Dutch in Japan

The first Dutch ship arrived in Japan in 1600. In the next two and a half
centuries, some 800 Dutch ships would follow and for most of this period the Dutch were the only Western nation permitted to trade with the Japanese. This article provides a social history of the Dutch language during the first hundred years of the Dutch presence in Japan. Although the focus of this use was Western Kyushu, where the Dutch had trading posts at Hirado and then Deshima, the language was also used elsewhere, notably in Edo, the capital of the Tokugawa Shoguns. After a review of previous research on this subject, the article considers who knew Dutch in seventeenth-century Japan. They can be divided into three groups: Dutch; Japanese, primarily interpreters; and others, who were neither Dutch nor Japanese. It then examines the use of Dutch by social domain. Throughout the article consideration is given to questions concerning language, such as how the Japanese learnt Dutch;
language competition; language contact including Dutch loanwords in
Japanese; bilingualism; code switching and the first translations from Dutch to Japanese. These translations were the initial steps towards the phenomenon that became known as rangaku (Dutch learning), which would have a profound impact on Japanese society.

a much-needed study of the history of rangaku, the study of the West by the Japanese through the medium of books in Dutch. In this book he ably and succinctly summarized Japanese scholarship which had been published on the topic up to that time. In 1986, he published a revised version of this text, Japan: The Dutch Experience, of which the book under review here is (except for the jacket and the title page) an exact reprint. When the second edition appeared, Professor Goodman was criticized for some rather obvious omissions of scholarship which had been published in the interval between 1967 and 1986, 1 a situation which now, fourteen years later, has only grown worse. But for the change in the title there would seem to be little need to review this book once more, and therefore 1 Marius B. Jansen's review of Japan: The Dutch Experience in the Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 13, 2 (1987): 466. adopting new technology from the West is, of course, the idea that, from a Japanese perspective, English is nothing more than a dialect of Dutch, and that, if one is familiar with Dutch, one just has to change around a few vowels in order to start making sense out of English. Of course, American and British scholars have always lovingly quoted Fukuzawa Yukichi, who wrote in his autobiography: "I had been striving with all my powers for many years to learn the Dutch language. And now when I had reason to believe myself one of the best in the country, I found I could not even read the signs of merchants who had come to trade with us from foreign lands." 2 But Fukuzawa also wrote that his dismay was only temporary and that he and his contemporaries found that: "After a while we came to see that English was a language not so entirely foreign to us as we had thought. Our fear in the beginning that we were to find all our labor and hope expended on Dutch to have been spent in vain, and that we were to go through the same hardship twice in our lives proved happily wrong. In truth, Dutch and English were both . . . . of the same origin. Our knowledge of Dutch could be applied directly to English; our one-time fear was a groundless illusion." 3

In the first hundred years of the Dutch presence in Japan, the Dutch language was used by Dutch, other Europeans and Japanese in a range of social domains. This article considers how Dutch functioned in Japan in the following hundred years, i.e. c. 1700–1800. After discussing who knew Dutch in Japan, it examines the use of the language not by social domain, but rather by the linguistic processes that resulted from contact between Dutch and other languages in Japan. These include the learning of Dutch by non-native speakers, bilingualism, language competition, code switching and loanword integration. Particular attention is paid to the subject of translation, for it was during this period that Japanese interpreters and scholars began to translate Dutch texts to a significant degree and the discipline known as rangaku (lit. ‘Dutch studies’) emerged. This article therefore aims to increase our knowledge of Dutch as an emigrant language and of the linguistic diversity and resultant language processes in early modern Japan.

In the early modern period thousands of people whose mother tongue was Dutch came to the English county of Norfolk. Whilst some of them only stayed for a short while, others settled and established communities in the towns of King's Lynn, Thetford, and Great Yarmouth and the city of Norwich. Whilst the communities in the fi rst two lasted only for a short period, those in Yarmouth and Norwich lasted for over one hundred years. In this article I consider the extent to which Dutch was both written and spoken in these towns and in other parts of the county such as the Fens. The principal domain in which Dutch was used was the church, but it was also used in the workplace, at home, and in other domains such as education and the administration of the communities. I conclude by considering how this use of Dutch has left its mark on the Norfolk dialect and its toponyms.

The history of anatomy in early modern Japan is said to begin with the dissection of a corpse by Yamawaki Tōyō in 1754, however Tōyō's famous "separation of the organs" (fuwake) was not the result of a solitary inspiration by an outstanding scholar. About a century earlier, from the 1650s, when Western-style surgery found its way to Japan, anatomy played an important role in Dutch-Japanese knowledge exchange, which can be easily confirmed in Japanese manuscripts and printed books. During those decades, the famous Chinese "Record of unjust imputations" (Wúyuān lù, 1308) drew the interest of Japanese authorities and a basic knowledge of forensic medicine took root in Japan as well. Furthermore, one should not forget Kōshi Hōyoku's epoch-making "Therapeutical treasures of osteopathic manipulation" (Honetsugi ryōji chōhōki, 1746) which recommends not only the study of Chinese classics and Western literature but also the observation of skeletons that had been dumped in the fields and mountains.
This paper deals with the advent of autopsies which were conducted at the Dutch trading post Dejima and stimulated the interest of Japanese officials and physicians. It also discusses the deaths of slaves on Dejima, whose existence and fate have been completely overlooked in scholarly literature.

This book presents one of the first Dutch-Japanese dictionaries together with the underlying Dutch original. The Japanese edition was published in 1822 by order of Okudaira Masataka (1781-1855), lord of the regional domain Nakatsu: "Nieuwe-gedruct bastaardt woorden-boek. Door Ooye Suntoo. Leefarts van den landsheer Nakats, t' Jedo". Okudaira had acquired Lodewijk Meijer's famous "Woordenboek" (printed in 12 editions ranging from 1663 to 1805) and decided to make the first part containing loanwords (bastaardt worden) available to Japanese scholars. The translation was done by Okudaira's physician Ōe Shunto (1787-1844), a specialist in Dutch-style medicine, under the supervision of the ingenious translator, linguist and scholar Baba Sajurō (1787-1822). In 1822 the dictionary was printed in Edo and distributed by Okudaira. Nowadays only a few copies are preserved. This edition presents the Dutch text (1688 edition) and the Japanese version in a parallel arrangement (pp. 63-440) in order to facilitate a better understanding of the success and limits Ōe Shunto's translation. An extensive preface (pp. 1-62) sheds light on the historical background, the persons involved in the translation process and the contents of both the Dutch original and the Japanese translation.
編者前書き
解説 中津『バスタールド辞書』の背景について
１ 中津藩における蘭学
2 『バスタールド辞書』出版の経緯
3 『バスタールド辞書』の編集に携わった人々
4 ローデウェイク・メイエルの『Woordenschat(語彙宝函)』
5 『バスタールド辞書』の諸相
史料および参考文献
バスタールド辞書(日本語版・オランダ語版)

In the second half of the sixteenth century, Norwich received a large number of immigrants from the Continent whose mother tongue was Dutch or French. Whilst the use of these languages in the city, along with English, has received some academic attention, notably from the sociolinguist, Peter Trudgill, to date the use of a fourth language, Latin, has not. In this article consideration is given to the social domains in which Latin was used and the manner in which it was used in these domains. In relation to the former, it was used in education, the church, the law and the public sphere. In relation to the latter, it was used to a limited extent orally, but more commonly as a written language, being found in correspondence, official documents and monumental inscriptions. Furthermore, it was often used in code switching with vernacular languages. This analysis will allow us to identify the distinctive role that Latin played in the life of early modern Norwich, and to argue and to assess whether Peter Trudgill is right to describe early modern Norwich as a ‘trilingual city’, a reference to the three vernacular languages, English, Dutch and French.

In accounts of the emergence of a standard language, linguists often adopt what Richard J. Watts terms a 'tunnel view' of language, in which those features of a language's history which do not contribute to the story of the standard language are marginalized or even ignored. In this article, I argue that those who write general histories of Dutch language and literature are sometimes guilty of adopting this 'tunnel view'. I take the case of London in the early modern period and look at how three developments in Dutch language and literature at this time — the publication of religious literature, the writing of the fi rst Dutch grammar, and the writing of sonnets in Dutch — each owes something to the presence of Dutch speakers in London in the second half of the sixteenth century. In each case, I then consider how these developments are recorded in general histories of Dutch language and literature. I also describe a number of cases elsewhere in England and conclude by offering a model — that of the tree — which may be useful for those who write such histories. keywords Dutch language in London, language development, Dutch and Flemish strangers in London, standard language

... upon the same primary sources as Richter, except he did not rely as much on the Gehring ... (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), page 4 25 Ibid, pages 4-5 26 Dennis Sullivan. ... A barkis a shallow draft Dutch vessel with two masts used for hauling cargo. ...