“Whoever presumes to bring a letter from abroad, or to return after he hath been banished, shall die with all his family; also whoever presumes to intercede for them shall be put to death.
“No nobleman nor any soldier shall be suffered to purchase anything of a foreigner.”
The Portuguese ships of 1639 were sent back with a copy of this edict, without being suffered to discharge their cargoes. The corporation of the city of Macao, greatly alarmed at the loss of a lucrative traffic, on which their prosperity mainly depended, sent deputies to solicit some modification of this edict. But the only reply made by the emperor was to cause these deputies themselves, with their attendants, to the number of sixty-one persons, to be seized and put to death, as violators of the very edict against which they had been sent to remonstrate. Thirteen only, of the lowest rank, were sent back to Macao, August, 1640, with this account of the fate of their company[115].
CHAPTER XXV
Policy of the Dutch—Affair of Nuyts—Haganaar’s Visits to Japan—Caron’s Account of Japan—Income of the Emperor and the Nobles—Military Force—Social and Political Position of the Nobles—Justice—Relation of the Dutch to the Persecution of the Catholics—The Dutch removed from Hirado and confined in Deshima—Attempts of the English, Portuguese, and French at Intercourse with Japan—Final Extinction of the Catholic Faith—A. D. 1620-1707.
Throughout the whole of the long and cruel persecution of the Catholics, the Dutch had striven by extreme subserviency to recommend themselves to the favor of the Japanese, in hopes of exclusively engrossing a trade which appears at this time to have been more extensive and more lucrative than at any former period. The Japanese, however, seem not to have been insensible to the advantages of competition; and, so long as the Portuguese commerce continued, they extended to the vessels of that nation a certain protection against the Dutch, and even preference over them. The danger from Dutch cruisers appears to have caused the substitution, for the single great carac of Macao, of a number of smaller vessels; nor were the Dutch, however urgent their solicitations, allowed to leave Hirado till such a number of days after the departure of the Portuguese from Nagasaki as would prevent all danger of collision.
Yet, however cringing the general policy of the Dutch East India Company, their trade, through the folly of a single individual, was near being exposed to a violent interruption. In the year 1626, Conrad Kramer, the head of the Dutch factory, was extremely well received on his visit to Yedo, and was allowed to be present at Miyako during the visit of the emperor to the Dairi,—an occasion which drew together an immense concourse, and which, according to the account that Kramer has left of it, was attended with vast confusion[116]. The annual visit to Yedo was made the next year by Peter de Nuyts, who gave himself out as ambassador from the king of Holland, and at first was treated as such; but the Japanese having discovered that he had no commission except from the council of Batavia, sent him away in disgrace.
Shortly after, Nuyts was appointed governor of Formosa. The Dutch, following in the footsteps of some Japanese adventurers, had formed an establishment on that island, about the year 1620, with a view to a smuggling trade with China; and, by erecting a fort at the mouth of the harbor, had speedily obtained the exclusive control of it. Not long after Nuyts’ appointment as governor, there arrived two Japanese vessels, on a voyage to China. They merely touched at Formosa for water, but Nuyts, to gratify the spite he had conceived against the Japanese nation, contrived to detain them so long that they missed the monsoon; and having required them, as the sole condition on which he would allow their entrance, to give up their sails and rudders, upon one pretence and another, he refused to return them, till at length the patience of the Japanese was entirely exhausted. They numbered five hundred men; and at last, all their reiterated and urgent applications for leave to depart being refused, they attacked the governor by surprise, overpowered his household, and made him prisoner; nor did the garrison of the neighboring fort dare to fire upon them for fear of killing their own people. Thus the brave Japanese extorted liberty to depart and indemnity for their losses, to which the Dutch assented, notwithstanding their superior force, for fear of reprisals in Japan. These, however, they did not avoid, for, as soon as the Japanese reached home, the emperor put under sequestration nine vessels with their cargoes, then at Hirado, belonging to the Dutch East India Company, and forbade any further trade with their agents. Things remained in this state for three years, the Japanese, however, receiving as usual Dutch vessels which came from Batavia, under the assumed character of belonging not to the East India Company, but to private merchants. At last it was resolved to seek an accommodation by surrendering up Nuyts to the mercy of the Japanese, which was done in 1634.
Having obtained his unconditional surrender, they treated him with great clemency; for, though detained in custody, he was not kept a close prisoner; and, in return for this concession, the Company’s ships were released and their trade reëstablished. The liberation of Nuyts was granted two years afterwards as a mark of the emperor’s satisfaction, with a splendid chandelier among the annual presents of the Company, and which was used as an ornament for the temple-mausoleum of the emperors of the race of Gongen-Sama [at Nikkō], completed about that time.
In the solicitation for the release of Nuyts both Haganaar and Caron were employed, to each of whom we are indebted for some curious memoirs of the state of Japan in their time. Haganaar made three visits thither. The first included the last four months of 1634. The second extended from September, 1635, to November, 1636; during which he made a visit to Yedo, and was at the head of the factory. The third was limited to three months in the autumn of 1637. Of each of these visits he has given brief notes in his printed travels[117], besides adding some observations of his own to Caron’s account of Japan. Hirado, which he describes as a town of thirty-six streets, had grown up suddenly, in consequence of the Dutch trade,—a single street producing more revenue to the lord than the whole town formerly had done; yet there were hardly any merchants in the place, except those who lodged at the factory, and who were drawn thither from all parts by the Dutch trade.