to the Shogun was made in great state. Two other Dutchmen and a number of Japanese officials accompanied him, and the entire retinue consisted of about two hundred persons. They visited on their journey the local princes, with whom they exchanged presents. On the arrival of the embassy at Yedo they were kept in strict confinement, and permitted to go out only on visits of ceremony. The audience of the Shogun was in the following form. When the president entered the hall of audience, they cried out "Holanda Capitan" which was the signal for him to draw near and make his obeisance. Accordingly, he crawled on his hands and knees to a place indicated, between the presents he had brought ranged on one side and the place where the Shogun sat on the other; and then, kneeling, he bowed his forehead quite down to the ground, and so crawled backwards like a crab, without uttering a single word. The stillness of death prevailed during the audience, which lasted scarcely sixty seconds. The Dutch chronicler's comment is: "So mean and short a thing is the audience we have of this mighty monarch."[1] Although cut off from the outside world, Japanese commerce did not languish. Kaempfer, writing in 1692, says that confined within the limits of their empire the people enjoyed the blessings of peace and contentment, and did not care for any commerce or communication with foreign parts, because such was the state of their country they could subsist without it.
- ↑ 1 History of Japan, Kaempfer. An account of the Dutch factory at Deshima, taken from Kaempfer and other Dutch and German authorities, will be found in 9 Chinese Repository, 291.
