JAPAN AND THE DUTCH 1600-1853, by Grant K. Goodman. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000, 304 pp., 40 pounds.

Thanks to the Tokugawa shogunate's decision at the beginning of the 17th century to expel the Portuguese and other Christian missionaries who had started to meddle in Japanese affairs, the Netherlands, from 1640 to 1853, was the only Western nation with which Japan had any direct contact.

The Dutch enjoyed trade privileges with some commercial success. They maintained a permanent outpost at Hirado first and then on the island of Deshima in Nagasaki harbor. Throughout these years it was never unmanned.

Goodman's book provides a thorough overview of those years of trade and intercultural exchange. It is a new and much extended edition of an earlier book. Few other books in English treat the Japanese-Dutch contact as broadly and rigorously.