The purpose of this paper is to analyze the account books, the original sources kept in the Dutch factory at Hirado and Nagasaki, and other calculative records of the trade between Japan and the Dutch East India Company, and to calculate the actual figures for the Japanese-Dutch trade. It is well known that the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Nederlandsche Oostindische Compagnie) conducted trade with Japan during the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1609, the Company established a factory at Hirado which in 1641 was ordered to move to Nagasaki. In both factories the Dutch merchants kept their account books according to the Italian system of bookkeeping. These books recorded the quality, quantity and price of goods imported, exported and negotiated with the Japanese merchants. At present, these account books-for example, the journals (Negotie Journalen) and ledgers (Negotie Grootboeken) - are preserved in the Netherlands National Archives (Nationaal Archief) in The Hague. In the past, Oskar Nachod and other scholars in Japan have made use of these archival materials for their analysis of the management of the Dutch factory in Japan. However, because they did not understand the bookkeeping system of the Dutch factory, the results of their calculations concerning the volume of trade between Japan and the Dutch East India Company are not precise, and differ from each other. *Oskar Nachod, Die Beziehungen der Niederlandischen Ostindischen Kompagnie zu Japan im siebzehnten jahrhundert, Leipzig 1879. This paper tries to clarify the bookkeeping and accounting system used at Nagasaki, by using the records of the year 1642 to present a case study of the system of double entry bookkeeping, branch accounting (i.e., the relationships between the main office at Batavia and the branch offices of Nagasaki, Taiwan, Tonkin and Siam) and the "closing" of the books. In addition, it tries to calculate the exact volume of the trade-amounts of import and export goods, prices, costs and gross profits of goods sold etc.-, and to correct the results of the calculations by O. Nachod and other scholars. These above-mentioned account books of the Dutch factory in Japan are foundational archival sources, and give a detailed picture of the annual trade between Japan and the Dutch East India Company. However, we can not understand the exact volume recorded in them unless we have a clear idea of the way in which they were organized.
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