The Image of Holland in the Works of Fukuzawa Yukichi

Abstract

The history of Japanese-Dutch relations began in 1600, when a ship called De Liefde reached the shores of Japan. In 1609, after an audience with the founder of the Tokugawa dynasty, Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, the Dutch managed to obtain an official document according to which the ships of the Dutch East India Company could henceforth sail to Japan. In the Edo era, during the period of self-isolation, Holland remained the only Western country with which Japan maintained trade relations. Dutch merchants lived on the tiny artificial island of Dejima in Nagasaki Bay. At first, trade was going well, but, as early as in 1743, the trade mission in Dejima suffered its first loss.

The power of Great Britain and the United States grew, while Holland, on the contrary, lost its influence. However, the gradual deterioration in the field of trade coincided strikingly with the increase in the influence that Holland had on Japanese culture, life, and language. In the Edo period, Holland became a kind of a “window to Europe” for Japan. There is an opinion that, if Holland’s influence on Japan had been weaker during this period, the modernization process in Japan at the beginning of the Meiji era would have been much more difficult.

The great Japanese educator of the Meiji period Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835– 1901) managed to visit Holland as part of the Takenouchi mission (1862). It is likely that, when writing the chapters about Holland in his geographical works “All the Countries of the World” (1869) and “The State of Affairs in the West” (1866–1869), he relied, among other things, on his own experience of getting to know this country. Fukuzawa classified Holland as a developed and enlightened country. However, in his opinion, Japan should keep up with the times and focus on more advanced countries, such as the United States and Great Britain.