Dejima

Built in 1636 to confine Portuguese merchants, Dejima outlived them: expelled two years later, they were replaced in 1641 by the Dutch, the only Europeans tolerated. Some twenty men lived there permanently, unable to cross the bridge into town without permission. Through that narrow door came European anatomy, astronomy and physics, translated by Japanese interpreters who founded an entire discipline. The islet, swallowed by nineteenth-century landfill, has been rebuilt building by building since 1996.