The Deshima Diaries

Book excerpt: English translation of the marginalia, or marginal notes, that were added to the text of the Deshima Diaries from the 1670's onwards in order to provide the Dutch chief of Deshima with a quick reference to the notes of his predecessors. This volume covers the marginalia from the 1700-1740 diaries. Providing the general public, and especially those who have neither a command of Dutch nor of Japanese, access to a fascinating period of Japanese history in which the Dutch played such a singular role. At the same time, the serious scholar wil obtain an easy key to the extremely rich holdings of the archive of the Deshima trading factory, which covers a shelf length of more than forty meters in the National Archives in the Netherlands, but which has been only rarely utilized by historians, Japanologists or other scholars. The Deshima archives of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) were used originally as a corpus of knowledge and experience amassed over the years by generations of Company personnel. It was a source which was consulted by opperhoofden whenever they were in doubt about the right answer to exasperating questions or challenges posed by Japanese society in the form of shogunal decrees, orders by the governors of Nagasaki, and the stubborn demeanor by blackmailing and manipulative officials. Life at Deshima was so regulated and controlled both by workings of the Japanese bureaucracy and by the rhythms of the East India Company's seasonal trade with Japan, that keeping a dagregister or diary in which all the remarkable occurances were noted, assumed crucial importance. This in contrast to other VOC factories where the keeping of a diary, though obligatory, was often neglected. In the isolation of Deshima almost everything seen or heard was 'notable'. Skipping through the text one is also inevitably touched by the suffering inflicted on Japanese society by perennial scourges such as earthquakes, epidemics, 'that one general disease called poverty' and the fires which periodically destroyed large portions of the great cities. The present volume is a thoroughly revised edition, especially with regard to the Japanese personal and topographical names occurring in the text, of volumes III-IV of the Leiden edition. Scientific Publications of the Japan-Netherlands Institute No. 12. Published by the Japan-Netherlands Institute, Tokyo 1992 (original ISBN 4930921015).