Hirado, a city in present-day Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, ocated on the island of the same name, has been a port of call for ships between the Asian mainland and Japan since the Nara period.

During the Kamakura and Muromachi periods, the local Matsuura clan had held the rights to trade with Korea and with Sung Dynasty China.

During the Sengoku and early Edo periods, Hirado's role as a center of foreign trade increases, especially vis-à-vis Ming Dynasty China and the Dutch East India Company (VOC).

The Portuguese had arrived in 1550; and the English and Dutch initially reach Japan at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

The first step in the profitable Dutch-Japanese trading relationship is the Shogun's grant of a trading pass (handelspas) in 1609.