THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. ART. I.-1. Japan, voorgesteld in Schetsen over de Zeden en Gebruiken van dat Rijk; byzonder over de Ingezetenen der Stad Nagasaky. Door G. F. Meijlan, Opperhoofd aldaar. Amsterdam. 1830. 2. Bijdrage tot de Kennis van het Japansche Rijk. Door J. F. van Overmeer Fischer, Ambteenaar van Neerlandsch Indie. Amsterdam. 1833. IT is hardly necessary to remind our readers that, from the year 1657, when the Portuguese were expelled from Japan, of all the nations of Europe the Dutch alone have been allowed access to the groupe of islands which constitute that empire. That this exclusive privilege has been ever confined within narrow limits, we knew from Kæmpfer and all the older authorities. From the works now under consideration, we learn that these limits have been progressively and recently narrowed, and that the trade which they still permit has so far declined under the discouragement and increasing jealousy of the natives, as to have become rather matter of curiosity and habit, than of commercial profit to the Hollander. Unconnected as our own country is, and must expect long to remain, by any bond of intercourse or communion with this extensive empire and singular people, we yet think that the majority of our readers will share with us the satisfaction and interest with which we receive any information, however scanty and imperfect, on this subject, from those who are alone enabled to afford it. We say advisedly, that we are likely to remain excluded from all means of investigation of our own. In one instance, indeed, in the present century, our flag has waved in the harbour of Nagasaki, as we shall hereafter state, and with what result. We are aware also, that Sir Stamford Raffles, that great promoter of Oriental enterprise, had his yearnings in that direction, and that the instructions for the late expedition to the Chinese seas embraced the contingency of an attempt at in * It is worthy of remark that to English skill and courage the Dutch owe their first access to Japan. The Erasmus, the first Dutch ship which ever reached that coast in 1599, was piloted by William Adams. For his most curious and interesting adventures in that country where his skill in mathematics and ship-building procured him a long but honourable detention, see Harris's Collection of Voyages, vol. i. p. 856. He deserves a high place in the list of the heroes of naval discovery and enterprise, and equally so among the diplomatists of commerce and civilization. VOL. LII. NO. CIV. X tercourse tercourse with Japan. We think it, however, much more likely that the sole remaining link between Europe and Japan, the Dutch connexion, should be severed by violence or obliterated by disuse, than that either force or persuasion should devise a new one between this country or any of its dependencies and that empire; that New Holland, Borneo, or Central Africa, have a fairer chance of being diplomatized or dragooned into hospitality or submission towards us, within any period to which the speculation of mortal man can reasonably extend. The Dutch themselves, indeed, are confined to a solitary factory, and Decima, as a residence, presents means for the study of the three islands, little superior to those which the Isle of Sheppey would afford to a foreigner in this country, even though he were favoured with a biennial visit from the governor of Sheerness, and allowed about as often to make an excursion to Canterbury in a sedan chair, closely watched and attended by a body of the new police. The once annual visit of the deputies from the Dutch factory has been reduced to a quadrennial one-and it is at best a mere retreading of the route pursued by Kæmpfer, under circumstances and ceremonies precisely similar. Still the Dutch are the only Europeans permitted to inhabit that commercial prison and to perform that unvaried journey, and whether a residence in Decima, and a pilgrimage to Jeddo, elicit new facts, or produce little more than a confirmation of those on record, we feel, in either case, thankful to any of them who, like Messrs. Meylan and Fischer, will communicate their observations to the world. The two works in question are, indeed, locked up in a language which finds few students and fewer translators in this country or even on the continent: but these are not times when we can expect Dutchmen to show complaisance to foreign nations, by abandoning their own language, and we are, therefore, additionally pleased to see them cultivating their national literature. Mr. Meylan, the first author on our list, has resided for many years in the Dutch factory, where, we believe, he at this moment holds the situation of Opperhoofd or President. The unpretending title of Sketches of Japan' would become a work more desultory and less instructive than the one before us. Into a thin octavo a great deal of information has been compressed; and the writer's observations are so concise and judicious, as to prove that the art of book-making is one which has been brought to little perfection at Decima. The volume of Mr. Fischer is a quarto, which, by its excellence of type and paper, and the singular beauty of its illustrations-being fac-similes of drawings by native Japanese artists-is of rank to figure on the shelves of an English collector, albeit as ignorant of Dutch as many collectors are of the the languages in which the volumes they arrange on their shelves are composed. Mr. Fischer has resided nine years at Decima, and, in the year 1822, attended the president of the factory as secretary, on his journey to the metropolis. That he was zealous in his endeavours to profit by his opportunities for amassing information is proved by the volume before us, as well as by a splendid collection of Japanese curiosities which he succeeded in conveying to Amsterdam, and which, having lately been purchased by the king of Holland, is, we believe, like other similar possessions of that most munificent and judicious royal collector, open to the public at the Hague. If the difficulty of learning anything about Japan excite our curiosity, what we do learn of it is no less calculated to raise our wonder, and in some respects even our envy. Situated apart from either continent, between the old world and the new, it enjoys an immunity from almost the possibility of foreign aggression. It is true that tradition, and what to the European eye seems a strong resemblance, point to the main land of China as the primitive source of its language, religion, and customs, and that the introduction of these must imply conquest, if not discovery and original occupation. But these are events lost in the night of antiquity; and it appears that from the commencement of its annals, whenever an attempt at invasion has been made, the natural difficulties of access have been a sufficient protection; the current, the shoal, and the typhoon, have spared the Japanese Drakes and Effinghams all occasion for exhibiting their valour against the Tartar armadas of times within the record of history. A country, for whose natural features Mr. Fischer finds his nearest European comparison in the Maggiores, Comos, and Luganos of northern Italy-cultivated like a garden to the summit of its hills; a climate under which the principal productions of the tropics grow side by side with those of southern Europe; a territory indented by seas, and intersected by lakes and rivers, swarming with every animal production of the water; a soil on which the radish attains the Brobdignag weight of sixty pounds, and the blossom of the plum expands to the size of an English cabbage rose ;-and all this tenanted by thirty-four millions of people, living under a despotism, and that despotism not the will of an individual, but the fiat of rigid but stedfast, severe but immutable law, which, for at least two centuries past, has kept the community as free from civil dissension as from foreign invasion: This was the case in 1281, when the Japanese rejected the yoke of the Tartar conqueror of China, Che Tsou. He fitted out an expedition of 100,000 men from Corea, but his fleet was dashed on the island of Firando, and not a tenth part of his ships escaped destruction, x 2 such such is the picture presented to us by the most recent visiters to the shores of these fortunate islands. Do they not deserve the name, and ought even we, in the pride of our hearts, to spurn the fanciful parallel which some writers have drawn between Japan and Great Britain? The comparison can, indeed, be pursued little further than respects the magnitude of insular sovereignty, the difficulties in the way of invasion from without, and a threefold geographical demarcation, extant, indeed, more distinctly in the case of the three islands of Nipon, Sicoco, and Kisnu, than in that of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Where, however, in the well ordered empire of Japan Proper can we find the counterpart of Ireland? Where is the Japanese Connaught? Which of her sixtyeight peaceful provinces represents Tipperary? When has a Buddhist been insulted by a follower of Sinto? What voice has been raised to repeal the union between Nankaydoo and Saykadoo, or to pronounce that Tookaydoo shall no longer contain the centre of government for both? It would be idle, however, to suppose that, upon closer observation, darker features in the condition of these islands should not present themselves; nor is it to be imagined that the state of prosperous stagnation which all accounts concur in describing as the result of their social institutions, can be purchased except by a large sacrifice of mental freedom, and almost every prospect of further advancement. The summary which is to be gathered from these volumes of the history of Japan contains little that is not to be found in Kampfer. There are points connected with that history, on which the archives of the Dutch factory might be supposed to have preserved information of some interest; but they are subjects on which, even in that case, Dutch writers may be excused (if any suppressio veri be excusable) for avoiding to dwell-we mean the expulsion of the Portuguese, and the bloody extermination of Christianity. Few portions of the religious history of the world would be more interesting than a faithful record of these events. In the aunals of Christianity, few examples have occurred of a triumph so rapid, followed by destruction so complete. Whether the force of circumstances compelled the Jesuits, who were agents of that great conversion, to associate themselves with a party in the civil feuds which then distracted Japan, or whether they did so voluntarily and in pursuance of the alleged practice of that order-of which their first apostle Xavier was a joint founder with Loyola-may be doubtful; certain it is that in an evil hour they took their part in the dispute, and perished. Japanese tradition attributes to them as a cause and justification of their fall, their rapacity and sensuality. This we doubt-those vices are usually the attendants of long and undisputed possession, rather rather than of the circumstances in which these missionaries of a religion struggling into life were placed. It is likely that the hostility of their Dutch rivals may have magnified individual instances of such errors, and that the zeal of triumphant persecution may have perpetuated the imputation. It is also clear that the conduct of the Dutch, in conveying the fatal intelligence of the alleged designs of the Jesuits, was influenced rather by commercial jealousy, than by any indignation at the errors of their doctrine or the vices of those who preached it. Mr. Fischer admits that the Dutch were compelled to join in the persecution against the stubborn remnant of the Christian host, who, after the expulsion of the Portuguese in 1637, took refuge in the province of Sinabara. The siege, however, being converted into a blockade, the vessel furnished by the Dutch was, as they allege, allowed to return. The Christians preferred death to surrender, and 40,000 men are said to have perished on both sides before the extermination was effected. The magnitude of the holocaust affords some measure of the depth and tenacity with which Christianity had struck its roots into a soil, where it would now appear that little less than miracle can ever replant it. From some of the Dutch accounts, we gather that the Hollanders, in the ardour of their rivalry with the Portuguese, nearly overreached themselves; for the latter, when they found that Christianity was placed under ban, informed the government, to its great surprise, that the Dutch themselves were Christians.* How the Protestant Hollanders escaped being thus forcibly absorbed into the bosom of the Romish church and sharing the honours of martyrdom, does not exactly appear, but we suspect that some of the tales, however often contradicted, of compulsory insults to the cross, had their origin in real events of this period. It is certain that the Dutch have ever since been confined to the area of the fanlike Decima, and that an imperial order is still read to them, on the great occasions of meeting between the governor of Nagasaki and the president of the factory, enjoining them to refrain from all communication with the Portuguese-a trifling circumstance, which proves satisfactorily to our minds the happy ignorance of the Japanese as to the modern politics of Europe; or, perhaps, a still wiser resolution, to affect an utter ignorance about them. In 1673, when an English ship was sent to attempt a revival of intercourse with Japan, the first question asked was whether it was long since the English king had married a daughter of the king of Portugal. This alliance was made the pretext of * See Valentyn-Description of the Old and New East Indies, vol. iv. article Japan. the |