The gate in front of me once opened to the world. Steps — now long gone — formerly led down from there to a quay in Nagasaki's sheltered harbor where, in centuries past, visiting trading ships tied up.
It was here that European mariners — many malnourished and sick from the four-month voyage to the Far East — would unload their provisions and catch their first glimpse of a country that was shrouded in mystery in their homelands.
For many, this was all they ever got to see — the small, artificial island of Dejima off the coast of Nagasaki.