| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Reinier H. Hesselink. Prisoners from Nambu: Reality and Make-Believe in Seventeenth-Century Japanese Diplomacy. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 2002. Pp. xii, 215. $24.95.

Reinier H. Hesselink explores a neglected but fascinating episode in the history of Dutch-Japanese diplomatic relations. In July 1643, Japanese authorities from the northeastern domain of Morioka (overseen by the Nambu family) cleverly lured ashore and then incarcerated ten crew members of the Breskens, a yacht out of Batavia that Dutch officials had dispatched along with the fluyt Castricom to search out the legendary "Gold and Silver Islands." In theory, the Dutch were allies of the Japanese, but officials in Edo, the capital of the Tokugawa shoguns, viewed all foreigners, particularly Christians, with contempt bordering on paranoia, and so Morioka authorities, nervous about attracting shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu's displeasure, sent the ten Dutch to Edo for a series of interrogations at the hands of the notorious Christian-hunter, Inoue Masashige. Only after surviving the twin tortures of bureaucratic ineptitude and anatsurushi (the infamous "pit torture," which Hesselink describes in lurid detail) were the Dutch granted permission to return home in December 1643. What transpired in those six months, and a later Dutch embassy to Japan in 1649, make up the bulk of this interesting story. . . .

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