Japan and the Japanese

THE DUTCH SHUT UP IN DESIMA. 201
from realizing all the advantages which they had expected from the
expulsion of their rivals. They, too, had excited suspicions by
replacing their dilapidated wooden factory at Firaado by a strong
stone warehouse, which had something of the aspect of a fortress.
In spite of their submissiveness in pulling down * this erection, their
establishment at that place was suddenly closed, and in 1641 the
Dutch factors were transferred to Nagasaki, where they were shut
up. in the same little artificial island of Desima, which had been
constructed to be the prison-house of the Portuguese. And to this
narrow island they have ever since been confined, with the exception
of some occasional visits to Nagasaki and its environs, and an
annual journey, by the chief officers of the factory, to pay their
homage to the emperor at Jedo a ceremony which seems to have
been coeval with the first arrivai of the Dutch. Hitherto the Por-
tuguese and the Dutch also had freely intermarried with the Japanese
; but this intimacy now came wholly to an end, and even
the Dutch were thenceforth regarded rather as prisoners than as
friends.
What contributed to increase this jealousy of the Dutch was the
peace between Holland and the Portuguese, which followed the
assumption of the crown of Portugal by the house of Braganza, and
the separation of Portugal from Spain, in the year 1640.
Evidence of this very soon appeared. In the year 1643, the
Dutch sent two ships from Batavia, the Castricoom and the Bres-
kens, to explore the yet little-known northern coast of Japan, the
island of Jeso and the adjacent continent, and especially to search
out certain fabled islands of gold and silver, whence the Japanese
were said to derive large supplies of those metals. These vessels,
when off Jedo, were separated in a storm, and the Breskens, in need
of supplies touched at a fishing village in about forty degrees of north
latitude. The lord of the village, and a principal person of the
neighboring district, visited the ship with great show of friendship,
and having enticed the captain, Shaep, and his chief officers on
* A curious contemporary narrative of this affair is given, among other
tracts relating to Japan, in Voyayes au J\"brd, torn. iv. It is not unlikely
that the military operations of the Dutch in the neighboring bland of For-
mosa, and their strong fort of Zelandia recently erected there, might have
aroused the suspicions of the Japanese.