Abstract
In 1609, two vessels belonging to the Dutch east India company reached Japan. The leaders of the expedition dispatched an envoy to meet with Tokugawa Ieyasu, the Tokugawa shogun, to ask for permission to establish a trading outpost in the country. A third and final reason to examine the history of Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie interaction with Japan is as a revealing episode in the wider encounters between Europe and Asia in the early modern period and it is that the relationship with the Tokugawa state that governed Japan is especially important. In its period of rapid expansion in the seventeenth century, the Dutch east India company emerged as a formidable organization. The company faced an equally difficult path when it attempted to make use of force as a key bargaining chip in negotiations. European vessels held a significant advantage over local shipping on the open ocean, and, in virtually every encounter at sea, ships from Europe.