| NOTA |
(★)(1.On July 29, 1643, ten crew members of the Dutch yacht Breskens were lured ashore at Nambu in northern Japan. Once out of view of their ship, the men were bound and taken to the shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, in Edo, where they remained imprisoned for four months. Later the Japanese government forced the Dutch East India Company representative in Nagasaki to acknowledge that the sailors had in fact been saved from shipwreck and that official recognition of the rescue [i.e., a formal vist from a Dutch ambassador] was in order. In a lively and engrossing narrative,´Prisoners from Nambu´ explores an incident that, while relatively obscure in and of itself, casts new light on the history of the period as a whole. Expertly constructing his tale from primary sources, the author examines relations between the Dutch East India Company and the shogunal government immediately following the promulgation of the´seclusion laws´[sakokurei] and anti-Christian campaigns. While imprisoned the Dutch crewmen were able to observe closely the internal structure of the Japanese government and its decision-making processes. Through their story we are given a fresh perspective on Tokugawa Iemitsu, his advisors, and bakufu diplomacy. Here is a fascinating case study of East-West cultural contact and an original contribution to the historiography of the early Tokugawa era. 2.Reinier H.Hesselink is associate professor of history at the University of Northern Iowa.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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