Japan and the Japanese

DUTCH-JAPANESE CHILDREN. 459
director. Doeff. however, got wind of this intrigue, frightened the
two interpreters by threatening
to tell the whole story to the gov>
ernor of Nagasaki, and finally carried the day. He paid, however,
rather dearly for his obstinacy, as Raffles sent no more ships, and
director Doeff was obliged to pass three years more without either
goods or news, cooped up and kept on short allowance in his iittle
island, with the satisfaction, however, that there, if nowhere else in
the world, the flag of Holland still continued to wave.
The Japanese government, obliged
to advance the means for the
support of the factory, did not leave the director entirely idle. He
was set to work, with the aid of ten Japanese interpreters, in com-
piling a Japanese and Dutch dictionary, for the use of the Japanese
men of science and the imperial interpreters. A copy of this work
was deposited in the imperial library at Jedo ; another, made by
Doeff for his own use, was lost, with all his other papers and effects,
on his return to Europe. The original rough draft of the work
was f und afterwards, however, at Desima, by Herr Fisseher, and
having made a transcript, though less perfect than the original, he
.brought it home in 1821), and deposited it in the royal museum at
Amsterdam.*
Thunberg, as we have seen, could hear nothing of semi-Dutch
children born in Japan. There were such, however, in Doeff's
time; and it appears, from an incidental remark of his, that although
no birth was allowed to take place at Desima, yet that the Japanese
female inmates of the factory were permitted to nurse their infants
in the houses of their Dutch fathers. At a very early age, how-
ever, these children were taken away to be educated as pure Jap-
anese, being allowed to visit their fathers only at certain specified
intervals. The fathers, however, were expected to provide for them,
and to obtain for them, by purchase, some government office.
* Mr. Medhurst, English missionary at Batavia, who his published an
English ai>d Japanese vocabulary, enumerates, in a letter written in 1827,
as among his helps to the knowledge of the language, besides five different
Japanese and Chinese diction tries, a Dutch, Japanese and Chinese one, in
two thick 8vo volumes ; also a corresponding one in Japanese, Chinese and
Dutch. These were printed in Japan, and were, perhaps, fruits of Doeff's
labors.