The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan

In 1663 seven half-dead Chinese sailors washed up onto the Gotō Islands, a small chain located near the coast of Kyushu. Their ship had departed Chaozhou in Guangdong province a few weeks earlier on its way to Japan but had run into a fierce storm that had swept away one of its masts. As the crew struggled to rig new sails, they sighted an unfamiliar Dutch ship on the horizon. It was not there to help, and, after refusing to submit to an inspection, the Chinese junk came under fire, heavy cannon shot from the Dutch ship ripping into their vessel’s hull. Forced to abandon ship, the surviving mariners, clinging desperately to the wreckage, were tossed by the sea for days before favorable currents washed them onto Japanese shores. The casualty list, both as a consequence of the bombardment and later in the cold waters of the East China Sea, was high. So too were the damages from the lost vessel and the rich cargo it had carried. Determined to extract full compensation from the company for their lossses, the survivors moved quickly to file a petition with the Nagasaki bugyō, the highest-ranking Bakufu official on Japan’s maritime frontiers.

The resultant document and others like it that were submitted by Chinese plaintiffs to Tokugawa authorities in protest of VOC actions form the subject of this analysis. In contrast to chapter 4, which considered a period when the Bakufu permitted, and in some ways actively encouraged, maritime trade through the shuinjō system, this chapter examines a later period during which Tokugawa foreign policy was defined by a series of maritime restrictions, the so-called closed country or sakoku edicts, promulgated between 1633 and 1639, that seem to mark a determined withdrawal from the sea. Given the fact that they combined to effectively shut down Japan’s merchant marine, these edicts seem to suggest an almost total abdication of responsibility over the ocean and an open pass for an organization like the Dutch East India Company to act as it saw fit on the sea lanes leading into Japan. But if we look more closely at the Dutch experience in these years a very different picture emerges. Even as it dramatically reduced the volume of maritime traffic moving in and out of the archipelago, the Tokugawa regime continued to cast a long shadow over the ocean.

To highlight this ongoing influence, this chapter shifts the focus away from the shogun’s court in Edo, where debates over attacks on Portuguese shipping played out, to consider the rise of Nagasaki as its own space for petition, investigation, and arbitration. The key protagonists of this story are Chinese or tōjin (literally, people of Tang) merchants, a diverse community of traders that was concentrated in Nagasaki after 1635. With no access to Edo, they turned to the Nagasaki bugyō who became an active participant in maritime disputes involving the Dutch. Beginning in the 1630s, the path to the governor’s office became a familiar one for Chinese merchants who, seeking to exploit Tokugawa law and carve out a space in which they could operate as plaintiffs, submitted a series of legal petitions demanding redress for episodes that had taken place as far away as modern-day Taiwan and Vietnam. The picture that emerges of Nagasaki as an international legal node casts further doubt on the traditional view of Japan in this period—already shaken to the core by the work of scholars such as Ron Toby and Arano Yasunori—as an essentially isolated state by showing that the Tokugawa regime, through officials on the water’s edge, continued to intervene in distant maritime disputes long after the promulgation of the sakoku edicts.¹

The corollary of a surprisingly activist Bakufu was continued Dutch frustration on the sea routes leading into Japan, and these cases provide further evidence of the company’s ongoing struggle to make use of the sharpest weapon in its arsenal. For VOC officials, the rise of Nagasaki represented a profoundly unwelcome development because it meant that any violent action directed against Chinese shipping with some connection to Japan—and there were plenty of instances in which the company wished to target precisely this traffic—could prompt a petition in that city and an investigation by the bugyō. Even if no compensation was ordered, Batavia had to contend with the disturbing presence of Japanese officials constantly looking over its shoulders, demanding explanations for VOC actions, and threatening retribution if none were provided. While such supervision was far from desirable, it was not the extent of the problem, and, as was the case when the company sent vessels to target Portuguese shipping, its campaigns against Chinese maritime traffic ultimately prompted an extension of Bakufu legal markers, which pushed out in this period from the waters around the archipelago to distant corridors of the ocean. The result was a further restriction on VOC operations, the climax of which came in the 1660s when the company was compelled to abandon a vital maritime campaign.

This chapter commences by looking at private Chinese merchants in Nagasaki before shifting to consider the mercantile networks attached to two figures, Zheng Zhilong and his famous son Chenggong, who emerged at the head of impressive maritime organizations that came to dominate the seas around China. As such, it draws on the steady stream of innovative work on the Zheng family by scholars such as Xing Hang, Patrizia Carioti, Tonio Andrade, Leonard Blussé, and others that has combined to reassess the nature of maritime East Asia, while aiming at the same time to bring the Tokugawa legal dimension more fully into the picture.² The portrait of the early modern seas that emerges is one characterized above all else by complexity, of waters crossed and recrossed by the tangled lines of authority and law described by Benton.

The Chinese merchant community had a long history in Kyushu, the traditional maritime center of the Japanese archipelago. During the sengoku period, Chinese towns had sprung up across the island as new arrivals were welcomed by local strongmen eager to gain access to the potential riches represented by expanded maritime trade. By the early seventeenth century, the community was increasingly concentrated in the important hub of Nagasaki, and in 1604 the first interpreter (tōtsūji) was appointed to mediate between Chinese merchants and the city’s authorities.³ The key figure in this early period was Li Dan, who had been elected captain and chief commander “of all the Chinas in Japon, both at Nangasaque, Firando, & else wheare.”⁴ His tenure marked the high point of political influence for the Chinese community in Japan and after his death no comparable figure emerged capable of commanding the allegiances of the community as a whole. In 1635, the Bakufu moved to establish clear boundaries around Kyushu’s foreign population by restricting Chinese merchants and their families to Nagasaki. The decision boosted the city’s Chinese population, which increased rapidly in size while prompting a surge in junk traffic.⁵

Although Japanese sources refer uniformly to the members of this group as tōjin, this characterization conceals a diverse community made up of a number of clusters, each with their own dialect, organization, and trading interests.⁶ Tōjin merchants had their hand in a wide range of commercial networks that extended not only to China but also to entrepôts across Southeast Asia. Of the ninety-seven Chinese vessels that arrived in Nagasaki in 1641, two were from Cambodia, three from Cochinchina and three from Tonkin, while subsequent years saw the arrival of shipping from Siam and other states across the region.⁷ But for all their success, these networks were also fragile. Whereas European merchants like the Dutch claimed the protection of state-sanctioned mercantile corporations and, at times of crisis, their home governments, Chinese traders possessed no such guarantors. Since commerce was officially prohibited between Japan and China (and had been since 1547), those merchants trading directly with the Chinese mainland were effectively smugglers whose presence in Nagasaki directly flouted Ming laws. Although the limited reach of Chinese authorities meant they had little to fear, tōjin merchants had, at the same time, no access to legal structures capable of providing redress for attacks against their ships or for lost goods. They were thus acutely vulnerable to maritime predation, incidents of which increased substantially after the intrusion of Dutch ships into East Asian waters.

In the first decades after its formation in 1602, the VOC aggressively targeted Chinese merchants on a number of occasions by initiating campaigns against the China-Manila trade route in 1617 and Chinese coastal shipping in 1622. In the absence of organized campaigns, violence lurked just below the surface. Sanjay Subrahmanyam describes the “banal use of violence” that was so characteristic of the company’s operations, noting its presence “whether acted out or potential—whenever the VOC appeared on the scene.”⁸ This proclivity for force stemmed in part from the fact that the organization was for much of its history at war with at least one of its many enemies or competitors, and its well-armed ships traversed Asian waters in a constant state of readiness. The company, moreover, aggressively enforced its rights to inspect neutral ships on the open ocean in order to determine their origins and the provenance of their cargo. When combined with the endless possibilities for conflict created by mistranslation, mutual suspicion, and the difficulties of communicating on the windswept waters of the open sea, the result was a sequence of violent episodes that occurred even in the absence of direct orders from Batavia.

Chinese merchants responded to the rise of the VOC in different ways. One favored preemptive strategy was to obtain some protection before setting out in the form of passes or flags. It was thus not uncommon to see Chinese junks flying the famous prince’s flag, sometimes decorated with the additional slogan “Viva Orangie.”⁹ A second strategy, of more direct interest to this chapter, relied on the use of the petition to protest incidents that had already taken place. As we have seen, the first such petitions were submitted directly to the shogun’s court by Li Dan and other Chinese representatives. Over time, however, these channels were shut down and Chinese merchants, private traders with no official status, denied access to Edo. The result was that petitions were redirected toward Nagasaki and particularly to the office of the bugyō, which was occupied in this period by two officials who rotated in and out of the city.¹⁰

It is easy to understand why Chinese merchants turned to the governor’s office to prosecute their case. There were other officials in Nagasaki, but only the bugyō, the senior Bakufu representative in Kyushu, possessed sufficient clout to order an investigation, collect the facts, and issue a ruling. While the attitude of individual governors toward the Chinese community varied, none displayed any sympathy toward VOC privateering. As the key officials tasked with securing Japan’s trade routes, they had no reason to tolerate attacks on constituent parts of this network, particularly if it could be proved that the Dutch had seized goods destined for the Japanese marketplace. Because of this, the governors were predisposed to consider—or at least not instinctively reject—complaints and to accept a role as conveners of an ad-hoc court of maritime arbitration. The next section examines two such documents submitted in 1635 and 1637 to the bugyō. Although neither elicited a favorable ruling, they confirmed Nagasaki’s emerging role as an important legal center; within just a few years the route to the governor’s office had become so well worn that one of these officials lamented that “Chinese complaints come daily to my ears.”¹¹

In September 1635 two Chinese merchants submitted a written petition to the Nagasaki bugyō, Sakakibara Hida-no-kami Motonao (in office 1634–38) and Sengoku Yamato-no-kami Hisataka (in office 1635–36), asking for restitution for an attack that had taken place near the company’s colony on the island of Taiwan. Eager to know what they were dealing with, Dutch agents obtained a copy of the petition, which they included in the factory’s Dagregister:

We are people who come annually to trade in Japan and we were here last year. As the junk that we came in was in poor condition, we requested and received permission from you to buy a confiscated junk. We departed [Nagasaki] on the 20th day of the 9th month. On the 6th day of the 10th month we encountered the Hollanders at sea. They said to us, “Good people and friends, come into Tayouan and conduct your trade there.” And as we come there every year for trade, we accepted this and went there. But they took not only our ship but also all our silver and cargo by force and they sent all our crew against our will to Jaccatra [Batavia]. We are very distressed about this. We made numerous submissions and requests about this matter to the Hollanders but were given an answer that the junk that was taken was a pirates’ junk and hence a legitimate prize. We said we had purchased this junk last year from the Regents [governors] in Nagasaki and had sailed out on it. We also said that, as they well knew, we were people who traded annually in Tayouan.

With these facts established, the last section of the petition came to the point: “We have faith and hope [that you will deal with this matter] as we are people who trade every year under Japan’s protection. We are known not only to the other Chinese but also to the Japanese who reside here as decent people and the whole world knows that we purchased the junk from Your Honours. We respectfully ask Your Honours to consider this matter. The loss of our money, goods and junk does not weigh on us so heavily as the 31 people [taken from us] who we fear will die.”¹² The document set out to first establish the complainants’ credentials as respectable merchants who were well known by all parties in Nagasaki. As regular traders with the archipelago, they operated under “Japan’s protection,” but this security had been ripped away by the Dutch, who had seized not simply cargo but also most of their crew. While it lamented the fate of these lost mariners, the document was, in the end, as all the petitions coming into Nagasaki, about money and was designed to secure restitution from the company for its alleged offenses.

Although the petition presented a straightforward case, the reality seems to have been far murkier. The available sources suggest that the company did in fact seize goods from some Chinese vessels near Tayouan, but when a delegation connected to these ships traveled to Batavia to plead their case, the governor-general responded with conciliatory measures, agreeing, probably in an effort to the keep the Chinese pipeline to the new colony open, to pay restitution for the confiscated goods.¹³ While this process was still ongoing, a separate group of merchants, the authors of the 1635 petition to the bugyō, journeyed to Nagasaki to submit their own request for compensation. Their document seems, therefore, to have been a largely opportunistic attempt to secure a quick payout before word of the case’s resolution reached Japan. Given how long it took for news to travel between Nagasaki and Batavia, there was plenty of room for such maneuvering and certainly some reason to hope that compensation could be secured in two places at once.

In response to the petition, the governors asked the incumbent opperhoofd, Nicolaes Couckebacker, to appear before the complainants. During the subsequent interview, he denied all knowledge of the incident while arguing that the allegations were completely unfounded. To further discredit the petitioners, Couckebacker ridiculed their claims to be honest merchants by suggesting that they had either traded with pirates or had used their own ships for piracy.¹⁴ The bugyō, however, remained unconvinced and concluded that the complaint must have some basis. Part of the problem was the company’s association with piracy, which had not diminished in the years since 1621. The bahan label, which continued to cling to the Dutch, meant that any rumor of maritime predation, however farfetched, was seized upon by Bakufu officials as further evidence of these tendencies. This was clear when Sakakibara, the more senior of the two bugyō, informed the Dutch that he believed that the bulk of the goods they brought to Japan each year had in fact been taken by piracy. In those years when their marauding yielded no prizes, the Dutch came, he concluded, “mainly with empty ships.”¹⁵

While the bugyō seem to have been persuaded of the essential justice of the petitioners’ claims, there was only so much they could actually do. The 1621 edict, the Bakufu’s official policy on VOC privateering, had declared piracy, or any indeed any act of maritime violence, in the waters around Japan illegal while making it clear that no limitations were placed on activities beyond this vaguely defined band. Any incident that took place outside Japanese waters, and this particular episode had occurred near Taiwan, lay beyond the bounds of Bakufu authority, and the bugyō were in no position either to adjudicate on its legality or to force the offenders to pay out. But, if their hands were tied, the governors were far from powerless, and there was a great deal they could do to make life difficult for the company’s representatives. Even if they could not enforce a penalty, they were free to range ahead of their superiors’ official position by conducting an investigation (in order to ascertain what had happened) and to exert pressure (in the hope that the Dutch would choose to settle of their own accord). After the initial interview, the message coming out of the governor’s office was thus for the Dutch to admit fault and offer some compensation even if they were not legally required to do so. In December 1635, for example, one of the bugyō’s subordinates advised the factory to “make good … [the plaintiff’s] damages” as his superiors wished to ensure the security of the vessels that traded with Japan.¹⁶ The company was, however, equally dogged in its refusal to countenance such a settlement, and, after months of stubborn resistance, Couckebacker was finally able to procure evidence demonstrating that compensation had already been paid in Batavia.¹⁷

While the incident had produced no direct action, it confirmed that Nagasaki was an open forum for such petitions. The staff of the Japan factory did not have to wait long for a further reminder of this. In August 1637 another group of Chinese merchants presented a complaint to Sakakibara and Baba Saburōzaemon Toshishige (in office 1636–52), who had taken over from Sengoku one year earlier. They alleged that on “the 6th day of the 6th month, we sailed with our junk from Cochin-China. On the 12th of the same month, at the height [latitude] of Canton at a place named Taijchum, we encountered a vessel of the Hollanders. Most of them came onto our ship and dragged us to Tayouan where we were later released.”¹⁸ The list of goods confiscated by the Dutch in the process included 677 pieces of ray skin, a large quantity of aguila wood, and the sailors’ clothes, which had, they claimed, been stripped from their very backs.¹⁹

Once again, the bugyō took the side of the petitioners by ordering local officials to examine the cargo holds of all VOC ships then in the port. So the searchers knew exactly what to look for, they attached the list of stolen goods that had been provided by the Chinese complainants.²⁰ Aware that they were walking a fine line between appropriate interrogation and overstepping the bounds of their authority, the governors emphasized that they did not intend to punish the Dutch even if the confiscated goods were found, as they did not directly concern themselves with “the piracy that the Hollanders engage in on the sea.”²¹ Instead, the goal of the search was simply to get to the bottom of the matter. Although the subsequent examination yielded no sign of any stolen goods, the governors made it clear to the opperhoofd that they had no doubt about what had actually happened. “We cannot,” they explained, “prove the truth of the claim that the Hollanders’ ships seized the junk … [but] we do not doubt that you have done this.” Going further, they berated the Dutch that, while “it is true that we cannot command or forbid what you do on the seas,” they were deeply troubled by these accusations.²²

While neither the 1635 nor the 1637 petition secured the desired result, they established an important precedent that was rapidly seized upon by tōjin merchants. For all their flaws, both petitions were accepted and some kind of investigation ordered. In the Nagasaki bugyō, therefore, Chinese merchants discovered a willing facilitator capable of intervening in maritime disputes and forcing the company to respond. The result was to open up a reliable path into Tokugawa legal structures, one that could, if the right kind of petition appeared, produce a far more advantageous result for the plaintiffs. For effectively stateless merchants operating in a dangerous maritime world, this was a valuable discovery, and it is not surprising that future petitioners were willing to travel across considerable distances to exploit Nagasaki’s potential as legal center.

For the company, the precedent was far less positive. Even as they were cautious not to overstep the bounds of the Bakufu’s 1621 edict, the Nagasaki governors showed a distressing willingness not only to receive petitions concerning incidents that had taken place far away from the archipelago but also to investigate them. This readiness to treat accusations from a group that the Dutch derided as natural liars, “deceitful and villainous” people who should not be trusted, had, VOC officials believed, created an overly permissive environment in which any and all complaints could be raised.²³ There were, one opperhoofd lamented, no penalties for false petitions and any accuser could simply retreat and return with a new, and equally baseless, grievance.²⁴

While there were certainly spurious protests, this was not the extent of the company’s concern. The far more significant problem related to the emergence of a legal node lying beyond Batavia’s control and accessible to a dispersed group of merchants that traded in many of the areas in which the company was most active. While it was always possible for aggrieved shipowners or merchants to petition VOC authorities directly in Tayouan, Batavia, or, in very rare cases, the Dutch Republic for compensation, the odds were tilted entirely in favor of the company, which was able to control such environments.²⁵ Tayouan and Batavia were company towns in which nothing happened without the governor-general’s consent, while in the republic there was no lack of support for its operations. Nagasaki was a different kind of space, a neutral forum in which local officials were predisposed to view maritime violence as piracy. There the Dutch had to answer not to a company administrator or a sympathetic judge, but to a quite different and far less reliable arbiter. Equally disturbing was the prospect (always on the horizon) that if Edo moved, as it had done once before in 1621, to redefine the nature of its authority over the ocean the governor’s office would acquire new powers to punish VOC actions.

The opening of a Nagasaki channel and the appearance of an activist bugyō willing to range ahead of the regime’s official policy on VOC privateering combined to make the ocean a far more uncertain place for Dutch mariners and administrators. This is evident in a planned but never implemented campaign against Zheng Zhilong, a dangerous rival to the VOC whose growing commercial empire threatened to undermine the foundations of its East Asian strategy. Rather than turning the full force of its fleets against shipping attached to the Zheng maritime network, a target that the Dutch believed they had ample justification to assault, VOC officials found themselves plunged instead into a prolonged and ultimately unsatisfying negotiation with Bakufu officials.

Born in 1604 in Fujian, Zheng Zhilong started his career in the Portuguese stronghold of Macao before moving to Hirado, where he rose to prominence through a close connection with Li Dan.²⁶ By the 1620s Zhilong had moved his operations to the seas around Fujian, where he emerged as one of many pirate captains who prospered in the busy shipping lanes off China’s traditional maritime hub. In 1628 the Ming administration, using a well-worn tactic of charging pirates to suppress pirates, co-opted Zhilong by offering him a position as admiral.²⁷ Armed with this official endorsement, he soon dispensed with his rivals and emerged at the head of a powerful maritime network.

Given the area in which he operated, it was inevitable that Zheng Zhilong would come into close contact with the Dutch and their colony at Tayouan. At first Zhilong, who appears in Dutch sources as Iquan, worked with the company by providing its representatives with a share of the plunder in return for shelter, but this relationship soon began to fray. The main point of contention concerned the flow of Chinese goods from the mainland to Tayouan. In 1624, when the company had moved onto the island, Dutch agents had obtained a vague promise from Ming officials that that they would ensure that Chinese merchants regularly visited the new colony, but this agreement, which was despite VOC claims to the contrary never endorsed by the Chinese state, broke down almost from the beginning. Few Chinese traders appeared in Tayouan, and the volume of goods that the company believed it had been promised never materialized. As Zheng Zhilong’s influence over the surrounding seas grew, VOC officials became increasingly convinced that he was impeding trade, and in July 1633 they decided to take action by launching a surprise attack against his fleet. Although they won an initial victory, the campaign soon turned against them when Zhilong reappeared with a formidable fleet comprised of 150 ships.²⁸

After a precarious peace was established, VOC officials had no choice but to cooperate with Zheng Zhilong. Tayouan’s economic fortunes depended on access to a steady flow of silk from China’s maritime provinces, and only the Zheng network was in a position to properly guarantee this. At the conclusion of the conflict in 1634, Zhilong had agreed to provide the Dutch with a regular supply of Chinese goods, and, initially at least, the commitment was honored. The result was an increase in VOC silk imports into Japan, which remained the most important market for such goods. From 855,094 guilders in 1635, imports more than doubled to 2,094,375 in 1637 and then increased still further to 3,008,209 in 1638.²⁹ As silk poured in, the company received an unexpected fillip when their primary competitor for market share, the Portuguese, were expelled from Japan in 1639. With its most formidable rival gone, it seemed as if the company’s fortunes in Japan were at last assured, and this sense of growing optimism was further buttressed when the governor of Tayouan managed to renew the contract with Zhilong in 1640.³⁰

Any expectation of a golden age for Dutch trade in Japan was shattered, however, just one year later when ships belonging to Zheng Zhilong began to arrive in Nagasaki harbor, thereby displacing the company’s role as middleman. In June 1641, dismayed VOC agents, recently relocated to the island of Deshima, recorded the arrival of a richly laden junk belonging to the “mandarin Iquan” in the quiet waters of Nagasaki harbor.³¹ It was followed in subsequent weeks by five more “great junks,” all carrying significant quantities of silk that were injected directly into the Japanese marketplace without VOC mediation.³² The only explanation put forward for this sudden incursion was that the governor on Tayouan had lacked the necessary funds to pay for the ships’ goods, causing them to proceed directly to Nagasaki, but it seems more likely that Zhilong simply saw an opportunity to dispense with an unnecessary partner and gain direct access to the region’s most lucrative market.³³ The result was a dramatic drop-off in VOC trade with Japan; from more than six million guilders in 1640, imports fell to 1,022,908 guilders in 1641 and to 529,357 guilders in 1643.³⁴

In Batavia the governor-general, Antonio van Diemen, was faced by a deteriorating situation that seemed destined only to get worse. In a letter sent to the Heeren 17 in 1642, he explained that “so long as the Chinese bring great quantities of silk and silk goods from China to Japan, the Company cannot survive there.”³⁵ Of the two available options—to abandon the factory in Japan or to use the company’s superior naval might to halt this incursion—van Diemen favored the second, and his letters to Japan reflected his determination to “enforce our rights by weapons” by attacking Zheng vessels on their way to the archipelago.³⁶ If the need to strike and strike hard was clear, there was still the tricky issue of the potential Japanese reaction to contend with. Unlike his famous predecessor Jan Pieterszoon Coen, who had felt no hesitation in dispatching a fleet directly into Nagasaki harbor to attack enemy shipping there, van Diemen was compelled to adopt a far more cautious attitude.

There were ample reasons for concern. An attack on one of Japan’s most important trading partners could damage the company’s standing and ruin its relationship with the Bakufu. The potential legal consequences were equally troubling. Even if a Zheng vessel was captured on the open ocean far beyond the sight of land-based officials, it could, past cases had made clear, prompt legal proceedings in Nagasaki. Above all, van Diemen wanted to avoid the specter of his representatives being dragged before Tokugawa officials determined to order compensation for VOC attacks. Confronted with this uncertain legal landscape, he resolved to seek assurances from Bakufu officials before taking any action. The result was a sustained lobbying campaign designed to convince Tokugawa officials of the essential legality of the company’s planned actions. If the regime could be persuaded to accept the legitimacy of the campaign, it would, van Diemen hoped, abandon any claim to authority over Zheng ships, even if they were in Japanese waters, and stay out of the company’s war.

The problem was, however, that the Bakufu had previously rejected any such arguments, choosing instead to label all VOC privateering as piracy in 1621. Because of this, van Diemen was forced to improvise by stitching together an unlikely legal rationale that received its first airing in a June 1642 letter sent to the shogun’s senior councilors:

The purpose of such explanations was to attach the use of force to a state, but, instead of arguing that VOC privateering should be seen as the legal extension of the Dutch government, van Diemen drew a line to a very different polity, Ming China. Considering that the VOC had gone to war with China just two decades earlier and the uncomfortable fact that Zheng Zhilong was actually a high-ranking Ming official, this was a bold claim, but it had a number of advantages. It connected VOC maritime operations not to a distant government in Europe that Bakufu officials knew very little about but rather to a familiar regional power, albeit one that was destined soon to collapse. Tokugawa officials were well aware that direct trade between China and Japan was prohibited by the Ming state, and it was at least possible to imagine the company as the unlikely instrument of this policy. Once the connection was drawn from Chinese emperor to Dutch captain, any attack on Zheng shipping could be presented as the legal enforcement of official prohibitions rather than a piratical assault. In an impassioned closing plea designed to resuscitate the logic of legitimate war and in so doing erase the pirate stain that had so dogged the company’s past efforts, van Diemen offered an implicit criticism of the Bakufu’s past propensities to label all maritime violence as piracy. While the regime had previously failed to distinguish between illicit predation and legitimate war waged in the service of “princes and kings,” it must, he argued, now recognize the vital distinction between the two. The alternative was a disordered world in which soldiers were bandits, sailors became pirates, and legitimate policy turned into illicit act.

When his letter failed to produce any official response, van Diemen shifted his efforts to Nagasaki, which represented the front line of any potential dispute. If the city’s bugyō could be persuaded to accept the company’s logic of legitimate war, they would be far less likely to act upon petitions submitted by Chinese merchants, thereby giving the company its desired space to maneuver. In 1643 van Diemen dispatched two letters to Nagasaki, one to the bugyō and the second to Ebiya Shirōemon, a local merchant seen as a useful ally.³⁹ The letter to Ebiya provided a detailed rationalization for the company’s planned actions, and when he arrived in Nagasaki the new opperhoofd, Jan van Elserack, largely parroted its arguments. It featured a familiar claim that because Chinese merchants were violating the “express orders of their king” they constituted a fair target for the Dutch, who were simply acting in accordance with the Ming emperor’s orders. This was paired with additional arguments designed to convince the bugyō of the justness of the company’s case.⁴⁰ In particular, van Diemen returned to the 1624 promise made by Chinese officials to supply Tayouan with goods, a commitment that enabled him to suggest that Zheng merchants were doubly condemned for breaking both the emperor’s regulations and a sworn agreement with the Dutch. Just in case this was not enough, he maintained as well that Chinese merchants had violated Tokugawa prohibitions by secretly bringing Catholic paraphernalia and priests into Japan. When all these justifications were combined, the Dutch had, he insisted, an absolute right to “seize and destroy” Chinese mariners sailing to Japan.⁴¹

When he reached Nagasaki in late July 1643, van Elserack immediately presented the letters to Ebiya and the incumbent bugyō, Yamazaki Gonpachirō Masanobu (in office 1642–50). Before the governor could respond, however, the opperhoofd found himself unexpectedly outflanked by Nagasaki’s Chinese community, which launched its own legal appeal.⁴² On 28 September, van Elserack discovered that a group of tōjin merchants had submitted a petition to Yamazaki asking him to prohibit attacks on their ships as they returned from Nagasaki to their home ports.⁴³ The next day he was presented with a document that had been drawn up by the bugyō and which required the Dutch to pledge that no action would be taken until formal sanction had been received from Edo:

VOC agents in Nagasaki and Batavia recognized the document for what it unquestionably was, a “perilous note” that, once signed, would hang like a millstone around their necks.⁴⁵ Even before one considered the wider implications, it showed that the attempt to win consent for an aggressive campaign by convincing Nagasaki officials of its essential legality had failed and that van Diemen’s carefully constructed argument had gained no ground in Japan. At the same time, the document contained within it a massive expansion of the governor’s authority at precisely that moment when the company sought to define and limit the extent of the office’s influence over the sea. If the Dutch committed themselves to this promise, they could be held accountable for any attack on tōjin shipping on the sea routes linking China and Japan, regardless of whether or not the assault had taken place in Japanese waters. The document made it clear that any damage to Chinese maritime traffic as it moved between its home port and Nagasaki was prohibited. The result was to create a vast zone over which the governor’s office could preside and to fix this to an undefined time line. There was no guarantee when the Bakufu would issue a decision as to whether the company could or could not attack Zheng shipping or even if it would respond to the request. Rather than allowing space for action, the document threatened, therefore, to trap Batavia in a perilous limbo in which it could face severe consequence with no assurances that these would lead ultimately to a favorable outcome.

Reluctant to make any such commitment, van Elserack argued that he lacked the necessary authority to sign off on the document.⁴⁶ The company was, he protested, already tormented by false complaints from Chinese merchants, inveterate liars prepared to say anything, and if given this chance they would simply fabricate incidents to harm the Dutch. Faced with this resistance, and concerned not to be seen overstepping the boundaries of his office, Yamazaki relented, informing the opperhoofd that he did not have to sign the document because it “was not the charge of the emperor [shogun]” but rather his own formulation.⁴⁷ Although this was an important concession, he demanded a guarantee nonetheless that VOC vessels in Nagasaki not attack Chinese ships on their way back from Japan. The opperhoofd must, the governor explained, “inform the governor in Tayouan and the Governor-General … that no Chinese traders coming to Japan should be harmed unless the high authorities [of Japan] give their permission.”⁴⁸

In Batavia, news of the governor’s reaction quashed any hope that a campaign against Zheng shipping could proceed without Japanese resistance. Rather than accepting the company’s legal arguments, the bugyō seemed determined to expand the boundaries of their authority to ensure the safety of Chinese maritime traffic to Japan. Batavia’s initial response was to persist with the same strategy, and in 1644 van Elserack recycled the message by explaining again that the company was, despite claims to the contrary, fully entitled to enforce its legal rights by targeting Chinese ships.⁴⁹ One year later, however, van Diemen, who had consistently backed the campaign, died in office, leaving his more cautious successor to terminate such plans. Concluding that the solution did not lie with hostile action, the new governor-general, Cornelis van der Lijn, decided that the company would be better served by cultivating alternative sources for silk.⁵⁰ Soon after, Zheng Zhilong himself faded from the scene when he was placed under house arrest after defecting to the newly established Qing regime.⁵¹

The company’s failure to launch its campaign against Chinese shipping sailing to Japan provides compelling evidence as to continued Tokugawa influence over the seas. Batavia had the ships and, as it repeatedly maintained, an unassailable logic for war, but any attempt to move onto the offensive faltered in the face of Japanese resistance and the power of the petition. In the years after this setback, Nagasaki remained an open forum for Chinese merchants seeking redress and petitions continued to filter in, creating more trouble for the factory, which was forced to defend a range of VOC operations in remote parts of Asia. In July 1653, for example, a group of Chinese mariners recently arrived from Siam submitted a written petition to the bugyō demanding compensation for 26,366 deerskins seized by the company from Chinese junks near Ayutthaya.⁵² According to the factory’s opperhoofd, who recorded the details in his diary, “the people of the [recently arrived] junks, making a great noise, went together with some Japanese … [who were included] to make the crowd seem larger, to hand over a written complaint to the governors.”⁵³

After questioning VOC representatives, the governor decided not to act, but cautioned the Dutch against attacking any Chinese junks coming to Japan, as these supplied the shogun and his subjects with necessary goods crucial to the functioning of the Japanese economy.⁵⁴ When he heard about the warning, the governor-general inveighed against the attitude taken by Tokugawa officials, writing that “it has become evident that they seek to protect the Chinese either with just or unjust means before us even though they are a ruin to the Company’s trading [activities] everywhere…. Nonetheless, in order to trade peacefully in the Japanese realm we will have to obey their unlawful orders whether we like it or not.”⁵⁵ The result of such petitions was to further entrench Nagasaki’s role as a site for legal maneuvering and to establish patterns that would come dramatically to the fore when the company was thrust into confrontation with Zheng Zhilong’s son, Chenggong, or, as he is more commonly known, Coxinga.

On 12 June 1657 four VOC vessels, the Hegersom, Wachter, Breukelen, and Urk, sailed from Batavia heading north toward Tayouan.⁵⁶ On 30 June the Breukelen encountered a Chinese junk off the island of Pulau Condor (Côn Đao) near the coast of Vietnam. The vessel in question had sailed from Johor near modern day Singapore and was headed, its passengers would later claim, to Japan via Amoy (Xiamen) in Fujian.⁵⁷ The transit port was of particular significance as it lay in this period under the control of Zheng Chenggong, who after breaking with his father had set himself up as an important loyalist commander in the long struggle that followed the toppling of the Ming regime by Qing forces in 1644. From his base in xiamen he waged an extended campaign against the new government, launching a series of attacks against Manchu strongholds that culminated in an ambitious but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to seize control of the former capital of Nanjing.

To support his campaign, Zheng Chenggong built up an extended maritime network stretching from his base in Fujian to ports across Asia. At its peak this network represented the largest organization of Chinese merchants active in Asia and a natural competitor for Batavia.⁵⁸ One Dutch official summed up this rivalry when he wrote that Zheng Chenggong’s “strength and power is greatly enlarged and he is dominant along the seacoast…. He seeks in all ways to become master over the trade and to create a monopoly. To this end, he sends many trading junks to Japan, Tonkin and other profitable places.” The result was to turn this network into what VOC officials described as “a terrible thorn in our side.”⁵⁹ As his father before him, Chenggong made a point of targeting the Japan trade, which offered an unparalleled opportunity for profit. The first Zheng vessels appeared in 1653, and within a few years they constituted the bulk of incoming Chinese traffic into Nagasaki. In the 1657 trading season, for example, the Japan factory recorded the arrival of forty-seven Chinese junks (twenty-eight from Anhai, eleven from Cambodia, three from Siam, two from Quinam, two from Patani, and one from Tonkin), all belonging “to the great merchant Coxinga and his followers.”⁶⁰

Because the Zheng maritime network and the Dutch jostled for control of the same markets, there was ample room for friction, and violent clashes occurred even in the absence of an open conflict between the two sides, which only eventuated after Coxinga’s invasion of Taiwan in 1662. This was the case in 1657 when the Breukelen, which carried no direct orders from Batavia to attack Zheng shipping, encountered the aforementioned junk near Vietnam. Recognizing a chance to secure an easy prize, the Dutch ship closed with the distant vessel. By the time it had come within firing range the fight was effectively over with the Chinese crew opting to surrender as soon as the first shots boomed out from the Breukelen s cannon. A small prize crew was subsequently dispatched to sail the ship to the Dutch colony on Taiwan. Since it was too dangerous to allow the captured Chinese mariners, numbering around fifty men, to remain on board where they might be able to overwhelm their captors and retake the ship, they were split among the small fleet. Of most importance to subsequent events were the eleven prisoners transferred to a second vessel, the Urk, that would later find its way to Nagasaki.⁶¹ Once the handover was complete, the Breukelen and Urk resumed their voyage, but were later separated after running into poor weather. Reaching its destination on 7 August, the Breukelen dropped anchor near Tayouan. Before the colony’s governor could rule on the legitimacy of the prize, however, disaster struck. As strong waves battered the exposed anchorage, the cable securing the captured junk snapped, and it was driven ashore, eventually going down in sight of the company’s primary fortress with the loss of seven lives.⁶² Since there was no point in holding the remaining prisoners, they were released on the island where they immediately demanded compensation for their losses.

While this was happening, the Urk, still with its eleven Chinese prisoners on board, was in a desperate state. Although it had managed to come within sight of Tayouan, it failed to reach the anchorage and was driven away by strong winds and currents. Out of water and running dangerously low on other provisions, the vessel was pushed further and further north toward Japan. Given the poor state of supplies, it was not possible to ride out the weather and head for the familiar port of Nagasaki. As a result, Urks skipper, Gerbrand Bock, decided to make for the nearest land in a last-ditch effort to find fresh water.⁶³ Edging closer to the unfamiliar coastline, the ship became stranded in shallow water near Satsuma domain in Kyushu. As the crew struggled to free their vessel, one of the captives, seeing a chance to escape, leapt overboard and swam ashore. It was a dangerous gamble, to seek help in a domain on high alert against infiltrating Christian missionaries, but it quickly paid off when the fugitive made contact with sympathetic local officials who resolved to investigate the matter. Coming on board, they discovered the remaining ten prisoners held below deck.

With no authority over the Dutch and no desire to meddle in a complicated case, the lord of Satsuma elected to hand the ship as well as its Chinese captives over to Bakufu officials. The Urk was refloated, provided with supplies, and sent under guard to Nagasaki, where its arrival on 23 August during the Japanese festival of Obon created a stir of interest. Once there, the incumbent bugyō, Kainoshō Kiemon Masanobu (in office 1652–60) decided to confine the Urks officers and crew in an empty warehouse so he could conduct a proper investigation.⁶⁴ The factory’s opperhoofd, Zacharias Wagenaer, whom we met in chapter 3, was ordered to interrogate the crew and provide a written transcript of their answers so it could be compared to the account obtained from the Chinese captives.

Clearly troubled by the affair, Wagenaer prepared twenty-two questions that were subsequently put to Gerbrand Bock, the Urks second mate and the ship’s constable.⁶⁵ Recorded in full in the opperhoofd’s diary, the questions dealt with each aspect of the capture, beginning with the most basic details as to the composition of the squadron and the date of its departure, but extending to far more difficult issues such as why exactly the Breukelen had decided to attack in the first place. This last question proved particularly tricky to answer, especially after it became apparent that none of the four ships that had left Batavia on 12 June carried instructions to assault Chinese shipping. Why then had the master of the Breukelen, who was of course not available to testify himself, chosen to engage with this particular junk? According to Bock and his fellow mariners, the vessel had been seized because it could not produce a pass (zeepas) indicating its origins and destination. Deeming this failure suspicious, the master assumed that the junk must have been trading with one of the company’s enemies and was thus a legitimate prize.⁶⁶

While it was presented as a definitive explanation, this was in fact just one of a number of possible accounts to appear in Dutch sources. The most likely explanation, and the one supported by the broadest range of materials, is simply that the master of the Breukelen acted on his own initiative without proper orders or any more substantial logic than a desire to secure easy plunder that could enrich him and his subordinates at little risk.⁶⁷ Indeed, it quickly became clear in the answers to the twenty-two questions that the Chinese junk encountered on 30 June had not been the only quarry. According to Bock, the Breukelen and its sister ships chased four other vessels, on 29 June, 6 July, 14 July, and 17 July. Three of these had evaded pursuit, while the fourth had to be released because it carried a properly authorized pass from Siam. The Breukelen’s actions provide evidence of what Virginia Lunsford has called the “slippery slope” of maritime predation.⁶⁸ For the VOC commander in the field, the already loose distinction between illegal pirate (zeerover) and legally authorized privateer (kaper) had a tendency to fade completely away when faced by easy prizes on the open ocean: “An ‘anything goes’ attitude prevailed in these far-off colonial outposts, these frontiers where the licit and illicit not only rubbed shoulders, but enjoyed a symbiotic relationship and intermingled almost seamlessly. To be a pirate in these regions meant that one could evidently wear several hats simultaneously, acting as either a kaper or zeerover in the same instance, depending on the perceptions of the audience and the exigencies of the moment.”⁶⁹ If this was, as it certainly appears, simply an attempt to seize goods for personal profit, then the plunder was disappointingly meager, consisting of small quantities of lakenen (a kind of woolen cloth), some tin, and other inexpensive goods.⁷⁰

Once the answers to Wagenaer’s questions had been recorded, the document was translated into Japanese and submitted to the governors. As the opperhoofd waited for a decision, he recorded an angry mood in the city where the Dutch were taunted as pirates and the Urk labeled the “thieves’ ship of the Hollanders.”⁷¹ The next day a group of laborers employed by the company to unload goods threw stones at the windows of the warehouse in which the Urk’s crew was confined while taunting them that they would be crucified for piracy.⁷² On 2 September the situation worsened when Wagenaer discovered that the junk captured by the Breukelen had in fact sunk, taking with it any hope that the captured sailors could simply be repatriated to Tayouan to reclaim their vessel.⁷³ The news was, he confided in his diary, certain to create more problems that would further disrupt Dutch business in Japan. As he fretted about what was to come, the eleven Chinese sailors arrived in Nagasaki determined to take action. Following a well-established path, they moved on 5 September to submit a formal petition to the governor’s office.⁷⁴ Rather than dealing with the matter personally, the bugyō decided that the incident was so serious that it was necessary to seek judgment from his superiors and the document was sent on to Edo.

The petition struck a nerve in the Tokugawa capital. Although the initial episode had taken place thousands of miles from Japan, the regime was clearly growing tired of the steady flow of complaints about the Dutch and decided it was time to act. On 12 October 1657 Wagenaer and his incoming replacement, Johannes Boucheljon, were summoned to the governor’s residence in Nagasaki to receive a new order from Tokugawa authorities.⁷⁵ It consisted of three parts with a sting in the tail. The Urk was given permission to leave Nagasaki since it had not been involved in the original act of aggression, but the Bakufu ordered that some sort of compensation be paid to the owners of the junk for their losses. Finally, the Dutch were instructed to refrain from pursuing or damaging Chinese junks sailing to Japan. To both Wagenaer and Boucheljon it was obvious that the order represented something new. For the first time and without any warning, Edo had asserted its authority beyond the coastal waters around Japan to the trade routes binding the archipelago to distant ports and had directly intervened to order compensation.

But, for all the potential implications, the order also came with ample wiggle room. Lacking any real detail, it did not specify where the payment should be made, stipulate an actual sum, or mandate an acceptable time line. Unsurprisingly, VOC officials in Japan opted to play a waiting game in the hope that the Bakufu’s determination to ensure that compensation was paid would eventually fade. In the meantime, the aggrieved merchants could be redirected to Batavia to seek restitution there, and, once in the company’s headquarters, months or even years could be lost in its bureaucratic maze. At first the decision to do nothing seemed entirely vindicated. No further protests were raised in Nagasaki, and when Boucheljon made his annual trip to Edo he was informed that the shogun had not yet issued a formal edict concerning Chinese shipping.⁷⁶ In its current state, therefore, the admonition not to attack tōjin vessels was simply a recommendation that lacked the binding force of law.

By early 1658 it seemed as if the company was in the clear, and the opperhoofd could be forgiven for thinking that he had evaded responsibility. In fact, the legal net thrown around the factory by the first petition was beginning to tighten. In August a second group of Chinese merchants arrived in Nagasaki to protest the Breukelen incident.⁷⁷ Led by the captain of the junk itself, described in the Dagregister as Tantsinquan, this was a more formidable delegation that was determined to see the case to justice.⁷⁸ Explaining that he had already sought and failed to receive proper restitution in both Tayouan and Batavia, Tantsinquan submitted a new petition to the two bugyō, Kainoshō Masanobu and Kurokawa Yohyōe Masanao (in office 1650–65), who responded by calling in the Dutch interpreters to explain why no compensation had yet been paid. In this second petition Tantsinquan valued his lost goods at around thirty thousand taels, a figure that came very close to the eventual payout.⁷⁹

In Nagasaki, Boucheljon continued to stall by explaining that Zheng Chenggong had submitted his own claim for one hundred thousand taels to Batavia and that this matter had to be settled before Tantsinquan’s petition could even be discussed.⁸⁰ With both sides prepared to fight, the case dragged on, but it was becoming clear that some compensation would need to be paid out in either Nagasaki or Batavia. Before this could happen, however, the Bakufu moved to formalize its 1657 order. In October 1659 Zacharias Wagenaer, who had returned for a second term as opperhoofd, was issued with a Bakufu order banning all attacks on Chinese shipping. The relevant provision stated simply that the Dutch “shall not pirate [bahan] Chinese ships [tōsen] coming by sea to Japan.”⁸¹ Although typically brief, the edict represented an important next step in the Bakufu’s response to VOC privateering. It was first of all a damning reminder that, despite all their attempts to distinguish between the need to “maintain their rights with weapons” and maritime predation, the Dutch remained unable to shake the pirate stain. As before, the term bahan boxed the company in, allowing no room to appeal, negotiate special exemptions, or argue for a more nuanced ruling that might permit some attacks while prohibiting others.

At the same time, the ruling significantly expanded the boundaries of Tokugawa authority. Whereas in 1621 the Bakufu had prohibited all acts of bahan in the waters near Japan, the 1659 edict focused on a single group rather than a specific maritime space. It effectively asserted legal rights over tōjin merchants, who were drawn under Bakufu protection for the first time. But, because the edict covered these individuals as they moved between their home ports and Japan, the result was a significant geographical expansion of the limits of Bakufu justice. Indeed, the order had the implicit effect of pushing legal markers out along a series of maritime corridors extending beyond the archipelago to Japan’s primary trading partners. After 1659 any shipping falling within the broad category of Chinese vessel or tōsen was exempt from attack and any captain able to provide some evidence that he was on his way to Japan could expect to find redress in Nagasaki. For the company, it was a particularly difficult pill to swallow as it meant that all “Chinese ships coming by sea to Japan” had access to the Bakufu’s legal structures regardless of how far away they were from Nagasaki. The result was to hand the Nagasaki bugyō policing rights over a vast expanse of ocean.

The 1659 edict represented a new evolution in the Bakufu’s ongoing response to VOC privateering, and it marked the final stage in a long process during which the regime’s definition of its own legal rights had shifted from the deck of the shuinsen to a band around the archipelago before settling on entire trade routes. While the spark had been supplied by Breukelen’s reckless actions, the impetus for the 1659 edict had clearly been building for a number of years. Despite occasional statements about the unimportance of trade and the low status of merchants, the Tokugawa regime relied on Chinese traders to connect the archipelago to wider commercial networks and assure the flow of vital commodities required by the Japanese economy.⁸² Chinese vessels consistently brought in larger quantities of goods than the Dutch, and unrestricted maritime violence threatened to cut these circuits. As illustration of this, the best account of the rationale for the new order was provided by a senior Bakufu official who explained that the Dutch “should refrain from seizing Chinese junks as they supply this realm with many necessary goods.”⁸³ Another noted that Japan could not manage without the “silk goods, medicines, and other commodities” brought by Chinese merchants to Japan.⁸⁴ By asserting its authority over trade routes, the regime acted, therefore, to secure the supply of goods into Japan.

Back in Nagasaki and presumably buoyed by word of the new edict, Tantsinquan continued to negotiate behind the scenes to advance his petition. In October 1660 the bugyō took another step along the long road to final resolution when they attached a figure, 27,096 taels, to the basic demand for compensation.⁸⁵ As the governors’ determination to extract payment hardened, so did the company’s attitude. In 1657 it was still possible to contemplate some kind of compensation in the hope that it might pacify Zheng Chenggong, who was too formidable a foe to anger unnecessarily, but as relations with their rival deteriorated VOC officials became less and less willing to make even the slightest concessions. By 1660 it was increasingly clear that Chenggong had set his sights on Taiwan, which he planned to turn into an impregnable base from which to continue his campaign against the Qing.⁸⁶ As they nervously debated these plans, VOC officials in Japan were insistent that they could not consider “giving the Chinese here any restitution or in the slightest way promising to do so in the future.”⁸⁷ How could they, the opperhoofd asked, contemplate paying out to a group of merchants associated with the very rival that threatened the company’s key East Asian possession?

Despite this resistance, the pressure continued to ratchet up, and in October 1662, five years after the original complaint, the company’s agents in Japan were backed into a corner. With no alternative in sight, they agreed to hand over the full sum to Nagasaki officials.⁸⁸ While it had taken years to produce a result, the Breukelen case provides tangible proof of the power of the petition and the ease with which even the strongest of European overseas enterprises could become entangled within legal nets. It was to be followed just a few years later by another legal controversy involving Dutch and Chinese merchants that further constrained the company’s ability to act against its declared enemies.

In the same year that the Breukelen case was finally settled, the company suffered arguably its most significant setback since its establishment sixty years earlier when Fort Zeelandia, its headquarters on Tayouan, fell to Zheng forces after a long siege. Faced with such a devastating loss, but without the resources to retake the island, Batavia was determined to strike back at Zheng shipping, both to gain some compensation for its conquered colony but also to revive the company’s shattered reputation.⁸⁹ To achieve these ends, the company assembled a powerful fleet of twelve ships manned by 756 sailors and 528 soldiers under the command of Balthasar Bort.⁹⁰ It was dispatched from Batavia in June 1662 with instructions to attack any shipping connected with Zheng Chenggong, including the rich trading junks sailing between China and Japan. So that there was no ambiguity, Bort was specifically authorized to take the fight into Japanese waters if prizes could be seized there.⁹¹ Aware that such an aggressive campaign would inevitably prompt a response in Japan, VOC agents on Deshima were instructed to inform Bakufu officials of their plans, but to also make it clear that their superiors were determined to exact revenge on Zheng shipping regardless of whether or not the shogun consented.⁹² The company had an absolute right, they insisted, granted to them by the law of nations to attack such targets whenever and wherever they were encountered.⁹³ The result was to set the stage for renewed conflict with the Bakufu over VOC privateering.

In the end it was not Bort’s fleet that instigated the inevitable confrontation, but one of the company’s regular trading vessels. On 29 August 1663 a VOC fluyt, the Klaverskerk, encountered a Chinese junk on its way from Chaozhou in Guangdong province.⁹⁴ When it was sighted, the junk was just seventy-five miles south of the island of Meshima on the sea routes leading into Japan.⁹⁵ There was thus, in contrast to the Breukelen’s earlier prize, no question that it was destined for Nagasaki. As the Klaverskerk closed, its captain discovered that the vessel from Chaozhou was already in distress, having been demasted in a recent storm. Although they had no means of escape, the Chinese crew refused to allow the Klaverskerks sailors to come on board to conduct an inspection, prompting the Dutch vessel to respond with force by firing on the junk until it was “shot to smithereens” and ready to sink.⁹⁶ Leaving its target foundering, Klaverskerk resumed its course and reached Nagasaki on 1 September where the master reported the details of the encounter to the incumbent opperhoofd, Hendrick Indijck. Although the attack had produced no actual plunder, there was also little reason to fear any repercussions as the chance of survivors was minimal at best.⁹⁷ It appeared, therefore, an easy, if clearly minor, victory in the company’s war against Zheng forces.

On 11 September, however, word reached the Japan factory that seven Chinese sailors from the destroyed vessel had washed ashore on the Gotō Islands.⁹⁸ Some weeks later a second group of survivors was discovered on the barren slopes of Meshima.⁹⁹ Once they had recovered, both groups made their way to Nagasaki where they moved rapidly—and entirely predictably—to file a petition with the bugyō. As compensation, they demanded 150 cases (150,000 taels) of silver, a massive sum far in excess of the final award to Tantsinquan.¹⁰⁰ For officials in Edo, who received the petition via fast messenger from Nagasaki, the Klaverskerk case represented a difficult quandary.¹⁰¹ While there could be no question that the company had broken the regime’s 1659 proclamation, which applied to all Chinese ships coming to Japan, there was also, given the open war between Zheng Chenggong and the Dutch, grounds for restraint. By the time it received word of the Klaverskerk episode, Edo was well aware that Zheng forces had seized the Dutch settlement on Tayouan, and the prospect of repeatedly intervening in a conflict that looked set to continue for years cannot have been particularly palatable.¹⁰²

In the end the Bakufu opted for the middle ground, issuing a decision that reached Nagasaki on 1 February 1664. For once both the original Japanese edict and the Dutch translation are extant, with the former reading as follows.

At this time, near Meshima there was an attack on a Chinese ship. This is totally outrageous. This is certainly something that should be punished. But we believe this is intended as retaliation for Koxinga’s attack on Taiwan. In the 6th month of Manji 4 (1661), a letter came to the Nagasaki magistrate that Taiwan had been attacked. This complaint reached the ears of the shogun, and so this time it has been forgiven. From now on, if Chinese vessels coming to Japan are attacked, even if they are far from Japan, then they [the Dutch] will be punished. This should be transmitted to Holland. The Dutch should also come … to present their greetings in Edo. In Edo, there will be further orders, which they will be told about.¹⁰³

It was a decidedly mixed message. Encouragingly for the Dutch, it omitted the term bahan and the automatic designation of VOC privateering as piracy, acknowledging instead that the company was involved in an ongoing conflict that had been precipitated by Zheng Chenggong’s invasion of Taiwan. At the same, however, the Bakufu condemned the Klaverskerk affair as an “outrageous” (futodoki senban) violation of past orders that clearly merited punishment. Its final conclusion was a one-off exemption for the incident paired with a requirement for the Dutch to come to Edo to discuss what had happened directly with the regime.

In March 1664, the new opperhoofd, Willem Volger, reached the Tokugawa capital to hear the promised “further orders.” Subjected to a lengthy interrogation, he was asked to explain in “all sincerity, how do you think His Majesty [the shogun], who has forbidden the taking of junks coming to Japan to trade, on pain of his highest displeasure, will think of this matter.”¹⁰⁴ Volger’s response was to insist that the company’s war with Coxinga had no connection with the Bakufu and hence that the Klaverskerk incident required no decision from Edo: “Our lord general in Jaccatra [Batavia] could not grasp and still cannot understand that the slightest misdeed has been done to the Japanese realm in carrying out a just war [rechtveerdigen oorlogh] against the faithless Chinese of Coxinja as revenge for their great damage and abuse they have done to us on Formosa and Tayouan.”¹⁰⁵ But, rather than signing off on this logic, Bakufu officials continued to insist that any attack on Zheng shipping was unacceptable while offering an individual loophole for the Klaverskerk incident, which had, they explained, been “done by inexperienced people who have no knowledge of Japanese customs.”¹⁰⁶ It came attached to a familiar condition that any further attacks on Chinese shipping would prompt swift punishment and Volger was cautioned that if this happened again the Dutch would learn the true “seriousness His Majesty’s [the shogun] commands.”¹⁰⁷

The contradictory nature of the response makes it difficult to interpret. Given the fact that there was an ongoing war in the region, it is possible read this decision as a retreat from the Bakufu’s prior insistence that it would punish all attacks on Chinese shipping regardless of where they took place, but this assessment seems less convincing if we examine how the company actually reacted to its apparent good fortune. VOC policy after the incident makes it clear that the Klaverskerk exemption had the opposite effect, further entrenching the Tokugawa regime’s authority over the sea-lanes leading into the archipelago. The obvious penalty for breaking one of the shogun’s laws was to expel the Dutch from Japan, and it was clear that this had been discussed as a potential punishment for the episode.¹⁰⁸ As satisfying as it might have been, such a decision would have been fraught with potential dangers.

Pushing the Dutch out of Japan would have put them firmly beyond the Bakufu’s reach, rendering them far more menacing. With no fear of retribution on land, the company would be free to pursue its war against Zheng shipping unhindered and could cut off key trading routes to Japan. A sense of the regime’s dilemma is provided by a revealing conversation between the opperhoofd and a local contact: “A merchant living in Edo told us … that before we came to Edo, he was called by the councilors and asked: if the Hollanders were [forced] out from Japan, would the trade of the Chinese grow and become double what it is today, as they had been informed? They answered no and if the Hollanders were expelled the Chinese trade would not increase but would decrease. There was no doubt that the Hollanders would seek to keep the Chinese out of Japan in any way possible and would hinder their voyages.”¹⁰⁹ Coming from a contemporary observer with a long history of contact with the company, it was a succinct summary of what might happen if the Dutch were expelled from Japan and the potential perils that could accompany this decision.

In the end, as these comments make clear, the Bakufu’s hold on the company depended on keeping its agents within reach and susceptible to future penalties. What was needed then was to keep the Dutch close at hand while ensuring that they were sufficiently intimidated not to try such aggressive actions again. And this was precisely what the regime’s decision achieved. While no punishment was immediately forthcoming, VOC officials were left in no doubt that another violation of the Bakufu’s laws would lead to unacceptably punitive consequences. As a result, when it received word of the regime’s warning, Batavia moved quickly to suspend its campaign against Zheng shipping sailing to Japan. While protesting that the company had every right to engage in lawful war, the governor-general instructed his subordinates to inform the Bakufu that he had received the shogun’s command and would honor it.¹¹⁰ The message was dutifully delivered in September 1665 when the opperhoofd informed the Nagaskai bugyō that all campaigns against Chinese maritime traffic coming to Japan had been abandoned because of the shogun’s edict.¹¹¹ In this way the Bakufu succeeded in halting a determined maritime operation that had threatened to disrupt the flow of goods into Japan.¹¹²

Forced to accept an edict that they could do nothing to alter, the Dutch scrambled once again to map out more precise boundaries of Bakufu authority. Much as they had done after the promulgation of the 1621 edict, VOC officials attempted to draw lines on a map delineating the limits of the shogun’s authority and hence allowing action beyond these markers. The opperhoofd in Japan was instructed to find out exactly how far the Bakufu’s jurisdiction extended into the ocean.¹¹³ If, for example, a Zheng junk was taken in the Taiwan straits or on its way from China to Manila, would this constitute a fair prize or another site for the exercise of Tokugawa legal rights?¹¹⁴ The opperhoofd was to press, above all else, for precision, to discover exactly how many miles beyond Japan the company might be permitted to act freely.¹¹⁵ As before, however, Tokugawa officials refused to provide any further details, with the result that the VOC was forced to adopt the most cautious attitude possible by carefully avoiding any acts of aggression against Chinese shipping.

The long-term effect was to ensure that the Dutch had little choice but to compete peacefully with merchants attached to the Zheng maritime network. With the threat of violence removed, a trade boom ensued between Taiwan and Nagasaki. Between 1663 and 1673 a total of 111 ships arrived in Nagasaki from Taiwan, then under the control of Coxinga’s son Zheng Jing, bringing large quantities of goods and disrupting VOC profits.¹¹⁶ Xing Hang estimates that the Zheng network brought in between 564,037 and 605,464 taels per year in trade with Nagasaki, meaning that, in his words, “Zheng Jing maintained the family’s superiority over the Dutch at Nagasaki, capturing, at the very least, half of the Japanese market in terms of both revenue and income.”¹¹⁷

There can be no question that the VOC was a formidable maritime power both in terms of its ships and its potent language of legal justification. It was also an organization accustomed to violence that made use of maritime force as a fundamental tool of policy. But in the waters around Japan, and on the sea routes linking the archipelago to other Asian ports, we see very little evidence of this. By any measure, the years from 1609 onward produced a remarkably meager record of success, whether against Portuguese or Chinese shipping, for what was after all the “largest, best-capitalized privateering enterprise in the world.”¹¹⁸

The history of the petitions submitted in Nagasaki or Edo by aggrieved merchants shows that maritime encounters did not always end when the weaker vessel surrendered or was destroyed and that it is not enough simply to focus on technology without considering the political context in which it operated. These documents and the Tokugawa response draw attention to the fact that the early modern seas were not the empty expanses they are sometimes imagined as, essentially lawless zones in which Europeans were able to make full and unrestricted use of their superior maritime firepower. Instead, organizations like the VOC found they could become swiftly entangled within the confining grip of legal structures that stripped away their ability to act when they were most determined to do so.

The previous chapter suggested, following Benton’s work, that the ocean can be seen as an unpredictable space filled with law and characterized by the presence of “jurisdictional tangles.”¹¹⁹ With this in mind, it argued that a second map delineating legal markers can be productively overlaid onto the familiar charts of empty spaces to produce a more accurate image of the early modern seas. An examination of the company’s privateering campaigns in Japan provides some sense of what one section of such a map might look like. Beginning with a limited scattering of dots marking individual vessels carrying shuinjō, Bakufu legal markers ballooned out in this period to a loosely defined band encircling the archipelago before expanding once again to encompass long sea corridors. The result was that Dutch administrators and captains were forced to confront a complex legal landscape whenever they sought to run out their guns, effectively limiting the company’s capacity to make use of its most effective weapon.