Lower right (l.r.) in pencil: James M. Nairn; verso frame in pencil in Brasch’s hand: J.M. Nairn; verso frame in ballpoint pen: Nisbet [framing instructions]
From the middle of the seventeenth to the beginning of the nineteenth-century, Japan, through the Tokugawa Shōgunate, was successful in rigorously enforcing a policy of seclusion. No Europeans were allowed into Japan except the Dutch who were…