Jan Joosten van Lodensteijn

Jan Joosten van Lodensteyn (or Lodensteijn; 1556–1623), known in Japanese as , was a Dutch navigator and trader.

Jan Joosten was a native of Delft and one of the first Dutchmen in Japan, and the second mate on the Dutch ship De Liefde, which was stranded in Japan in 1600. He was also engaged in the trade in Asia. Other fellow sailors included the captain of De Liefde Jacob Quaeckernaeck and purser Melchior van Santvoort.

After making it through the Straits of Magellan, they became separated, but later rejoined the Hoop (Hope) off the coast of Chile, where some of the crew and captains of both vessels died in an encounter with natives. They decided to leave hostile Spanish waters and sell their woolen cloth cargo in Japan rather than in the warmer Moluccas. The two ships encountered a storm and Hoop was lost.

In April 1600, De Liefde drifted ashore at Usuki, Bungo Province, Japan. The crew was 110 when the ship departed from Rotterdam, but by the time it reached Japan it was down to 24, including several who were close to death.

Tokugawa Ieyasu, the daimyō of Edo (modern Tokyo) who later became shōgun and established the Edo shogunate, dealt with the ship and its crew. Ieyasu, who was the head of the Council of Five Elders, ordered them to sail the ship to Sakai (near Osaka) and then on to Edo. It is known that the Portuguese Jesuit missionaries insisted to the Japanese that the ship was a pirate vessel and that the crew should be executed.

Ieyasu invited both Adams and Jan Joosten to Edo when he became Shogun. He hired Adams as a diplomatic adviser and gave him the Japanese name and a fief of 220 koku in Miura, Sagami Province. Jan Joosten, also employed as a diplomatic adviser, was given the Japanese name and a residence in Edo.

Jan Joosten served as Ieyasu's diplomatic adviser and interpreter, while at the same time engaging in the red seal ship trade under license from Tokugawa Ieyasu in Asia.

Hoping to return to the Netherlands, he went to Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, capital of Indonesia), but negotiations were proceeding with difficulty. As the Dutch authorities did not give him permission to sail, he gave up the idea of returning to the Netherlands. Then, on his way back to Japan, his ship ran aground in the South China Sea and he drowned in 1623.

Memorials and legacy The Jan Josten Memorial Statue in the Yaesu Chikagai (Yaesu Underground Mall) in Tokyo Station.

The place name Yaesu in Tokyo comes from Jan Joosten. He lived in Edo Castle Town, near present-day Hibiya, Chiyoda-ku, so the place was called after his Japanese name . Later, changed to and then used as the name of the town for the first time in 1872. The current is located in Chuo-ku, Tokyo, and was established in 1954.

The Jan Joosten Memorial Statue stands in the Yaesu underground mall at Tokyo Station. The Jan Joosten Monument, erected in 1989 to commemorate the 380th anniversary of the Japan-Dutch Treaty of Amity, is located on Yaesu Street.

In 1999, his home town of Delft named Jan Joostenplein (Jan Joosten Square) after him (it is off Van Lodensteynstraat, which is named for a relative). There is a sculpture of "De Liefde" in the courtyard.