On July 29, 1643, ten crew members of the Dutch yacht Breskens were lured ashore at Nambu in northern Japan. Once out of view of their ship, the men were bound and taken to the shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, in Edo, where they remained imprisoned for four months. Later the Japanese government forced the Dutch East India Company representative in Nagasaki to acknowledge that the sailors had in fact been saved from shipwreck and that official recognition of the rescue (i.e., a formal visit from a Dutch ambassador) was in order.
Prisoners from Nambu provides a lively, engrossing narrative...
On July 29, 1643, ten crew members of the Dutch yacht Breskens were lured ashore at Nambu in northern Japan. Once out of view of their ship, the me...
