fyeah-asian-history-art:(1)Stranding of de Liefde in Japan The 400 years of exchange between Japan a
fyeah-asian-history-art:(1)Stranding of de Liefde in Japan The 400 years of exchange between Japan and the Netherlands began in 1600. In April of that year one foreign ship ran aground on the coast of Usuki in Bungo Province (now Usuki City, Oita Prefecture). The ship was de Liefde(eng. the love) and was the first Dutch ship to reach Japan. Five ships including de Liefde set sail from Rotterdam for the East in June 1598. The fleet followed a course that took it through the Strait of Magellan and then on to the Pacific, but after storms and attacks from Spanish and Portuguese ships only de Liefde reached the Far East. The few remaining survivors included Captain J. Quaeckernaeck, Officer Jan Joosten van Lodensteyn, and English ship’s pilot William Adams. These men were summoned to Osaka on the orders of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who ruled the country, and then who consulted them for their knowledge. Jan Joosten van Lodensteyn was granted a vermilion-seal certificate and was an active trader, and the area he lived in Edo came to be called Yaesu-gashi after him. William Adams gained the confidence of Ieyasu and served him as a foreign affairs advisor. He was given the Japanese name Miura Anjin because he was granted a small fief on Miura Peninsula and he was a ship’s pilot (Anjin means “ship’s pilot”). -- source link