The Dutch East India Company in Early Modern Japan

Gift Giving and Diplomacy

Michael Laver

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781350246812
• eBook ISBN: 9781350126053
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire prémoderne

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.

1

Gift-Giving and the Early Modern Web of Diplomacy

Scholars have long recognized the power of gift-giving in social, economic, and political relationships. The French theoretician Marcel Mauss, writing in the 1920s, analyzed the role of gift-giving in building relationships among different social groups; in essence gift-giving builds bonds within in-groups and disparate groups by weaving an elaborate social fabric of giving, reciprocity, and social memory.¹ Through a society-wide system of exchange, including the social obligations embedded in gift-giving, Mauss argues that individuals are collectively bound together, and that, indeed, virtually every society at root, ancient and modern, has this in common, although certainly local differences prevail. In other words, the mechanism of binding society together through the giving and receiving of gifts is common to all human societies. Lewis Hyde brings Mauss’ analysis of “archaic” societies into the modern world by writing about gifts and the gift economy in contradistinction to the rational, impersonal market-based economy of capitalism. Whereas the market economy is not necessarily concerned with personal relationships, gifts are used to strengthen interpersonal bonds by binding the giver and the receiver into an inextricable social relationship. Hyde notes that in contrast to material wealth, which makes a person rich the more that person hoards it, gifts are the opposite because “wealth” in the gift economy is accrued by giving gifts away, and thus accruing to oneself increased and closer relationships, the prestige and honor associated with largesse, and a network of obligatory reciprocity that one might call on in some indeterminate future.² Building on Hyde, Belk and Coon devise two frameworks within which to analyze gift-giving. The first is a model in which a gift is given with some sense of an expectation of reciprocity; in other words, and to be less than charitable, the gift is given with an ulterior motive in mind. The second is a model in which a gift is given as an expression of love,³ although the theorist Jacques Derrida would counter that in the first model the gift is not, strictly speaking, a gift at all, in the sense that the giving is “tainted” by one’s own motives in the expectation of some desired outcome.⁴ Derrida goes so far as to posit (in what turns out to be a paradox) that the reality of a gift is not possible in human society because a gift is always given with some self-interested motive in mind. A true gift, according to Derrida, is something that is freely given with no thought whatsoever to anything in return; but in reality, such a mindset is more or less impossible, given the nature of humanity, although perhaps, the example of love above is the closest we can get to giving a true gift (perhaps Jesus recognized this when he spoke of self-sacrificial love as the ultimate expression of love). Even if a gift were to be somehow given with the total absence of any ulterior motive on the part of the giver, the receiver of the gift would still feel a variety of social obligations in receiving the gift, and thus the purity of the gift would also be compromised.⁵

Nathan Miczo posits that it is not the gift itself that is of primary importance, but the symbolism behind the gift, or in other words, the larger social action that the giving of the gift symbolizes.⁶ The anthropologist Chris Gregory has referred to gift-giving as a mechanism through which we establish and maintain relationships through a system of reciprocity that creates a perpetual situation of indebtedness between the two parties. He identifies that gifts are given with the intention of creating a relationship, which at its core carries the social obligation to reciprocate. In other words, a gift is code for a social mechanism whereby complex webs of social indebtedness are created, and often the longer the period of time between receiving and reciprocating, the more firm is the indebtedness of the receiver, and hence the stronger the social obligation to pay the debt back.⁷ Katherine Rupp, in a 2003 study of gift-giving and networks of reciprocity in Japan, found that by setting up a quid pro quo with one of her subjects, in this case letters of recommendation in exchange for English lessons, she unwittingly entered into a complex web of reciprocity from which she was unable to extricate herself without breaking, or at least damaging, a relationship, not to mention possible research data. From her personal experience, Rupp extrapolates anecdotal evidence that many people in modern Japan feel that gift-giving and the social obligations that result make the entire world of gifts more a burden than a pleasure.⁸

Moving to the early modern period, Cynthia Klekar uses English voyages to Japan and China in the seventeenth century to describe a world in which European-Asian state-to-state relations were not yet the norm (and would not be until the late nineteenth century), and relations between Western actors such as East India Companies and Asian potentates were mediated by “a cross-cultural language of gift exchange, reciprocity, and obligation that informed early modern conceptions of international trade and diplomacy.”⁹

Gift-giving accompanied almost every initiative that the Dutch East India Company (and its English counterpart) undertook in Japan from their arrival in the islands in the early seventeenth century.¹⁰ This was an effective strategy because gift-giving was not only a practice used in Western early modern diplomacy but also widespread in East Asian societies in which gift-giving was very much informed by practices such as tribute missions. If we were to extend our study even more broadly, we would find that gift-giving was a hallmark of early modern European interaction with many parts of the world: Christina Brauner, for example, analyzes European trading companies’ use of gifts in their trade with West Africa, and João Melo writes about the gifts that the Portuguese “Estado da India” used to facilitate relationships with several Asian rulers.¹¹

Klekar’s magnificent study focuses largely on the initial voyage to Japan of Captain John Saris, the man charged by the East India Company with trying to get in on the silver trade, and as such, Saris’ gifts were given very much with a specific intended outcome. In other words, the gifts that the English and early Dutch merchants presented to the Shogun were presented as part of a specific intention: to be able to establish trade in Japan. Thus, these gifts are examples of the first model explicated by Belk and Coon earlier, in which the gift is presented with a desired outcome in mind. Gifts may have been presented rhetorically as gifts of honor and respect, bu t in the end, everyone involved knew that the East India Companies expected a certain result and that these gifts were a down payment of sorts on that result. Company officials certainly conceived of their gifts in this way. They surely did not envision themselves actually becoming vassals of the Japanese Shogun, even though the Dutch occasionally wrote of themselves in exactly those terms, at least in letters to the shogunal court; and they surely did not think the gifts they presented were in any way an official demonstration of Dutch or English submission to the Shogun, even though the action of gift-giving might have implied such on the surface.¹² Rather, the gifts presented were transactional in nature. We know this is the case for the Dutch, given several remarks made in the VOC diaries in which the chief merchant specifically tells his successors to use the gifts as a way to curry favor with Japanese officialdom.¹³ One such instance is in a diary entry for 1662 in which the chief merchant states,

It would be better to keep their favor by a small presentation now than incur their displeasure, which would cost the company six times as much to gain their favor, apart from the damage which their ill will might bring about as happened in Hirado, when the lodge had to be demolished, which was said to have been caused by someone who was unsatisfied because Mr. Caron had not presented him a gift.¹⁴

This is almost certainly a misreading of the removal of the VOC from Hirado to Deshima, but, be that as it may, it speaks volumes that the Dutch put so much weight on the importance of these gifts. For the VOC, the yearly gifts were simply the price of doing business, and in fact, when one looks at the accounting books that still survive, as well as in the letters sent from Deshima to Company officials in Batavia, it becomes clear that the gifts were just another expense, similar to the rent that the Company was obliged to pay the Japanese for the use of Deshima.

Gifts were also transactional in the sense that they were occasionally offered to bring about a desired outcome in a negotiation or to resolve a crisis between the VOC and the Shogun, an eventuality that occurred several times. Shogo Suzuki, for one, distinguishes between those gifts given to the Shogun on the yearly journey to court and those gifts given when the Dutch wished to discuss diplomatic or commercial affairs with the shogunal counselors.¹⁵ It certainly was not unusual in early modern foreign relations for European representatives to travel to the court of a ruler to present gifts along with a petition, either for trade or for some other purpose. We’ve already seen that the Dutch, when they first arrived in Japan in 1609 seeking to establish a headquarters in Japan for their still nascent East India Company, made the journey to the shogun’s court at Sunpu where they provided Tokugawa Ieyasu with admittedly paltry gifts along with a petition for trade.¹⁶ The Dutch were warmly received despite a barrage of condemnation from their Portuguese rivals, and despite their anemic gifts, probably because of larger strategic geopolitical considerations on the part of Ieyasu.¹⁷ The founding Shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty found it quite attractive to have another set of foreigners who could be played off against the Portuguese, the Catholicism of whom the Japanese consistently and increasingly found problematic. We also know that Ieyasu, in contradistinction to later Shogun, was eminently interested in overseas trade, as seen in his welcoming attitude not just to the Portuguese and Dutch but also to the English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Ryūkayan Islanders, and in his willingness to tolerate a significant overseas Japanese population in places such as Manila and Ayutthaya. The Ikoku Nikki, a compilation of diplomatic correspondences by the Zen monk and close confident of Ieyasu, Konchi-in Sūden, contains a great many letters to overseas countries as diverse as Ming China and the Spanish Philippines.¹⁸ In this spirit of openness, the Dutch were originally given essentially free rein to conduct trade in Japan, a boon that was, as Adam Clulow notes in his recent marvelous study of the VOC in Japan, out of all proportion to the paltry gift the Company initially presented.¹⁹

As we will have occasion to examine in a later chapter, lavish gifts always accompanied attempts to resolve various crises that arose between the Dutch and the shogunal court. The most famous example was the arrest and imprisonment of Pieter Nuyts, a Company servant who ran afoul of Japanese authorities because of his heavy-handed treatment of Japanese merchants on the island of Taiwan. After the Tokugawa suspended Dutch trade in retaliation, Nuyts was sent to Japan to answer for his actions, essentially sacrificed to the Japanese in order to restore trade, and was only released from his several-year captivity because of the tireless advocacy of the chief merchants, and also because the Shogun at the time was enormously pleased with a lavish gift of a metal candelabra.²⁰

Another well-documented instance in which gifts were presented to the Shogun in an attempt to resolve a diplomatic crisis is from the farcical embassy in 1649 to the shogun’s court in order to thank him for his treatment of several Dutch crewmen from the ship Breskens who had gone ashore in the domain of Nambu in search of provisions after their ship ran low.²¹ The Dutchmen, because they did not arrive at Nagasaki, were arrested and forwarded to Edo for interrogation, the local populace convinced they were priests trying to enter Japan surreptitiously. While the men were eventually released after exhaustive interrogation to ensure the castaway Dutch were not in league with either the Portuguese or the Spanish, the bakufu insisted on a suitable display of gratitude, involving an official embassy from Holland. The Dutch chief merchant correctly assessed the situation when he writes that the Japanese were looking for a similar display of gratitude as that made upon the release of Nuyts.²² After several years of back and forth, the Dutch finally cobbled together an “official” embassy led by a sickly man by the name of Petrus Blokhovius and his second-in-command, Andries Frisius.²³ As expected, Blokhovius died en route, Frisius went to the trouble to embalm his remains so as to prove to the Japanese that a high-ranking ambassador was indeed sent. The farce played out with the bestowal of lavish gifts on the Shogun in recompense for his graciousness in allowing the Dutch prisoners of 1643 to go free. The Dutch assured the Shogun that “the envoy had travelled four or five thousand miles from his country not for gold or silver or trade, but to pay reverence to the shogun.”²⁴ This was a bald-faced, well, untruth, and the Shogun almost certainly saw it as such as well, but the shogun’s honor had been served, and in return Frisius was presented with 500 schuiten of silver for his superiors in Batavia, 200 schuiten for himself, and ten “silk gowns” also for himself.²⁵ Frisius’ gifts for the Shogun included the usual gifts of cloth and European goods, but also a “pyrotechnist” who fired off mortars and taught the shogunal guards how to fire them, and a finely crafted silver ship that was quite a hit at court. In the end, the Shogun was well pleased with the envoy, although his officials were apparently not pleased that the envoy had arrived aboard a ship packed with merchandise. It was good enough, though.

There were, of course, other nuances to the gift-giving that was a defining feature with European interactions with Japan. A long-established diplomatic model in East Asia known as the “tribute system” had its origins as early as the Tang Dynasty, although a more mature and coherent manifestation of the system arose during the Ming and Qing dynasties (Late Imperial China).²⁶ In this economic and political worldview, only rulers who were willing to make a formal recognition that the Chinese emperor (and by extension the Chinese empire) was the superior partner could partake in legitimate trade. Thus, potential trade partners were required to send embassies to the emperor’s court to perform a ritual of submission, and in return, the emperor would “confirm” the rulers in their positions of authority in their own countries. Only then would merchants be allowed to engage in trade. Often the political embassy and the trade missions were combined into one trip for expediency, although in this Sino-centric worldview, legitimate trade was still conditional on a show of obeisance to the emperor.²⁷

In this conception, VOC gifts could certainly be interpreted as a type of tribute paid to the shogun’s court, especially since the outward trappings of the system were more or less all present, including an inherently unequal relati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Dutch East India Company and the Rhythm of Life in Japan
• 1 Gift-Giving and the Early Modern Web of Diplomacy
• 2 Horses and Camels and Birds of Paradise, Oh My: Exotic Animals as Gifts
• 3 Most Exquisite Curiosities of Nature and Art
• 4 Rarities and Curiosos: Scientific Paraphernalia as Gifts
• 5 A Taste of the Exotic: Food and Drink as Social Lubricant in Early Modern Japanese-Dutch Interactions
• Epilogue: Gifts and the Coming of the Americans
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright