6 THE AZALEAS OF THE OLD WORLD 



and introduced Christianity; he visited Oita, and going north to Hondo 

 established a mission at Yamaguchi, a few miles north of Shimonoseki. 

 This newly introduced religion soon claimed thousands of adherents, 

 much to the alarm of the Japanese Daimyos and military men backed 

 by Buddhist priests, and a period of persecution commenced. The 

 native Christians migrated to Nagasaki, which soon became one of the 

 chief marts of Portuguese trade. 



In 1596 the Dutch first visited Java and other islands of the East 

 Indies and in 1602 the Dutch East India Company was established. 

 The war which then ensued between the Dutch, Spaniard and Portu- 

 guese for possession of the spice islands lasted until 1610 when the 

 Dutch remained master of these seas. The seat of the Dutch govern- 

 ment was first established on the island of Amboyna, but in 1619 it 

 was transferred to the newly founded city of Batavia in Java. In 1600 

 a Dutch ship visited Japan, and nine years later the Dutch East India 

 Company sent several vessels to Firando (Hirado), northwest of Naga- 

 saki, where they were well received by the Japanese. In 1611 a formal 

 edict in favor of their trade was obtained. A Dutch factory and also 

 an English factory were established at Hirado the same year. 



In 1624 Christianity was proscribed in Japan and the land was 

 closed to foreigners. The Portuguese, English and Spaniards, who also 

 had a factory, were expelled and only the Dutch and the Chinese were 

 permitted to carry on trade, and that under galling restrictions. The 

 Dutch factory was removed in 1639 to Deshima, then an islet at the 

 head of Nagasaki harbor but now absorbed into the foreshore. And 

 so Japan secluded herself for over two centuries from contact with the 

 outer world until the advent of the American Expedition in 1853-54 

 under command of Commodore Perry. All this may seem to have 

 little to do with plants and with Azaleas in particular and yet they 

 are inextricably bound up with the subject. It is to the merchant 

 adventurer that we owe all our first plant introductions from Japan 

 and our early knowledge of the flora. From 1690-92 Engelbert 

 Kaempfer, in the service of the Dutch East India Company, lived in 

 Japan, and in his Amoenitates Exoticae, published in 1712, he gives an 

 admirable account of Japanese plants. He gives good figures of many 

 of these under the vernacular names and among them an Azalea now 

 known as R. obtusum var. Kaempferi Wils. In all Kaempfer mentions 

 twenty-one Azaleas, and it is interesting to note that many of the 

 vernacular names he gives are in common use to-day. C. P. Thunberg 

 in 1775 visited Japan in the capacity of physician to the Dutch Com- 



