In 1820, J. F. Van Overmeer Fisscher arrived at Nagasaki, as a member of the factory. He resided there for seven years, and after his return to Holland published, in 1833, a work in the Dutch language, entitled “Contributions towards a Knowledge of the Japanese Empire,” embellished with engravings from Japanese drawings, so superior to former specimens as to give occasion for some suspicion of aid from the European engraver.
In 1822, Fisscher accompanied Blomhoff in the quadrennial embassy to Yedo, which, from its long intermission, appears to have excited unusual attention. It had been proposed to make the embassy annual, as formerly; but to this change the Japanese authorities would not assent. Fisscher’s account of the journey does not differ materially from that given by Kämpfer and Thunberg. The entrance into Yedo, notwithstanding the absence of carriages, reminded him, from the noise and the throng of people, of the commercial parts of London. The shops had signs, as in Europe; the goods were exhibited from the doors and windows under the charge of boys, who rivalled each other in calling by loud cries the attention of purchasers. Long before entering Shinagawa, they found themselves in the midst of a vast crowd, marching along broad streets, paved at the sides, formed of houses, regularly built, among which were many large buildings. From the suburb to their hotel, called Nagasakiya, and in the immediate vicinity of the palace, it was two hours’ march; and, as the palace was said to occupy a space half a Japanese mile in diameter, Fisscher estimates the diameter of the whole city at not less than five or six hours’ walk at an ordinary step.
After the audience and the official visits were over, the Dutch spent twelve days in receiving visits. Among the crowds who obtained the privilege of seeing them, were several princes or their secretaries, and many savans, Doeff’s Globius among the rest. Several of these visitors had more or less knowledge of the Dutch language, and great eagerness was exhibited to obtain new scientific information. To a party given to the Dutch by the master of the mint and the conductor of the embassy, many of the Japanese guests came rigged out in Dutch clothes; and as these had been collected through long intervals and preserved as curiosities, they presented a very grotesque and antique appearance.[104] Fisscher’s own party were laid under contribution in the same way, their lady visitors unpacking and rummaging their trunks, and putting them to the necessity of giving away some of the most valuable articles. The greater part, however, were content with a few words written on their fans.
Mr. G. F. Meylan, who first arrived in Japan shortly after Fisscher left it, and who subsequently died there, as director, has also contributed something to our knowledge of Japan, by a thin volume published in 1830, like Fisscher’s, in the Dutch language, with the title of “Japan; presented in Sketches of the Manners and Customs of that Realm, especially of the Town of Nagasaki.” One of the most original things in Meylan’s book is his apology for the custom of the Dutch in taking female companions from the Nagasaki tea-houses. None of the male Japanese servants are allowed to remain in Deshima over night. “How, then,” plaintively asks Mr. Meylan, “could the Dutch residents otherwise manage to procure any domestic comfort in the long nights of winter,—their tea-water, for instance,—were it not for these females?” He passes a high eulogy upon their strict fidelity and affectionate activity; and indeed the connection appears to be regarded by them not so much in the light in which we see it, as in that of a temporary marriage. The female inmates of the Japanese tea-houses hold, indeed, in the estimation of their own people, a very different position from that which our manners would assign to them; since not only is the custom of frequenting these houses, as places of relaxation and amusement, general among the men, but sometimes, according to Fisscher, they even take their wives along with them.
Of the personal charms of these wives, with their teeth blackened, their eyebrows shaven, their faces white, Fisscher does not give a very high idea. The concubines do not shave their eyebrows, but the custom of blackening the teeth is so common as to be adopted by all females above the age of eighteen. The immoderate use of the warm bath causes them to look, at twenty-five, at least ten years older. Not content with the natural burdens of child-bearing, they augment them by several absurd customs, one of which is the wearing, during pregnancy, of a tight girdle round the body.
The works of Fisscher and Meylan are chiefly valuable for the confirmation they give of Kämpfer’s accounts, and as showing the Japanese very little altered from what they were when he described them. A visitant to Japan, and a writer of much higher pretensions, is Dr. Philipp Franz von Siebold, who was sent out, in 1823, commissioned by the Dutch government, to make all possible investigations, as well into the language, literature, and institutions, as into the natural history of the country. The Japanese interpreters understood Dutch so well as to detect his foreign accent, but they were satisfied with the explanation that he was a Dutch mountaineer. He availed himself, as Kämpfer had done, of all means that offered to elude the restrictive laws; and he found, like Thunberg and Titsingh, a certain number of the natives very anxious to obtain information, and by no means unwilling secretly to impart it.
In 1826, he accompanied Van Sturlen, the director, on the quadrennial journey to Yedo, taking with him a young native physician, a native artist, and several servants to assist his researches into natural history. Following, as Fisscher had done, nearly or quite in Kämpfer’s old route, he saw, in the passage across Kiūshiū, the same old camphor-tree, as flourishing, apparently, as it had been a hundred and thirty-five years before, but with a hollow in its trunk large enough to hold fifteen men. He visited the same hot springs, and descended some sixty feet into the coal mine, near Kokura, mentioned by Kämpfer. He saw only one thin seam of coal, but was told of thicker ones below,—an account which the coal drawn up seemed to confirm.
The Wedding Ceremony
At Yedo he met with many Japanese physicians, astronomers, and others, of whose acquisitions he speaks with much respect.