Japan and the Netherlands have a special relationship. No two other European and Asian countries have maintained such long and continuous contact undisturbed by the trauma of colonialism. It began 400 years ago when, after a gruesome crossing of the Pacific, the Rotterdam trading vessel Liefde, or "Love," washed ashore in Usuki Bay, Kyushu, on April 19, 1600.
The Japanese-Dutch relationship which thus began is very special for a number of reasons. After the Portuguese, along with all other Christians, were expelled from Japan in 1639, the Dutch alone were allowed to stay. For more than two centuries, their trading factory on the artificial island Deshima in the port of Nagasaki was Japan's only window to Europe. The little bridge connecting Deshima with the town of Nagasaki came to be known as the "Dutch bridge" ("oranda no kakehashi"), a metaphoric expression referring to the Dutch as cultural mediators for Japan.
This metaphor inspired the title and the theme of this book. Spanning a short physical gap, the bridge to Deshima linked different worlds. The distance between them and how the inhabitants on either side interacted with each other are fascinating topics, but this is not all that is intended with the bridge metaphor. The book also makes an attempt to span the four centuries of Dutch-Japanese exchange it commemorates.