Interesting fact:

During Japan’s period of self-imposed isolation, it was illegal to travel beyond the borders of the country, upon pain of death. There was almost no contact with the outside world, except on a tiny island situated in the harbor of the city of Nagasaki. Its name was Deijima, and it was here that a small community of individual were allowed to trade on behalf of the Dutch colonial powers. Here, they taught practices of Western medicine, traded European goods and even kept concubines from the local population. Intrigued? Check out the spellbinding novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacbod De Zoet by David Mitchell to delve into this intriguing historical anomaly.