CHAPTER XLII
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.
Threshing and Cleaning Grain
Coolies in a Rice Field
Women carrying Rice
The Cultivation of Grain
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.
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]
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.