“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.