5 Euros - Beatrix Friendship with Japan

Issued to mark 400 years of Dutch-Japanese relations, this coin commemorates the 1609 arrival of the Dutch trading vessel the Roode Leeuw met Pijlen at Hirado, which secured the Netherlands a trading foothold in Japan that would eventually become the sole Western presence permitted during Japan's Sakoku isolation period. For over two centuries, the Dutch East India Company's artificial island of Dejima in Nagasaki Bay was the only sanctioned point of contact between Japan and the Western world.