DOGS OF CHINA AND JAPAN 



" The merchants married the daughters of the richest in- 

 habitants. The gold of the country was exchanged against 

 European and Indian curiosities, medicines, stuffs, and other 

 things of like nature. Upwards of 300 tuns of the precious 

 metal were exported every year." 



The Dutch established a factory at Firando just previous 

 to 1600. In 1637, in consequence of a Portuguese plot 

 against the Emperor, the country was closed by Imperial 

 decree to all Portuguese intercourse. All Japanese returning 

 from abroad were put to death. No boat whatever, of any 

 nature, was to leave Japan, and all Portuguese were banished 

 to Macao. Meanwhile, the Dutch had been making every 

 effort to forward their trade. " No trouble," says Kaempfer, 

 " no expenses were spared to please the Emperor upon whom 

 alone all the good or bad success of their trade depended. The 

 most exquisite curiosities of nature and art were purchas'd 

 and brought over for the annual presents. The oddest and 

 scarcest animals in particular were brought up in the remotest 

 kingdoms of Europe, Persia, and the Indies, to have where- 

 withal to satisfy their demands, ridiculous and fanciful as 

 they generally were, for animals so strange in their nature, 

 colours and shape, as perhaps never existed in nature." * 

 In 1641 the Dutch were ordered to remove from Firando 

 to Nagasaki, where their factory existed in Kaempfer 's 

 time. 



The period of British trade with Japan at the beginning of 

 the seventeenth century was brief. The East India Company, 

 successful in its competition with the Portuguese and Dutch 

 in India, was making plans to gain a footing in the trade of 

 the Far East. Its efforts to oust the Dutch from the Japanese 

 trade were not successful. Will Adams, who, arriving about 

 1600, was the first Englishman to reach Japan, rose to great 



* " Kaempfer's History of Japan," by J. G. Scheuzer, J. MacLehose. 

 174 



