ABSTRACT

This chapter deals with two kinds of strange device: pumps and clockwork. It assesses how these were used and adapted in Japan — less technologically altered than conceptually transformed. A love of precision was firmly entrenched as an association of the Dutch. The “Dutch ship” entered Edo-period folklore. The cloud of non-comprehension that hung over Dutch devices was the result of a genuine inability to grasp. The great foci of Western mechanisation were the Vereenigde Oost Indische Compannie ships, two of which would dock in Nagasaki Bay annually. The citizenry of Nagasaki never entirely grasped how the ship worked. Traditional automata worked on strings hidden from the eyes of the viewers. The quality of pressurisation can be told from the fact that the shower came down some four metres from the automata’s stands. The Takeda Company seems to have made a special feature of automata that were cushioned on or propelled through water.