Dejima VOC dan rangaku

• Main Author: Bambang Wibawarta
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Indonesia 2008-10-01
• Series: Wacana: Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia
• Subjects: rangaku (dutch learning), dejima, hirado, voc, tokugawa, hegemoni (hegemony).
• Online Access: http://wacana.ui.ac.id/index.php/wjhi/article/view/195

Japan and the Netherlands have maintained a special relationship for about 300<br />years since the adoption of the National Seclusion policy, the so-called sakoku by<br />the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1867). The Dutch began trading with Japan and<br />engaging with Japanese society in 1600, when a Dutch ship, De Liefde, arrived in<br />Kyushu. The Tokugawa government measures regarding foreign policy included<br />regulations on foreign access to Japan and a prohibition on Japanese going<br />abroad. Between the middle of the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century,<br />Japan was characterized by a stable political pattern in which representatives<br />of the VOC (Dutch East India Company), were the only Europeans with a right<br />to trade in Japan. In the course of this period, the Japanese evaluation of the<br />Dutch changed from regarding them as commercial agents to seeing them as<br />importers of European knowledge. This paper is especially concerned with the<br />influence of the so-called ‘Dutch Studies’ (rangaku) on the early modernization<br />of Japan, especially with regard to medicine and the natural sciences. This<br />research examines the development of rangaku and the trading between Japan<br />and VOC at Dejima.