How much history am I going to have to dive into to understand why Dutch traders in Japan trampled symbols of Christianity? If it’s not too much, could someone be so kind as to explain here? Otherwise, directions to the answer that have somehow evaded my encyclopedia and web searching would be much obliged!
Err, maybe some context would help? As in, what makes you think Dutch traders in Japan ever did trample crucifixes, and when was this supposed to have happened?
It reminds me of a part of the James Clavell novel Shogun which I read in a previous lifetime, but I wouldn’t presume such a source to be historically accurate.
Hmm. I haven’t heard of this but it might make sense-- after having let in a few Portuguese et. al. the Japanese kicked them out as the catholic missionaries were spending too much time trying to convert the japanese. The Japanese allowed, however, the Dutch to maintain a little merchant colony on Nagasaki (Deshima) as they showed little interest in this sort of thing, the good capitalist Calvinists that they were, so maybe a display like this would have been good for business.
Ah, yes, it seems that after the Jesuits got busy and were a bit too sucessful the Tokugawa bakufu expelled the missionaries (1614) and required Japanese and others who were suspected of supporting christianity to do this as a sort of test, I suppose. However, the Dutch are A) Calvinist (and thus at least ideologically iconophobic and not TOO interested in conversions) and B) competitors of the Portuguese and therefore ok guys. So the Dutch would have been doing it sort of under duress; There were apparently a few crucifixions involved in the reaction against the Jesuits. Does this help at all?
The only place I ever recall seeing that mentioned was in Gulliver’s Travels. At the time, I figured that it was a reference to the Spanish/Portuguese battles with the Dutch for trade rights to Japan.
Europeans first established contact with Japan shortly after the Reformation. The Spanish and Portuguese who were in that region were, of course, Catholic. The Dutch were Protestants, and more particularly, they were Calvinist Protestants (rather than Lutheran Protestants) and they carried a strong streak of Calvin’s iconoclastic opposition to religious imagery. I know that during the European feuds over Japan, the Dutch, at one point, persuaded the Japanese emperor (or Shogun) to ban Catholic Christianity. (Eventually, the Japanese got tired of the mess and threw out the Dutch as well.)
The Dutch would have had no problem with breaking or “trampling” a crucifix as they saw the crucifix as an object of idolatry. On the other hand, a Catholic would have considered such an act as a grave sign of disrespect and might have chosen martyrdom rather than acceding to such a demand.
Swift (and his character Gulliver) were “Catholics of the Anglican Communion” rather than full-blown Protestants and he would have been repulsed by the idea of such a desecration.
Mind you, this is simply a WAG.
There is some support for my guess on this page and a short bibliography (of print articles) dealing with the topic on this page
And capybara seems to have beaten me to it with actual dates and events that indicate the same sort of thing.
Yay! Thanks! Dopers rock!
Lagomorph, I figured anyone who had an answer would recognize the question as I asked it, and I lucked out 
I did read of this in Gulliver’s Travels. The part that threw me off was,
“…the Emperor, he seemed a little surprised, and said, he believed I was the first of my countrymen who ever made any scruple in this point, and that he began to doubt whether I was a real Hollander or no; but suspected I must be a Christian.”
I take “Christian” to include Catholics, Easterns, and Protestants, and the dictionary agrees. Tumultuous language, it is.