Nagasaki – Jean Dominique Etienne Canu after Jean de Fontenay, 1810

NAGASAKI, CALLED TCHANGKI BY THE CHINESE

“Nangasacki appellé par les Chinois Tchangki.“ Copper engraving made in 1810 by Jean Dominique Étienne Canu after a design by Jean de Fontenay. Coloured by a later hand. Size: approx. 16 × 29.5 cm.

We see the walled city of Nagasaki with, along the waterfront, “la loge Hollandoise” (D) and the “Place des Vaisseaux Hollandois,” referring to the Dutch trading post of Dejima.

Since 1641, this was the only place in Japan where Europeans – exclusively the Dutch – were permitted to reside and trade, under strict supervision. From Dejima, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) supplied spices, sugar, textiles, and medical knowledge in exchange for Japanese copper, lacquerware, and porcelain.

Across the bay lay the Chinese quarter, Tōjin yashiki (“Loge Chinoise,” with a “Place des Vaisseaux Chinois”), about twice the size of Dejima.

Trade between China and Japan was much larger than that between the Netherlands and Japan. Each year, a maximum of four Dutch ships sailed to Japan, whereas dozens of Chinese vessels arrived during the same period. In the late seventeenth century, more than a hundred Chinese ships sometimes came annually to Nagasaki, primarily to buy copper and seafood. The Chinese merchants mainly sold silk, sugar, and traditional medicines to the Japanese.

From 1689 onward, Chinese traders were required to reside in Tōjin yashiki (literally “Residence of the Chinese”). Like the Dutch, they were confined within an enclosed compound.

Both Dejima and Tōjin yashiki remained in use until Japan’s forced opening to the West in the mid-1850s and were officially dismantled in 1868.

A notable annotation on the map points to the “great mountain where the Christians were martyred” – a reference to the execution site where, after Christianity was banned in 1614, numerous Japanese converts and European missionaries lost their lives.

The map’s designer, Jean de Fontaney, was a Jesuit and mathematician who travelled several times through Southeast Asia and China. He never visited Nagasaki himself but gathered information from Chinese merchants to create this view. That information was apparently imprecise: he did not realise that Dejima was an artificial island and also depicted the Bay of Nagasaki as a river.

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