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Japan: Dutch traders flirting with geishas in Nagasaki, c.1800, painted by an unknown Japanese artist.

The Dutch traders or merchants depicted in this scene would most probably have been working with the Dutch East India Company (VOC), which had established a monopoly on trade with Japan provided the Europeans maintained their barracks and trading post off the mainland in Dejima. The traders in this picture were presumably on a rare sojourn into Nagasaki where they encountered the charming local geisha ladies.

Dejima, or Deshima (literally ‘Exit Island’), is a small artificial island built in the bay of Nagasaki in 1634 during the Edo period. Dejima was built to constrain foreign traders as part of ‘sakoku’, a self-imposed isolationist policy. Originally built to house Portuguese traders, it changed to a Chinese and Dutch trading post from 1641 until 1853 during which time the Dutch mostly bartered for Japanese gold, silver and copper with East Indies’ spices, Indian cloth and Chinese silk and porcelain. Dejima Dutch Trading Post has since been designated a Japanese national historic site.