The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900)

The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900)
Author: Christopher Joby
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2020-12-29
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9004438653

In The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900) Christopher Joby offers the first book-length account of the knowledge and use of the Dutch language in Tokugawa and early Meiji Japan, which had a profound effect on Japan’s language, society and culture.

Japan and the Dutch 1600-1853

Japan and the Dutch 1600-1853
Author: Grant K. Goodman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2013-07-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136831800

This is the history of Dutch influence on Japan during the so-called 'closed centuries' between 1640 and 1853. Dutch maritime traders provided the only commercial link which Japan maintained with the west, and were thus the sole channel for western ideas and knowledge to reach neo-Confucian society. Professor Goodman explains the circumstances of the Dutch themselves in Japan during the seventeenth century, and the historical and intellectual milieu within which 'Dutch studies' were nurtured. He traces the initial interest of the Shogun government in European astronomy and medicine, and the gradual development of interest in wider spheres of western knowledge and culture.

The Company and the Shogun

The Company and the Shogun
Author: Adam Clulow
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2013-12-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231535732

The Dutch East India Company was a hybrid organization combining the characteristics of both corporation and state that attempted to thrust itself aggressively into an Asian political order in which it possessed no obvious place and was transformed in the process. This study focuses on the company's clashes with Tokugawa Japan over diplomacy, violence, and sovereignty. In each encounter the Dutch were forced to retreat, compelled to abandon their claims to sovereign powers, and to refashion themselves again and again—from subjects of a fictive king to loyal vassals of the shogun, from aggressive pirates to meek merchants, and from insistent defenders of colonial sovereignty to legal subjects of the Tokugawa state. Within the confines of these conflicts, the terms of the relationship between the company and the shogun first took shape and were subsequently set into what would become their permanent form. The first book to treat the Dutch East India Company in Japan as something more than just a commercial organization, The Company and the Shogun presents new perspective on one of the most important, long-lasting relationships to develop between an Asian state and a European overseas enterprise.

The Dutch East India Company in Early Modern Japan

The Dutch East India Company in Early Modern Japan
Author: Michael Laver
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2020-04-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350126055

Michael Laver examines how the giving of exotic gifts in early modern Japan facilitated Dutch trade by ascribing legitimacy to the shogunal government and by playing into the shogun's desire to create a worldview centered on a Japanese tributary state. The book reveals how formal and informal gift exchange also created a smooth working relationship between the Dutch and the Japanese bureaucracy, allowing the politically charged issue of foreign trade to proceed relatively uninterrupted for over two centuries. Based mainly on Dutch diaries and official Dutch East India Company records, as well as exhaustive secondary research conducted in Dutch, English, and Japanese, this new study fills an important gap in our knowledge of European-Japanese relations. It will also be of great interest to anyone studying the history of material culture and cross-cultural relations in a global context.

The Intra-Asian Trade in Japanese Copper by the Dutch East India Company During the Eighteenth Century

The Intra-Asian Trade in Japanese Copper by the Dutch East India Company During the Eighteenth Century
Author: Ryūto Shimada
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2006
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004150927

In this definitive study of the intra-Asian trade in Japanese copper trade by the Dutch East India Company, the author argues that the trade in this commodity reaped high profits. Despite the huge imports of British copper by the English East India Company during the eighteenth century, the Dutch Company successfully continued to sell Japanese copper in South Asia at higher prices. Compared to the capital-intensive development of British mines in the age of the Industrial Revolution, the copper production in Tokugawa Japan was characterized by a labour-intensive 'revolution' which also made a big impact on the local economy.

The Netherlands East Indies Campaign 1941–42

The Netherlands East Indies Campaign 1941–42
Author: Marc Lohnstein
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 97
Release: 2021-06-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1472843533

At the end of 1941, Imperial Japan targeted The East Indies in an attempt to secure access to precious oil resources. The Netherlands East Indies Campaign featured complex Japanese and Allied operations, and included the first use of airborne troops in the war. This highly illustrated study is one of the less well-known campaigns of the Pacific War. Imperial Japan's campaigns of conquest in late 1941/early 1942 were launched in order to achieve self-sufficiency for the Japanese people, chiefly in the precious commodity of oil. The Netherlands (or Dutch) East Indies formed one of Japan's primary targets, on account of its abundant rubber plantations and oilfields. The Japanese despatched an enormous naval task force to support the amphibious landings over the vast terrain of the Netherlands East Indies. The combined-arms offensive was divided into three groups: western, centre and eastern. The isolated airfields and oilfields were, however, picked off one by one by the Japanese, in the rush to secure the major islands before major Allied reinforcements arrived. This superbly illustrated title describes the operational plans and conduct of the fighting by the major parties involved, and assesses the performance of the opposing forces on the battlefield, bringing to life an often-overlooked campaign of the Pacific War.

The Invention of Religion in Japan

The Invention of Religion in Japan
Author: Jason Ānanda Josephson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2012-10-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226412342

Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept of what we call “religion.” There was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning. But when American warships appeared off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country had to contend with this Western idea. In this book, Jason Ananda Josephson reveals how Japanese officials invented religion in Japan and traces the sweeping intellectual, legal, and cultural changes that followed. More than a tale of oppression or hegemony, Josephson’s account demonstrates that the process of articulating religion offered the Japanese state a valuable opportunity. In addition to carving out space for belief in Christianity and certain forms of Buddhism, Japanese officials excluded Shinto from the category. Instead, they enshrined it as a national ideology while relegating the popular practices of indigenous shamans and female mediums to the category of “superstitions”—and thus beyond the sphere of tolerance. Josephson argues that the invention of religion in Japan was a politically charged, boundary-drawing exercise that not only extensively reclassified the inherited materials of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto to lasting effect, but also reshaped, in subtle but significant ways, our own formulation of the concept of religion today. This ambitious and wide-ranging book contributes an important perspective to broader debates on the nature of religion, the secular, science, and superstition.

The Japanese in Colonial Southeast Asia

The Japanese in Colonial Southeast Asia
Author: Takashi Shiraishi
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2018-05-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501718932

This collection of essays by Japanese scholars deals with the role played by the Japanese in colonial Southeast Asia, particularly the economic impact of Japan on these nations before and after World War II. The introductory essay provides an overview of the Japanese presence in this region.

The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism

The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism
Author: Sidney Xu Lu
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2019-07-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108482422

Shows how Japanese anxiety about overpopulation was used to justify expansion, blurring lines between migration and settler colonialism. This title is also available as Open Access.