Dutch study at Bakumatsu Japan.
Currently, I am reading The Capital of the Tycoon (1863), written by Rutherford Alcock who was the first British diplomatic representative to live in the Bakumatsu period of Japan. There are many interesting episodes in the book, which he experienced in Japan. One of them is, of course, about language. Those days, Dutch was the only European language officially Japanese could possibly learn. In Nagasaki, there was an institute to bring up Japanese interpreters to communicate with Dutch people. Unfortunately, however, they had no idea about the mutation and progress of language, which had taken place during past two centuries. Therefore, they didn’t make any effort to catch up modern Dutch language. Consequently, confusion occurred between Japanese Dutch speakers and Alcock’s staff who grew up in Holland. While the Japanese insisted that they used proper Dutch usage, Alcock’s staff couldn’t understand the old style Dutch which was not used in those days. The episode tells us about the limitation of the methodology of their Dutch study at the Bakumatsu Japan.
