For more than two and a half centuries Dutch merchants in Japan were confined to the fan-shaped island of Dejima in the Bay of Nagasaki. Only once a year were they allowed to leave their golden cage to embar-k on the Edo Sanpu, a 1000-mile journey to present-day Tokyo in order to pay their respects to the shogun, Japan's absolute ruler.

Four of them-Engelbert Kaempfer, Philipp Franz von Siebold, Dirk de Graeff van Polsbroek, and Frederik van Overmeer Fischer-recorded their experience. They describe a country where rivers still run their natural course, and beeches glimmer with gold dust. It is a country filled with beauty everywhere: towering pagodas, exquisite shrines, magnificent temples, opulent palaces, and imposing castles. Populating this captivating landscape is a modest yet idiosyncratic people, a people that never cease to fascinate.

Now, almost two centuries after the Edo Sanpu's last chroniclers set out on their long and arduous journey, author and Dutchman William de Lange treads in their footsteps to compare notes.