Dutch Merchants

"Dutch Merchants" extends Kawakami's portrait of the VOC (Dutch East India Company) traders at Dejima to a group subject, showing several of the Dutch merchants who conducted the strictly limited trade with Japan during the sakoku period. These men — Calvinist Protestant traders from the Netherlands — were Japan's only permitted Western contact for over two centuries, and their permitted annual visits to Edo (where they paid court to the Shogun) gave Japanese officials and curious individuals rare glimpses of Europeans. Kawakami renders them with the same warmly curious gaze that characterized his treatment of all cross-cultural encounters.