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