Dutch accounting in Japan 1609-1850: isolation or observation?

The trading station or factory maintained by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was Japan's sole window on the Western world during most of the Tokugawa period (1600-1868). While many aspects of the factory's role in Dutch/Japanese cultural exchange have been researched little is known in the West of the accounting at the factory. This paper considers the possibility that double-entry bookkeeping employed by the Dutch may have been diffused to the Japanese. The available evidence is synthesized after considering the accounting system in the Dutch factory.