On 27 July 1609, the governor's barge carrying the first official Dutch emissaries, Jacob van den Broeck, Nicolaes Puyck and Melchoir van Santvoort, departed from Hirado to visit Ieyasu in Sumpu. Throughout the long journey Puyck recorded his view of Japan. He found the country ‘very beautiful….high and mountainous…. very populous and fertile’ on the land and ‘small sails everywhere’ on the water.

Two days later, one of these small sails drew up alongside the governor's barge. It carried a messenger from Lord Matsura, who expressed his master's delight at the Dutch arrival and informed them that the lord, whose ship was on the water midway from Osaka, was awaiting them. Later in the day, another of his boats came to provide them with gifts of salted salmon and sake. In return, they presented the lord with two lengths of silk, and sailed on for the Strait of Shimonoseki, at the tip of Honshu, the main island. They passed through the strait at night and at noon they moored in the shelter of Mukō-jima, a small island off Honshu’s southern shore, some sixty miles east of the strait. There they waited for the ideal wind that would speed their barge into the Inland Sea.

Before the end of the following day, the wind turned to the west and allowed the barge to curve up to Kaminoseki, Honshu's southeastern cape. From the cape, the direction was north-east, up the Inland Sea. At dusk they met another of Lord Matsura's boats, fromwhich a messenger informed them that his master had anchored with three of his barges just off Yashiro Island, which was not so far from where they were. The Dutch emissaries anchored near one of the barges and embarked. On the barge, they were finally welcomed in person by Matsura Shigenobu (see Plate 10). His imposing figure, very young-looking for a sixty-five-year old, impressed Puyck. Puyck writes that the lord was ‘gay in spirit’ and ‘very curious to hear or see all things foreign’. They had a satisfactory exchange well into the night and were provided with a letter of recommendation to the Shogun by one of Matsura's retainers.