyushu, since 1609. In 1640 the shogunate ordered the demolition of their new stone warehouses there because the buildings bore dates in the Christian calendar. The chief of the factory, François Caron, obeyed without protest.

In 1641 the Dutch were ordered to move to Dejima. The decision suited the shogunate, which wanted all European trade under its direct control in Nagasaki, and the Nagasaki merchants who owned the empty island. The Dutch accepted the restrictions because the Japan trade, especially the export of silver, was then among the most profitable in the VOC’s Asian network.

Life on the island

Dejima housed a small community, usually only a dozen or so Europeans and rarely more than about 20, together with Asian servants, some of them enslaved. The head of the post, the opperhoofd, was known to the Japanese as the kapitan. Wives and families were not permitted. The only Japanese allowed in were officials, interpreters, labourers, merchants on business and courtesans from the Maruyama district of Nagasaki.

The residents could not leave without permission, and Japanese guards searched everyone crossing the bridge. The Dutch could not practise Christianity openly, and their books and goods were inspected when ships arrived. Daily life could be tedious, and many accounts describe the island as a comfortable prison.

Ships arrived each summer from Batavia, the VOC’s base on Java. In the 17th century several ships might come in a year, but the shogunate later limited their number, and by the 1790s normally only one ship a year was allowed. The Dutch imported Chinese silk, textiles, sugar, deerskins, dyewoods and medicines, and exported silver, later mainly copper, together with camphor, porcelain and lacquer.

The chief also had duties beyond trade. Each year he submitted a report on world news to the authorities, and he travelled with a small party to Edo to pay his respects to the shogun. This court journey was made every year until 1790 and every four years after that.

Window on Western science

Dejima’s greatest influence was intellectual. Japanese interpreters, a hereditary group of specialists in Nagasaki, learned Dutch and became experts in European knowledge. After the shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune relaxed the ban on Western books not related to Christianity in 1720, interest grew rapidly.

The study became known as rangaku, “Dutch learning”. Its landmark was the Kaitai Shinsho (New Book of Anatomy) of 1774, a translation by Sugita Genpaku, Maeno Ryotaku and their colleagues of a Dutch edition of a German anatomy text. Japanese scholars went on to study Western astronomy, surveying, chemistry and botany.

Several company physicians became important interpreters of Japan for Europe. The German Engelbert Kaempfer lived on Dejima in 1690–1692 and wrote a celebrated history of Japan. The Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg collected plants in 1775–1776. Philipp Franz von Siebold, who arrived in 1823, taught Western medicine to Japanese students, but was expelled in 1829 after maps of Japan were found among his possessions, an episode known as the Siebold Incident.

Dejima in the age of revolution

The VOC was dissolved in 1799, and during the Napoleonic Wars the Netherlands fell under French control. The post survived by chartering neutral ships, many of them American, to make the voyage. Under its chief Hendrik Doeff, from 1803 to 1817, Dejima was one of the very few places in the world where the Dutch flag still flew.

In 1808 the British frigate HMS Phaeton entered Nagasaki harbour under a Dutch flag, seized two Dutch hostages and demanded supplies. The Nagasaki magistrate, Matsudaira Yasuhide, took his own life after failing to stop the intrusion. In 1813 the British, who then held Java, tried to take over the Dejima trade, but Doeff refused to hand it over.

The end of Dejima’s monopoly

Dejima’s special status ended after the Perry Expedition forced Japan to open to the United States in 1854. The Dutch signed their own treaties with Japan in the following years, and in 1859 Nagasaki opened as a treaty port to several Western nations. The Dutch trading post was soon replaced by a consulate.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries harbour works and land reclamation surrounded the island, and it disappeared into the city. Dejima was designated a national historic site in 1922. Since the 1990s Nagasaki has rebuilt many of its warehouses and residences on their original sites.

Myths and facts

A popular story says that the shogun designed Dejima’s shape by spreading out his folding fan. There is no evidence for this; the curved shape is more likely to have followed the shoreline and currents of the harbour.

Dejima is also often described as Japan’s only contact with the outside world. In fact Chinese merchants traded in Nagasaki on a larger scale than the Dutch, and Japan dealt with Korea, the Ryukyu Kingdom and the Ainu through other gateways, as the article on sakoku explains. Dejima was unique only as the sole channel to Western Europe.

Timeline

• 1609: The Dutch open a trading post at Hirado.
• 1634–1636: Dejima is built to house the Portuguese.
• 1639: Portuguese ships are banned from Japan.
• 1641: The Dutch East India Company is moved from Hirado to Dejima.
• 1690–1692: Engelbert Kaempfer serves as physician on the island.
• 1774: The anatomy translation Kaitai Shinsho is published.
• 1808: HMS Phaeton enters Nagasaki harbour.
• 1823–1829: Philipp Franz von Siebold works at Dejima and in Nagasaki.
• 1859: Nagasaki opens to Western trade, ending Dejima’s monopoly.
• 1922: Dejima is designated a national historic site.

Why it matters

For more than two centuries Dejima was the narrow door through which Japan watched the West and Europe glimpsed Japan. The knowledge that passed through it helped prepare Japanese scholars for the rapid modernisation of the later 19th century, and the reconstructed island remains one of the most vivid reminders of the Tokugawa era.