Japan and the Japanese

194 JAPAN. A. D. 1G20 1707.
to the account that Kramer has left of it, was attended with vast
confusion.* The annual visit to Jedo was made the next year by
Peter de Nuyts, who gave himself out as ambassador from the king
but the Japanese hav-
of Holland, and at first was treated as such ;
ing discovered that he had no commission except from the council
of Batavia, sent him away in
disgrace.
Shortly after Nuyts was appointed governor of Formosa. The
Dutch, following in the footsteps of some Japanese adver.turcrs had
formed an establishment on that island, about the year 1020 with
a view to a smuggling trade with China ; and, by erecting a fort at
the mouth of the harbor, had speedily obtained the exclusive con-
trol of it. Not long after Nuyts' appointment as governor, there
arrived two Japanese vessels, on a voyage to China. They merely
touched at Formosa for water, but Nuyts, to gratify the spite he
had conceived against the Japanese nation, contrived to detain
them so long that they missed the monsoon ; and having required
them, as the sole condition on which he would allow their entrance,
to give up their sails and rudders, upon one pretence and another,
he refused to return them, till at length the patience of the Jap-
anese was entirely exhausted. They numbered five hundred men ;
and at last, all their reiterated and urgent applications for leave to
depart being refused, they attacked the governor by surprise, over-
powered his household, and made him prisoner ; nor did thd garrison
of the neighboring fort dare to fire upon them for fear of killing
their own people. Thus the brave Japanese extorted liberty to
depart and indemnity for their losses, to which the Dutch assented,
notwithstanding their superior force, for fear of reprisals in Japan.
These, however, they did not avoid, for, as soon as the Japanese
reached home, the emperor put under sequestration nine vessels
with their cargoes, then at Firtfndo, belonging
to the Dutch East
India Company, and forbade any further trade with their agents.
Things remained in this state for three years, the Japanese, how-
ever, receiving as usual Dutch vessels which came from Batavia,
under the assumed character of belonging not to the East India
Company, but to private
merchants. At last it was resolved tc
* This curious piece may be found in French, in the Voyages des Indtt,
torn. v.