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Summary
Travel is an act for human beings to visit new places and experience different cultures and histories. Through travel, people can actually feel historical events and people’s lives by visiting historical places and cultural heritage sites, and can gain a deeper understanding of history and broaden their own perspectives. In this section, we will discuss the historical background of the trip and the places visited based on Ryotaro Shiba’s “Kaido yuku” (On the Road) about this journey and history.
Kaidou wo yuku vol.35 Holland.
In the previous article, I took a walk in New York. This time, the group will travel to the Netherlands, a country that was among the first in Europe to establish autonomism, rationalism, and a modern civic spirit, as Ryotaro Shiba noted, “The world was truly created by God, but only the Dutch are known to have created the Netherlands.
After arriving in Amsterdam by air, the group will walk through the Dutch cities and consider the history of the country and its trade, which is inseparable from the sea. In Leiden, they will look at the Japanese horse chestnut tree that Siebold brought back from Japan, and think about the exchange between Japan and the Netherlands that began with a Dutch sailing ship that arrived in Japan on a desperate voyage. In the port city of Holden, he will consider the herring fishery that made the Netherlands a trading nation. He will also think about the national character of the Netherlands, which has built its land by reclaiming lowlands, known as “netherlanders” (people of low land), and visit the great dike that divides Lake Ijssel and the North Sea.
He then travels to Antwerp, Belgium, which is associated with Rubens described in “Paintings around Holland – The Dog of Flanders and Rubens“, Van Gogh described in “How Van Gogh became Van Gogh“, and other painters associated with the Netherlands, Maastricht and Aachen in Germany, and Nuenen and Nuenen in the Netherlands, and reflects on each of these painters.
This trip was to the Netherlands. In Japan, the Netherlands (Dutch Nederlanden English Netherlands meaning “lowlands”) is called “Holland” (Holland). Holland is properly “Holland,” which is the name of the province in the center of the Netherlands.
Holland was central to the fight for independence of the Netherlands from Spain, which is why the Netherlands is called “Holland” in the eyes of foreign countries. Especially in Japan, the Portuguese, who were the first Europeans to arrive in Japan, called the Federal Republic of the Netherlands Holland, a name that has taken root in Japan and has continued to the present day.
The Dutch government has announced that, as of January 1, 2020, Holland will no longer be used as the official country name, but will be the Netherlands in all cases, and at the same time has issued a notice to countries not to use Holland. Until now, the country had been written in English as both Holland (without the definite article because it is a proper noun) and the Netherlands (with the definite article because netherland alone is a common noun meaning “lowland”), but now they have decided to unify them into one name.
The Netherlands was originally ruled by the King of Spain as a Spanish-Habsburg territory, but it developed woolen and other industries from the late Middle Ages, and from the 16th century, the Calvinists, a new sect of Christians, became numerous, and Spain, which owned this land, was a Catholic country as described in “On the Road to the Southern Barbarians (2) Spain and Portugal. In 1581, Spain declared its independence, and it took 80 years until its independence was internationally recognized in 1648. In Japan, this period corresponds to the period between the Battle of Sekigahara and the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate.
While waging this war of independence, the Netherlands embarked on an aggressive overseas expansion, establishing the Dutch East India Company in 1602 to drive out Portuguese power in South India, Southeast Asia, and Taiwan, and in 1623, the Amboyna Incident successfully eliminated British power in the spice trade with Southeast Asia and He gained a monopolistic position.
The 400 years of exchange between Japan and the Netherlands began in the 5th year of Keicho (1600). In March of that year (1600.4), a foreign ship drifted ashore at Usuki, Bungo Province (present-day Usuki City, Oita Prefecture). This was the first Dutch ship, the Liefde, to arrive in Japan.
Five Dutch ships, including the Liefde, left Rotterdam in June 1598 for the Orient. The fleet took a course around the southern tip of South America and into the Pacific Ocean, but storms and Spanish and Portuguese ships attacked the fleet, and only the Liefde reached the Orient. Among the few survivors were Captain Kwakernak, high ranking seaman Jan Joosten, and English navigator William Adams. They were summoned to Osaka by order of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who held real political power, and were heavily used for their knowledge. Jan Joosten was given a red seal and became active in trade, and his Edo residence was called “Yaesu Kawagishi” after him. Adams was trusted by Ieyasu as a diplomatic advisor, and was called “Miura Anjin” (Anjin of Miura) for the land he was granted and his pilotage duties.
At the time, trade with Japan was conducted by the Portuguese, who were backed by the Catholic Church, as described in “Kaido yuku Nanban-no Michi (1): Xavier and the Basques“. Ieyasu tried to associate with the Protestant Dutch as a force to oppose the Catholic Church, and granted a red seal to Kwakernak and others to allow them to trade with Japan. In response, a ship of the Dutch East India Company arrived at Hirado, Kyushu, in 1609, bringing a letter of invitation and an offering to Ieyasu from Maurits, Governor-General of the Netherlands. Ieyasu received the envoy in Sunpu and entrusted him with a letter and a red seal of permission for passage. As described in “On the Road to Karatsu, Hirado, Sasebo, and Nagasaki,” a Dutch trading post was established in Hirado, and trade between Japan and the Netherlands began.
There were no restrictions on Dutch-Japanese trade at first, but in 1616, foreign vessels other than Ming vessels were allowed to enter only Hirado and Nagasaki.
In the Netherlands in the first half of the 17th century, along with the development of trade with overseas countries, agricultural infrastructure such as land reclamation projects and construction of canal networks in the country progressed, and horticultural agriculture for urban areas flourished. The familiar Dutch rural landscape with its windmills was created at this time. The Netherlands also developed industries such as glassmaking, woolen textiles, shipbuilding, brewing, and printing, and became one of the most productive regions in Europe.
During the period of the Thirty Years’ War, Descartes, a Frenchman, lived in the Netherlands and wrote “Methodologie” and other works, deepening his speculations on rationalistic philosophy, which is based on mathematical thinking and had a great influence on later thought, along with British empiricist philosophy. Grotius, a Dutch jurist and diplomat, also had a great influence on modern thought, as he formulated the idea of international law in the course of his experience of the Thirty Years’ War.
Protestantism, which encouraged individualistic and autonomous activities, rather than the traditional Catholicism of a centralized organization connected to God through the church, was one of the first in Europe to promote autonomism, rationalism, and modern citizenship, as it encouraged personal interpretation of the Bible and a direct connection to God in matters of faith. and rationalism, and modern civic spirit. Today, as described in “Building Bridges: Christianity and Modernity,” Catholicism is also an open organization.
Napoleon, who became emperor of France, overthrew the Batavian Republic in June 1806 and established the Kingdom of the Netherlands with his brother Louis as king. This was part of Napoleon’s domination of the continent. However, King Louis was compromising toward the Dutch, so Napoleon abolished the king in 1810 and placed the kingdom under the direct control of the French Empire. The Kingdom of the Netherlands was short-lived (1806-1810), and the Netherlands was incorporated into Napoleon’s empire, temporarily disappearing from the world.
After the fall of Napoleon, the Protocol of Vienna, concluded at the Congress of Vienna, restored the Netherlands, which had been annexed by France, as a constitutional kingdom with Willem I of the House of Oranje as king. At this time, Belgium, which was adjacent to France, was also annexed to the Netherlands in order to separate it from French influence. The country is therefore also referred to as the United Kingdom. Thus, the Netherlands became a kingdom in which the Oranje family, which had previously been “governor-general,” became “king” and the throne was hereditary, and the throne has continued to the present day.
Belgium became a part of the Netherlands, but there were many points of conflict with the Netherlands. First, the Dutch were Protestant (Calvinist), while Belgium was predominantly Catholic. Another was that Dutch was the official language, but Belgium was divided into Dutch (Flanderen) in the north and French-speaking Walloon regions in the south. Furthermore, although Belgium had a larger population, it was considered to have the same number of seats in parliament. This led to a growing spirit of independence on the Belgian side, which, stimulated by the French July Revolution of 1830, rose up and declared Belgium’s independence and separated in October of the same year.
During the World War II era, German troops invaded the Netherlands and Belgium in May 1940, and the king and government went into exile in London to call on the people to resist. The country was ruled by German and pro-Nazi forces (Dutch fascists). During this period, there were many casualties among the German resistance movement and the Jewish population. Germany mobilized the occupied Dutch for forced labor. About 100,000 6,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps and murdered during the three years of occupation.
In June 1944, the Allies launched the Normandy landings, entered the Netherlands on September 12, and gradually drove the Germans back, and on May 5, 1945, the Germans surrendered and the Netherlands was liberated.
In parallel, he actively promoted European integration, beginning with the formation of the Benelux Customs Union in 1948, followed by accession to the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, and the recommendation to form the European Atomic Energy Community and the European Economic Community in 1957. This trend led to the European Community in 1967, and then to the establishment of the European Union through the Maastricht Treaty adopted in Maastricht, the Netherlands, in 1992.
In “On the Road: A Dutch Travelogue,” we follow the flow of Dutch history in this way, from Amsterdam through Leiden and Holden to the German/Belgian/Dutch border at Mount Faluus.
In the next article, we will discuss Nichiren and Kuonji Temple on Mount Minobu in Yamanashi Prefecture.
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