Essay #3
Word Count: 346
In the novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell intertwines two
narratives to create a fictional image of late eighteenth-century Japan – one of Dutch traders
confined to the artificial island Dejima in Nagasaki bay, and one of nuns imprisoned within a
Shinto fertility shrine on Mount Shiranui. Although The Thousand Autumns is a fictional novel,
Mitchell’s exploration of the theme of Isolation within the Dejima and Shiranui narratives
directly parallels Tokugawa isolationist policies, and Mitchell is able to portray the benefits and
consequences of Japanese isolation through these narratives.
In both Mitchell’s narratives and in the historical reality, isolation is used as a means of
maintaining power over and stability within a given population. In both cases, the ruling group
(the men in the Shiranui narrative, and the Samurai elite in historical reality) has greater
knowledge than the subjects. Often, however, the isolation is shown to lead to types of ignorance
that come with negative consequences. When considering how Western thought and medicine
could benefit the boy with elephantitis by recognizing his condition is medical, rather than
demonic, Ogawa remarks: “The shogun’s policy of isolation preserves his power
unchallenged…but sentences Uokatsu and countless others to futile, ignorant deaths,” (296).
This statement is also a perfect parallel for the Shiranui sisters’ imprisonment. Enomoto’s
isolating of them allows him to control every aspect of their lives and create fictional realities
that most of the sisters are entirely ignorant of. These fictions maintained by the New Year
Letters allow them to continue living a lifestyle they otherwise may object to – similar to the
Tokugawa equivalent of village life as “well-regulated concentration camp”.
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While Dejima is devoid of superstition and false realities, its isolation still allows for the
development of power structures otherwise objectionable to its subjects. Jacob learns through his
betrayal by Vorstenbosch that European ethics do not apply on Dejima even though its
inhabitants are Dutch, and that the separation of the men from European governing bodies
ensures that those power structures will remain in place in a stable form.
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