CHAPTER XXVIII
Particular Statement as to the Dutch Trade as it existed in Kämpfer’s Time—Arrival of the Ships—Unlading—Passes—Imports—Company and Private Goods—Kambans, or Public Sales—Duties—Profits—Exports—Departure of the Ships—Smuggling—Execution of Smugglers.
“The Dutch ships,” says Kämpfer, “are expected some time in September, towards the latter end of the southwest monsoon, that being the only time proper for this navigation.[145] As soon as the spy guards with their glasses discover a ship steering towards the harbor, and send notice of her approach to the governors of Nagasaki, three persons of our factory are sent with the usual attendance to meet her about two miles without the harbor, and to deliver to the captain the necessary instructions, from the director of our trade, with regard to his behavior.
“The interpreter and the deputies of the governors demand forthwith the list of the cargo and crew, as also the letters on board, which are carried to Nagasaki, where the governors first examine and then deliver them to our director.
“The ship follows as soon as possible, and, having entered the harbor, salutes both imperial guards with all her guns, and casts anchor opposite to the town, about a musket-shot from our island. If the wind be contrary, rowing-boats (kept for this purpose by the common people of the town) are sent at our expense, but not at our desire, to tow her in by force. In still weather they send about ten of these boats; if it be stormy, and the wind contrary, they increase the number to fifty, and sometimes to a hundred—so many as they think necessary—that is, at least twice the number there is occasion for.
“When the ship has entered the harbor, two guard-boats, with a good number of soldiers, are put one on each side of her, and continued, being mounted with fresh troops every day, till she leaves. As soon as the ship drops anchor, great numbers of officers come on board to demand our guns, cutlasses, swords and other arms, as also the gunpowder packed up in barrels, which are taken into their custody, and kept in a store-house, built for this purpose, till her departure. They attempted, also, in former times, to take out the rudder, but, having found it impracticable, they now leave it in.
“The next day after her arrival, the commissioners of the governor come on board, with their usual attendance of soldiers, interpreters, and subordinate officers, to make an exact review, in presence of our director, of all the people on board, according to the list which hath been given them, and wherein is set down every one’s name, age, birth, place of residence, and office, examining them from top to toe. Many questions are asked, as to those who died on the voyage, when and of what distemper they died. Even now and then a dead monkey or parrot may occasion a strict inquiry to be made after the cause and manner of their death, and they are so scrupulous that they will not give their verdict, without sitting upon the body itself, and carefully examining it.
“After this, the orders of our director, and likewise of the governors of Nagasaki, relating to our behavior with regard to the natives, are read in Low Dutch, and afterwards, for every one’s inspection, stuck up in several places on board the ship, and at Deshima. The same rules are observed with all our ships, of which there are two, three, or four, sent from Batavia to Japan every year, according to the quantity of copper they have occasion for; one of which goes first to Siam, to make up part of her cargo with the commodities of that country. Formerly, when the Dutch as yet enjoyed a free trade, they sent seldom less than six or seven ships, and sometimes more.
“The review being over, they proceed to unlade the ships, during which, several of the governors’ officers, a chief interpreter, a deputy interpreter, and an apprentice, besides several clerks and inferior officers, remain on board, taking possession of every corner, to see that nothing be carried away privately. The water gates of our island, through which the cargo is to be brought in, are opened in presence of the karō, that is, high commissioners of the governors, and their retinue. So long as the gates are kept open, the karō, with their deputies and other assistants, stay in a room built for this purpose, not far off. The whole body of interpreters, as also our landlords, clerks, and other officers of our island, give their attendance, and also their assistance, at that time. They fall to work with three hundred or more kuri, or workmen—always at least twice the number there is occasion for. The unlading of every ship ought to be performed in two days, but notwithstanding the number of men they employ, they generally make a three days’ work of it, in order to make it so much the more beneficial to the town.
“The goods are brought from the ship in boats, kept for this purpose only, at the Company’s expense. Being brought within the water gates, they are laid before the commissioners, who set them down in writing, count them, compare them with the list that hath been given in (opening a bale or two of each sort, picked out from among the rest), and then order them to be locked up, under their seal, in the Company’s warehouse, until the day of sale. The trunks belonging to private persons are set down at the entry of the island, and there opened and examined. If the owner doth not forthwith appear with the key, they proceed, without any further ceremony, to open them with axes. All vendible goods are taken out and locked up under their seals. Some other things, also, which they do not approve of, as, for instance, arms, stuff, and cloth wrought with gold and silver, as also all contraband goods, are taken into custody by the Otona, who returns them to the owner upon his departure.
“No European, nor any other foreign money, and, in general, nothing that hath the figure of a cross, saint, or beads, upon it, is suffered to pass. If any such thing should be found upon any of our people, it would occasion such a confusion and fright among the Japanese as if the whole empire had been betrayed. I have already taken notice that, upon our drawing near the harbor, every one is obliged to deliver his prayer-books, and other books of divinity, as also all European money, to the captain, who packs them all up in an old cask, and hides them.
“Those who are newly arrived must suffer themselves, in going in or coming out of our island, to be searched, whether or no they have any contraband goods about them. Every one who wishes to go on board, whether it be for his own private business, or in the Company’s service, is obliged to take out a pass-board from the commissioners at the water gates, and, in like manner, when he returns on shore, he must take out another from those on the ship.
“At night, when the commissioners sent on board the ship return with their retinue to Nagasaki, the cabin is sealed up in their presence, and all the Dutchmen accurately counted over, to see that there be none wanting, which would occasion a very great confusion. During my stay in Japan it happened that a common sailor unfortunately was drowned in the night, nobody perceiving his falling into the water. At the review made the next morning (for it is constantly made every morning and night) the fellow was missed. This unlucky accident suddenly stopped all proceedings, and the fear lest it should be a Roman Catholic priest, who had made his escape into the country, occasioned such a consternation among the Japanese, that all the officers ran about, scratching their heads, and behaving as if they had lost their senses, and some of the soldiers in the guard-ships were already preparing to rip themselves open, when at last the unlucky fellow’s body being taken up from the bottom of the harbor put an end to their fears.
“At all other times, that for lading and unlading our ships excepted, the water gates are shut, by which means all communication is cut off between those that stay on board and those that remain on shore. The ship’s cargo having been placed in the warehouses, the goods lie there till they are pleased, in two or three days of sale, which they call Kamban, to sell them. What remains unsold is carried back to the warehouses, and kept there against the next year’s sale.
“The following goods are imported by us: raw silk, from China, Tonquin, Bengal, and Persia; all sorts of silks, woollen, and other stuffs (provided they be not wrought with gold and silver); Brazil wood; buffalo, and other hides; raw skins, wax, and buffalo horns from Siam; tanned hides from Persia, Bengal, and other places, but none from Spain and Manila, under pain of incurring their utmost displeasure; pepper; sugar, in powder and candied; cloves; nutmegs; camphor, from Borneo and Sumatra; quicksilver; cinnabar; saffron; lead; saltpetre; borax; alum; musk; gum benzoin; gum lac; rosmal, or storax liquida; catechu, commonly called Terra Japonica; fustic; corals; amber; right antimony (which they use to color their china ware); looking-glasses, which they cut up to make spy-glasses, magnifying glasses, and spectacles, out of them. Other things of less note are snakewood; mangoes, and other unripe East India fruits, pickled with Turkish pepper, garlic, and vinegar; black lead and red pencils; sublimate of mercury (but no calomel); fine files; needles; spectacles; large drinking-glasses of the finest sort; counterfeit corals; strange birds, and other foreign curiosities, both natural and artificial. Some of these are often sold in private, by sailors and others, without being produced upon the Kamban, and in this case the Dutch make no scruple to get as much for them beyond their real value as possibly they can.
“Of all the imported goods, raw silk is the best liked, though it yields the least profit of any. All sorts of stuffs and cloths yield a considerable and sure profit, and should there be never so much imported, the consumption in so populous a country would be still greater. Brazil wood and hides are also to be disposed of to very good advantage. The most profitable commodities are sugar, catechu, storax liquida, camphor of Borneo (which they covet above all other sorts), looking-glasses, etc., but only when they have occasion for them, and when the Chinese have imported in small quantities. Corals and amber are two of the most valuable commodities in these eastern parts; but Japan hath been so thoroughly provided by smugglers, that at present there is scarce fifty per cent to be got upon them, whereas formerly we could sell them, ten, nay, a hundred times dearer. The price of these things, and of all natural and artificial curiosities, varies very much, according to the number and disposition of the buyers, who may be sure to get cent per cent clear profit by them, at what price soever they buy them.
“The yearly sum to the value of which the Dutch are permitted to sell goods imported by them is, by Japanese reckoning, three hundred chests of silver, each of a thousand taels, or in gold fifty thousand kobans; the highest value of the koban, as current in Japan, being sixty mas, or six taels. But the Japanese having obliged the Dutch East India Company to accept payment in gold kobans, each reckoned at sixty-eight mas, the sales of the Company, though made to the amount of three hundred thousand taels in silver, produced only forty-four thousand one hundred and eighteen kobans.”
A chance was thus afforded, as Kämpfer expresses it “to make the officers concerned in carrying on the Dutch trade some amends for their trouble and hard usage, by allowing them to dispose of goods on their own private account,” to the value of five thousand six hundred and eighty-two kobans, equivalent, at the reckoning of fifty-eight mas, to forty thousand taels, thus making up the fifty thousand kobans, to the amount of which the annual sale of Dutch goods was limited; and as this arrangement for private trade had been made by the Japanese, the East India Company did not venture to interfere with it.
At the head of these officers stands the Director, or, as he is called by the Japanese, Captain of the Dutch (Hollanda Capitan), who has the command, inspection, and care of the trade. The same person is the head of the embassy sent to court once every year; and, according to the custom of the country, he must be relieved after the year is expired. The ships from Batavia bring over his successor, with some few merchants and clerks, to assist during the sale, after which, the old director goes on board, to return to Batavia. The privilege of private trade was, in Kämpfer’s time, divided as follows: The acting director could sell to the extent of ten thousand taels; the new director to the extent of seven thousand; his deputy, or the next person after him, to the extent of six thousand. The captains of the ships, the merchants, clerks, &c., shared the remainder, as they happened to be in favor with the chief managers, and the Japanese interpreters.
“The day of the Kamban (as they call our sale), which must be determined by the court, drawing near, a list of all the goods is hung up at the gates without our island, written in very large characters, that everybody may read it at a due distance. Meanwhile, the government signifies to the several Otonas of the town, and these to the merchants, who are come hither from diverse parts of the empire, what duty per cent will be laid for the benefit of the inhabitants of Nagasaki, upon each description of our goods, in order to enable them to determine what price they can afford to offer. The day before the Kamban, papers are put up at all the gates of the streets, to invite the merchants to make their appearance the next morning at Deshima, where, for their further information, they find before every house a list of the goods laid up in it. As the direction of our trade is entirely in the hands of the government of Nagasaki, so, particularly, the Kamban cannot be held but in presence of two Stewards of the governors, authorized by them to assist at it. The chief officers of our island must likewise be present. The first interpreter presides, and directs everything, while our own triumvirs—I mean the two directors, the old and new—and the deputy director, have little or nothing to say.
“All persons who must be present at the sale having met together, our directors order samples of all our goods to be exposed to view, and then give a signal with a gum-gum, a sort of flat bell, not unlike a basin, for the merchants to come in. The house where the sale is kept is a very neat building, built at the Company’s expense, and is then, by removing the shutters, laid open towards the street for people to look in. There is a small gallery round it, and it is divided within into several partitions, very commodiously contrived for this act.
“The sale itself is performed in the following manner. Only one sort of goods is put up at a time. Those who have a mind to buy them give in some tickets, each signed by feigned names, and signifying how much they intend to give for a piece, or a katti, of the article on sale. I took notice that every merchant gives in several tickets. This is done in order to see how matters are like to go, and to keep to a less price in case he repents of the greater, for which purpose they are signed only by feigned names; and, because of the great number and subdivision of the small coin, it seldom happens that two tickets exactly agree. After all the bidders have given in their tickets, our directors proceed to open and assort them. They are then delivered to the presiding chief interpreter, who reads them aloud, one after another, beginning with the highest. He asks after the bidder three times, and, if there is no answer made, he lays that ticket aside and takes the next to it. So he goes on, taking always a less, till the bidder cries out, ‘Here I am,’and then draws near to sign the note, and to put his true name to it with black ink, which the Japanese always carry about them. The goods first put up being sold, they proceed to others, which they sell in the same manner; and so they go on till the sum determined by the emperor hath been raised, which is commonly done in two or three, seldom in four, days of sale. The day after each Kamban the goods are delivered to the buyer, and carried off. A company of merchants of the five imperial cities have obtained the monopoly for buying and selling raw silks, of which they would fain oblige us to make up at least one-third of our cargoes.
“The duty or custom levied upon goods has been introduced at Nagasaki, merely with an intent to take off part of the vast profits which foreigners get upon their commodities, and to assign them for the use and maintenance of the poorer inhabitants of the town, among whom it is distributed in proportion to the trouble they must be at, on account of the public offices they must serve by turns. They commonly receive in this distribution from three to fifteen taels each. The duty laid upon the goods belonging to the Company is fifteen per cent, producing forty-five thousand taels. The goods belonging to private persons, which are commonly sold at the end of the Kamban, pay much more—no less than sixty-five per cent upon goods sold by the piece, and sixty-seven per cent on goods sold by weight. Rating each sort at half the whole amount, and the whole produce is twenty-seven thousand taels. The reason they give for the difference in the rate of duty is, because private goods are brought over in the Company’s ships, at the Company’s expense, and, consequently, deserve less profit. The Chinese, for the like reason,—that is, because they are not at the expense of such long and hazardous voyages as the Dutch, but are nearer at hand,—pay a duty of sixty per cent for all their goods, which brings in a sum of three hundred and sixty thousand taels duty. If to this be added the yearly rent for our houses and factories, which is five thousand five hundred and eighty taels, and that of the Chinese factory, which is sixteen thousand taels, it makes up in all a sum of four hundred and fifty-three thousand five hundred and eighty taels (upwards of half a million of dollars) which the foreign commerce produces annually to the magistrates and inhabitants of Nagasaki.
“The profits our goods produce may be computed to amount, one year with another, to sixty per cent, though, if all the charges and expenses of our sale be taken into consideration, we cannot well get above forty or forty-five per cent clear gain. Considering so small a profit, it would scarcely be worth the Company’s while to continue this branch of our trade any longer, were it not that the goods we export from thence, and particularly the refined copper, yield much the same profit, so that the whole profit may be computed to amount to eighty or ninety per cent.
“The goods belonging to private persons being brought over and sold without any expense to the owner, the gain therefrom, notwithstanding the great duty laid upon them, is no ways inferior to that of the Company. The two chief directors have the greater share of it. They cannot hold their offices longer than three years, and that not successively, being obliged, after they have served one year, to return with the homeward-bound ships to Batavia, whence they are sent back again, either by the next ships, or two years after. If the directors stand upon good terms with the chief interpreter, and have found ways and means to secure his favor, by making him large presents at the Company’s expense, he can contrive things so that some of their goods be put up and sold upon the first or second Kamban, among the Company’s goods, and so, by reason of the small duty, produce sixty-five to seventy per cent profit. This, too, may be done without any prejudice to the Company; for, in casting up the sums paid in for goods, these articles are slipped over. If they have any goods beyond the amount they are legally entitled to, chiefly red coral, amber, and the like, it is an easy matter to dispose of them in private, by the assistance of the officers of the island, who will generally themselves take them off their hands. The Otona himself is very often concerned in such bargains, they being very advantageous. Formerly, we could sell them by a deputy to the persons who came over to our island at the time of our Kamban, and that way was far the most profitable for us. But one of our directors, in 1686, played his cards so awkwardly that ten Japanese were beheaded for smuggling, and he himself banished the country forever.
“The residing director, who goes also as ambassador to the emperor’s court, hath, besides, another very considerable advantage, in that such presents as the governors of Nagasaki desire to be made to the emperor, not to be found in the Company’s warehouses, and therefore to be bought, can be furnished by him out of his own stock, if it so happens that he hath them, in which case he takes all the profit to himself, without doing any prejudice to the Company. Nay, they might possibly go still further in pursuit of their own private advantages, were it not that they endeavor to pass for men of conscience and honor, or, at least, aim to appear fearful lest they should be thought too notoriously to injure both the confidence and interest of their masters. I do not pretend hereby to charge them with any indirect practices as to the annual expenses, though perhaps even those are sometimes run up to an unnecessary height; nor is it in the least my intention to detract from the reputation and character of probity of so many worthy gentlemen, who have filled this station with honor, and discharged their duty with the utmost faithfulness to their masters. Thus much I can say without exaggeration, that the directorship of the Dutch trade in Japan is a place which the possessor would not easily part with for thirty thousand guilders (twelve thousand dollars). ’Tis true, it would be a great disadvantage to the director, and considerably lessen his profits, if he hath not a good cash in hand to provide himself, before his departure from Batavia, with a sufficient stock of goods, but must take them upon credit, and upon his return share the profits with his creditors. Besides, he must not presume to leave Batavia, much less to return thither, without valuable consideration to his benefactors, unless he intends to be excused for the future the honor of any such employment. The goods he brings back to Batavia are silk gowns, which he receives as presents from the emperor and his ministers, and whereof he makes presents again to his friends and patrons, victuals, china ware, lackered or japanned things, and other manufactures of the country, which he can dispose of at Batavia at fifty per cent profits; and besides some kobans in gold; though if he have any left it is much more profitable to buy ambergris,[146] or refined copper, and to send the latter, if possible, on board the Company’s ships to Malacca. I say if possible, because there are strict orders from the Company against it.
“But it is time at last to send our ships on their return. To make up their cargoes we buy from twelve thousand to twenty thousand piculs of refined copper, cast in small cylinders, a span long and an inch thick, each picul packed in a fir box. We buy, likewise a small quantity of coarse copper, delivered to us in broad flattish round cakes, and sometimes we take in some hundred piculs or chests of copper kasies or farthings, but not unless they be asked for at Tonquin and other places. All the copper is sold to us by a company of united merchants, who, by virtue of a privilege from the emperor, have the sole refining and selling of it to foreigners.
“The other part of our cargo is made up of Japanese camphor, from six thousand to twelve thousand, and sometimes more, pounds a year, packed up in wooden barrels; of some hundred bales of china ware packed up in straw; of a box or two of gold thread, of an hundred rolls to the box; of all sorts of japanned cabinet-boxes, chests of drawers, and the like, all of the very best workmanship we can meet with; of umbrellas, screens, and several other manufactures, made of canes, wood, buffalo and other horns, hard skins of fishes, which they work with uncommon neatness and dexterity, stone, copper, gold and Sowas (?), which is an artificial metal, composed of copper, silver and gold, and esteemed at least equal in value to silver. To these may be added paper made transparent with oil and varnish; paper printed and colored with false gold and silver for hanging of rooms; rice, the best to be had in Asia; sake, a strong liquor brewed from rice; soy, a sort of pickle, fit to be eat at table with roasted meat; pickled fruits packed in barrels; indented tobacco; tea and marmalades; besides some thousand kobans of gold in specie. The exportation of the following articles is strictly forbidden. All prints, pictures, goods or stuffs, bearing the emperor’s coat of arms. Pictures and representations, printed and others, of soldiers and military people, of any person belonging to the court of the Dairi, or of Japanese ships; maps of the empire or any part of it; plans of towns, castles, temples, and the like; all sorts of silk, cotton, and hempen stuffs; all sorts of arms, including those made in Japan after European patterns; carpenters’ knives; silver.
“Our ships cannot be laden, nor set sail, till special leave has been given, and the day of their departure determined by the court. When they are laden, all our private goods and what else we have to bring on board, must be again narrowly searched. For this purpose, two of our landlords, two apprentices of the interpreters, and two clerks, with some kuri, or workmen, about two or three days before the departure of the ships, call upon every one in his room, as well those who stay at Deshima as those who are to return, and who, during the time of sale, have been lodged in our empty houses. These people visit every corner, and examine all our things piece by piece, taking an exact memorandum of what they find; then they bind them together with straw ropes, and put their seals to them, along with a list of what the parcel contains, for the information of the gate-guard, who would else open them again. All contraband goods are seized at this search. Should any of these be found upon any Dutchman, the possessor would be at least banished the country for life, and the interpreters and servants appointed for his service and all other suspected persons would be put to the rack, till the seller and all his accomplices were discovered, by whose blood only is such crime to be expiated. Of this we had a late instance in the imperial steward’s own secretary, who, having endeavored to send over some scymitar blades to China, was executed for it, with his only son, not above eight years old. Upon my own departure, although my things, for good reasons, were visited but slightly, and over a bottle, yet they seized upon an old Japanese razor and a few other things, just because they happened to see them.
“The day determined for the departure of our ships drawing near, they proceed to lade their cargoes one after another. Last of all, the arms and powder are brought on board, followed by the ship’s company, who must again pass in review according to the list which was given in upon ship’s arrival. The ship being ready, she must weigh her anchors that instant and retire two leagues off the town towards the entrance of the harbor, where she rides till the other ships are laden in the same manner. When all the homeward-bound ships are joined, they proceed on their voyage and after they have gotten to the main sea, to a pretty considerable distance from the harbor, the Japanese ship-guard, which never quitted them from their first arrival till then, leave them and return home. If the wind proves contrary to the ship’s going out, a good number of Japanese rowing boats, fastened to a rope, tow them out by force one after another. For the emperor’s orders must be executed in spite of wind and weather, should even afterwards all the ships run the hazard of being wrecked.
“All these several strict orders and regulations of the Japanese have been made chiefly with an intent to prevent smuggling. The penalty put upon this crime is death without hope of reprieve; but it extends only to the person convicted and his accomplices, and not to their families, as the punishment of some other crimes does. And yet the Japanese are so addicted to it, that, according to computation, no less than three hundred persons have been executed in six or seven years’ time for smuggling with the Chinese, whose departing junks they follow to the main sea, and buy of them at a low price what goods they could not dispose of at their sale at Nagasaki. But these unhappy wretches are almost as frequently caught by the Japanese boats particularly appointed for that purpose, and delivered up to justice at Nagasaki, which constantly proves severe and unmerciful enough.”
Not long after Kämpfer’s arrival in Japan, eleven smugglers were caught in one boat, and brought to Nagasaki, where they were executed a few days after. On the 28th of December, 1691, twenty-three persons suffered death for smuggling, ten of whom were beheaded, and the others crucified. Among the latter were five who, upon being taken, made away with themselves, to avoid the shame of an unavoidable public execution; but their bodies were nevertheless preserved in salt, on purpose to be afterwards fixed to the cross. During Kämpfer’s stay in Japan, which was not above two years, upwards of fifty smugglers lost their lives.
“Though there are not many instances of people executed for smuggling with the Dutch, yet such a case occurred in 1691, when,” says Kämpfer, “two Japanese were executed on our island for having smuggled from a Dutchman one pound of camphor of Borneo, which was found upon the buyer just as he endeavored to carry it off from our island. Early in the morning on the day of execution the acting governor of Nagasaki sent notice by the Otona to our director to keep himself with the rest of the Dutchmen in readiness to see the criminals executed. About an hour after came over the numerous flocks of our interpreters, landlords, cooks and all the train of Deshima, with the sheriffs and other officers of justice, in all to the number of at least two hundred people. Before the company was carried a pike with a tablet, whereupon the crime for which the criminals were to suffer was specified in large characters. Then followed the two criminals, surrounded with bailiffs. The first was the buyer, a young man of twenty-three years of age, very meanly clad, upon whom the camphor was found. The second was a well-looking man, well clad, about forty years of age, who suffered only for having lent the other, formerly a servant of his, the money to buy it with.
“One of the bailiffs carried an instrument upright, formed like a rake, but with iron hooks instead of teeth, proper to be made use of if any of the malefactors should attempt to make his escape, because it easily catches hold of one’s clothes. Another carried another instrument proper to cut, to stab, and to pin one fast to a wall. Then followed two officers of the governor’s court, with their retinues, as commissioners to preside at this act, and at some distance came two clerks. In this order they marched across our island to the place designed for this execution.
“We Dutchmen, only seven in number (our ship being already gone), resolved not to come near. But our director advised us to go, as he had heard that on our refusal we would be compelled by force. I followed this advice, and went without delay to see the execution done. I found the two criminals in the middle of the place, one behind the other, kneeling, their shoulders uncovered, and their hands tied to their backs. Each had his executioner standing by him, the one a tanner (for tanners in this country do the office of executioners), the other his best friend and comrade, whom he earnestly desired, as the custom is in this country, by doing him this piece of service, to confirm the friendship he had always had for him. At about twenty paces from the criminals sat the two commissioners upon one bench, and the two clerks upon another. A third was left empty for our director, who, however, did not appear. The rest of the people stood promiscuously where they pleased. I myself crowded with my Japanese servant as near one of the malefactors as possibly we could. While they were waiting for the rest of the Dutchmen I overheard a very extraordinary discourse between the two criminals; for as the elderly man was grumbling between his teeth his Kwannongyō, or short prayer to the hundred-hand idol Kwannon, the other, to whom I stood nearest, rebuked him for it. ‘Fy!’said he. ‘For shame, to appear thus frightened out of your wits!’‘Ah, ah!’ says the other, ‘I only pray a little.’‘You have had time enough to pray,’ replied the first; ‘it serves no purpose now, but to expose yourself and to show the Dutch what a coward you are!’and this discourse so wrought upon the other that he actually left off praying.
“The minute that the Dutch were all assembled at the place of execution, a signal was given, and that instant both executioners cut off each his criminal’s head, with a short scymitar, in such a manner that their bodies fell forward to the ground. The bodies were wrapped up, each in a coarse rush mat, and both their heads together in a third, and so carried away from Deshima to the ordinary place of execution, a field not far from Nagasaki, where, it was said, young people tried their strength and the sharpness of their scymitars upon the dead bodies, by hacking them into small pieces. Both heads were fixed upon a pole, according to custom, and exposed to view for seven days. The execution being over, the company marched off from Deshima without any order. Our director went to meet the two commissioners, and afterwards the two clerks upon the street, as they were returning home, thanked them for the trouble they had been at on this occasion, and invited them to his house to smoke a pipe; but he had nothing in return for this kind invitation but a sharp reprimand, with an admonition to take care of his people, that no more such accidents should happen for the future. This was the first time criminal blood was shed upon our island.”
The proceedings at the Chinese sales, and the articles imported and exported by them, were according to Kämpfer, much the same as in the case of the Dutch, except that they were not allowed to take away any money, but merchandise only.