We’re trapped in a loop this week as Isaac talks about another Isaac: specifically, Isaac Titsingh, a member of the Dutch trade station at Nagasaki and one of the famous European interpreters of Japanese history and culture to the West.
Sources
Screech, Timon. Secret Memoirs of the Shoguns: Isaac Titsingh and Japan, 1779-1822.
Titsingh, Isaac. Illustrations of Japan.
Images
Was copper really the only thing the Dutch cared about coming from Japan? Was there no art? I know Japan is resource poor, which is their usual justification for colonialism, but they really had nothing else for the Dutch? No pigments? What about the sugar trade in Kagoshima?