Fusetsugaki

• Japanese: 風説書 (fuusetsu gaki)

Fûsetsugaki were documents collected in Nagasaki from Dutch and Chinese merchant ships, relating information about the ships themselves (their cargoes, etc.) and about events and developments in the broader world. Along with information obtained via Korea and Ryûkyû, these reports were a key source of information for Edo period authorities as to political and other developments in the outside world.

The first fûsetsugaki were prepared by the Dutch in 1641; from 1644 onwards, it became standard for both Dutch and Chinese ships to provide three copies of such reports when making port at Nagasaki. One copy went to the Nagasaki Magistrate's office, one to Edo, and one to the official interpreters.

Historian Ishii Yoneo has compiled modern Japanese translations of many of the Chinese fûsetsugaki in a 1998 volume entitled The Junk Trade from Southeast Asia: Translations from the Tôsen Fusetsu-gaki, 1674-1723.

References

• Marius Jansen, China in the Tokugawa World, Harvard University Press (1992), 12.