LAUSR

The first Dutch ship arrived in Japan in 1600. In the next two and a half centuries, some 800 Dutch ships would follow and for most of this period the Dutch were the only Western nation permitted to trade with the Japanese. This article provides a social history of the Dutch language during the first hundred years of the Dutch presence in Japan. Although the focus of this use was Western Kyushu, where the Dutch had trading posts at Hirado and then Deshima, the language was also used elsewhere, notably in Edo, the capital of the Tokugawa Shoguns. After a review of previous research on this subject, the article considers who knew Dutch in seventeenth-century Japan. They can be divided into three groups: Dutch; Japanese, primarily interpreters; and others, who were neither Dutch nor Japanese. It then examines the use of Dutch by social domain. Throughout the article consideration is given to questions concerning language, such as how the Japanese learnt Dutch; language competition; language contact including Dutch loanwords in Japanese; bilingualism; code switching and the first translations from Dutch to Japanese. These translations were the initial steps towards the phenomenon that became known as rangaku (Dutch learning), which would have a profound impact on Japanese society.