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For more than two and a half centuries Dutch merchants in Japan were confined to the fan-shaped island of Dejima in the Bay of Nagasaki. Only once a year were they allowed to leave their golden cage to embark on the Edo Sanpu, a 1000-mile journey to present-day Tokyo in order to pay their respects to the sh¿gun, Japan's absolute ruler.
Four of them-Engelbert Kaempfer, Philipp Franz von Siebold, Dirk de Graeff van Polsbroek, and Frederik van Overmeer Fischer-recorded their experience. They describe a country where rivers still run their natural course, and beeches glimmer with gold dust. It is a country filled with beauty everywhere: towering pagodas, exquisite shrines, magnificent temples, opulent palaces, and imposing castles. Populating this captivating landscape is a modest yet idiosyncratic people, a people that never cease to fascinate.
Now, almost two centuries after the Edo Sanpu's last chroniclers set out on their long and arduous journey, author and Dutchman William de Lange treads in their footsteps to compare notes.
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William de Lange was born in 1964 in Naarden, the Netherlands to Dutch and English parents. In the late 1980s, he traveled to Japan, where he supported himself by making traditional Japanese scrolls, working as a carpenter, and writing articles for the Japan Times Weekly. Having studied at Leiden and Waseda universities during the nineties, he lived in Japan for the next decade, studying the art of Japanese fencing under Akita Moriji sensei, eighth dan master of the Shinkage-Ryu. Since then, he has written a large number of books on Japanese history, culture, and art. More recently, he has appeared in the Netflix documentary Age of Samurai. His many books include Samurai Battles, Samurai Sieges, An Encyclopedia of Japanese Castles, and The Siege of Osaka Castle. He is perhaps best known for his epic history of the Yagyu clan, and his acclaimed biography of Miyamoto Musashi.
