Thunberg’s Visit to Japan—Searches and Examinations—Smuggling—Interpreters—Deshima—Imports and Exports—Unicorn’s Horn and Ginseng—Soy—The Dutch at Deshima—Japanese Mistresses—Japanese Women—Studying the Language—Botanizing—Clocks—New Year’s Day—Trampling on Images—Departure for Yedo—Journey through the Island of Shimo—Japanese Houses and Furniture—Manufacture of Paper—Practice of Bathing—Shimonoseki—Voyage to Ōsaka—Children—From Ōsaka to Miyako—Agriculture—Animals—A.D. 1775-1776.
From the time of Kämpfer’s departure from Deshima, of all the Dutch residents and visitors there, none, for a period of upwards of eighty years, favored the world with their observations. They went to Japan in pursuit of money, not to obtain knowledge, either for themselves or others.
At length, in 1775, Charles Peter Thunberg, a Swedish physician, naturalist, and traveller, to gain an opportunity of seeing Japan, obtained the same official situation which Kämpfer had held before him. Being an enthusiastic botanist, he was sent to the East by some wealthy merchants of Amsterdam to obtain new trees and plants, as well for the medical garden of that city as for their own private collections. Circumstances caused him to spend three years at the Cape of Good Hope, whence he proceeded to Batavia. He left that port June 20, 1775, and arrived off Nagasaki the 14th of the following August. From an experience of more than a hundred years, the Company reckoned on the loss of one out of every five ships sent to Japan, though care was taken to select the best and strongest vessels.[38]
The searches and examinations previous to landing were the same described by Kämpfer. Hitherto it had been usual to allow the captains of the vessels to pass at pleasure to and from their ships without being searched; they, with the directors of the Dutch factory, being the only persons exempt from that ceremony. The captains had taken advantage of this exemption to dress themselves out, for the convenience of smuggling, in a showy, blue silk, silver-laced coat, made very wide and large, in which dress they generally made three trips a day to and from Deshima, being often so loaded down with goods that they had to be supported by a sailor under each arm. Thunberg’s captain rigged himself out in the same style; but, much to his disappointment and that of the other Dutchmen, whose private goods the captains had been accustomed to smuggle for a commission, the Japanese officers who boarded the ship brought orders that the captain should dress like the rest; that he and the director also should be searched when they landed, and that the captain should either stop on board, or, if he landed, should remain on shore, being allowed to visit the ship only twice during her stay. “It was droll enough,” says Thunberg, “to see the astonishment which the sudden reduction in the size of our bulky captain excited in the major part of the ignorant Japanese, who before had always imagined that all our captains were actually as fat and lusty as they appeared to be.”
In the year 1772, one of the Dutch ships from Batavia, disabled in a violent storm, had been abandoned by her crew, who, in their haste, or believing that she would speedily sink, had neglected the standing order of the Company, in such cases, to set her on fire. Some days after she drifted to the Japanese shore, and was towed into the harbor of Nagasaki, when the Japanese found on board a number of chests marked with the names of the principal Dutch officers, and full of prohibited goods,—and it was to this discovery that the new order was ascribed.
The examination of the clothes and persons of all who passed to and from the ship was very strict. The large chests were emptied, and the sides, top, and bottom sounded to see if they were not hollow. Beds were ripped open and the feathers turned over. Iron spikes were thrust into the butter-tubs and jars of sweetmeats. A square hole was cut in the cheeses, and a thick, pointed wire thrust through them in every direction. Even some of the eggs brought from Batavia were broken, lest they might be shams in which valuables were concealed.
Formerly, according to Thunberg, the Dutch took the liberty to correct with blows the Japanese kuri employed as laborers on board the ships; but in his time this was absolutely prohibited. He adds, that the respect of the Japanese for the Dutch was a good deal diminished by observing “in how unfriendly and unmannerly a style they usually behave to each other, and the brutal treatment which the sailors under their command frequently experience from them, together with the oaths, curses, and blows with which the poor fellows are assailed by them.”
The interpreters would seem to have adopted, since the time of Kämpfer (as he makes no mention of it), the practice of medicine among their countrymen after the European manner. This made them very inquisitive as to matters of physic and natural history, and very anxious to obtain European books, which they studied diligently. Kämpfer speaks of the interpreters with great indignation as the most watchful and hateful of spies. Thunberg appears to have established very good terms with them. New restrictions, however, had been placed on their intercourse with the resident Dutchmen, whom, to prevent smuggling, they were not allowed to visit, except in company with one or two other officers.
Deshima, from Thunberg’s description of it, appears to have altered very little since Kämpfer’s residence there, though glass windows had lately been brought from Batavia, by some of the Dutch residents, as a substitute for the paper windows of the Japanese.
The permanent residents were now twelve or thirteen (there had been but seven in Kämpfer’s time), besides slaves brought from Batavia, of whom each Dutchman had one.