The First European Description of Japan, 1585 (44 page)

1. We write with twenty-two letters; they write with forty-eight in the kana alphabet and with infinite characters for a variety of representations
.

The alphabet used by Romance languages at the time did not really have
k
or
w
, and
i
and
j
and
v
and
u
, respectively, were interchangeable, hence Frois' twenty-two rather than twenty-six letters.
¹

The letters in the Japanese syllabary, known as
kana
(as opposed to
kanji
, or Chinese characters), are uniformly short, like the Greek
mora
. In
kana
, consonants invariably come with an associated vowel sound, e.g. “ka, ke, ki, ko, ku,” where each of these
open
syllables is represented in writing by a single letter. Japanese has only five vowels, and these are almost identical to those used in Latin. When a Japanese vowel appears alone in a given syllable (i.e. without a consonantal onset), it is also represented by a letter. The forty-eight letters in
kana
are the forty-seven comprising the syllabic poem on the vanity of life written by the abbot Kobo Daishi (d. C.E. 776), in which no syllable is used twice,
²
plus the controversial syllable “n,” the only consonant without an associated vowel and thus the only consonant that can end a written word in Japanese. (The syllables “su” and “se” at the ends of words sometimes only get as far as their “s” sound when they are spoken, as a result of a process of reduction and elimination of the vowel nucleus.) The syllabary most commonly used today (but also in use at Frois' time) is not a poem, but is arranged instead according to the five vowel sounds. Its logic (unlike “our” somewhat illogical Roman alphabet) is reflected in its decimal-linked name:
goju-on
or “fifty-sounds.”

Because Frois does not give details about
kana
, the contrast here would seem to be between a finite number of letters in European alphabets and the “infinite characters” used in Japanese.

2. We study different arts and sciences through our books; they spend their entire lives coming to know the essential meaning of the characters [
used in their writing system
]
.

Frois grew up in a Europe that had been profoundly transformed during the fifteenth century by mass production of rag paper and Johannes Gutenberg's development of the printing press. The production of hundreds of thousands of books and pamphlets on innumerable subjects encouraged people from many walks of life to learn to read and to engage authors and ideas that were previously available only to the privileged elite. Movable type and the printing press made possible the Humanist education that Frois alludes to, which presupposed the ready availability of books of Latin grammar and rhetoric or books on Roman history by Livy or the works of Aristotle.

With respect to Japan, Frois accurately emphasizes the great extent to which education in Japan focused on mastering written Japanese. The children of the nobility studied at home rather than at a school, usually with a tutor.
³
Fellow Jesuit and linguist Rodrigues wrote that there were as many as 80,000 letters and characters to be learned, although it was generally enough to know about 10,000 characters or a little less, “because if these are known, many others can be understood by their composition.” Note that not only the characters had to be learned, but the many ways that they may be pronounced and combined with the
kana
. As linguist and polemicist Roy Andrew Miller has noted, to say that Japanese employs a complex writing system is to risk the most sweeping understatement possible.
⁴

3. We write across the page, going from left to right; they write going down the length of the page, and always from right to left
.

On Jan. 14, 1549, Xavier wrote John III, King of Portugal, about this very matter:

I am sending you a copy of the Japanese alphabet. Their way of writing is very different from ours because they write from the top of the page down to the bottom. I asked Paul why they did not write in our way and he asked me why we did not write in their way? He explained that as the head of a man is at the top and his feet are at the bottom, so too a man should write from top to bottom.
⁵

Paul, who accompanied Xavier as a translator, was from Malacca, where he learned Christian doctrine. There is a Japanese saying that “writing is the man” (
bun-wa hito nari
), which makes Paul's reasoning even more poignant.

The Japanese on certain occasions also write horizontally, left to right, as well as right to left (on Buddhist plaques with the name of a temple, and perhaps most visibly, on the right side of a moving vehicle, such that the writing flows from the
front to the back). Because both Chinese characters and Japanese syllables are written individually by moving the writing instrument from the upper left to the lower right in the space occupied by that character or letter, it would seem logical for the vertical lines to also go left to right, but for some reason this was reversed.

4. Where the final pages of our books end, that is where theirs begin
.

If it were not for the reversal indicated in the note to
#3
above this difference would not exist.

5. We hold printing in high regard; they use handwriting for nearly everything because their printing is unsuitable
.

Block printing in Japan went back about 800 years before Frois' time. It is not clear why Frois found it “unsuitable.” Fellow Jesuit Rodrigues seemed to be of a different opinion:

First of all they take a sheet of paper the same size as the proposed book and carefully write on it in the desired style with the required number of lines, spaces and everything else. Then they glue this sheet face down on the block and with great skill cut away the blank paper, leaving only the block letters … They then carve these letters on the block with iron instruments … They are so dexterous in this art that they can cut a block in about the same time as we can compose a page.
⁶

6. We write with quills from ducks and other birds; they use paintbrushes with hare-fur bristles and a bamboo handle
.

Quill pens made from the feathers of waterfowl, particularly geese and less frequently swans, crows, hawks, eagles, and owls, were the writing instrument of choice in Europe. Although a brush may seem a crude and inefficient instrument with which to write, the physical and aesthetic satisfaction of the brush far exceeds that of the quill, an instrument that originated for the purpose of cutting as much as covering sheepskin parchment. The lifelong mastery of characters (see
#2
above) is in large part not about memorizing characters, which really does not take that long, but learning to write characters in many different styles, far more different than our printing and cursive. Therefore, practicing this is an art, which is tremendously satisfying in itself.

7. Our ink is liquid; theirs is made in loaves that are ground as they write
.

Ink was made in Europe from carbonized plants (e.g. the burned branches of the hawthorn tree) and minerals such as salt, which were mixed with wine, walnut oil, or other mediums.

The
sumi
ink of the Japanese usually is made by the writer, who grinds a bar on the device Frois mentions in
#8
below. Sometimes servants, wives, or children did the grinding. One ink stick the size of a small candy bar, mixed with water, makes gallons and gallons of ink. Rodrigues wrote that “the best kind is made from the smoke of sesame oil … which adheres to a vessel, and from this they make paste.”
The paste was made into small loaves, “others long and others round,” stamped and “decorated with various flowers, serpents and figures from legends … they add some musk while making the best sort so that it will smell sweetly when they write with it.”
⁷

Today most Japanese would say they have no time to make their own ink. Still, it is not unheard of to receive as a gift an ink-stick in the form of a cicada covered with gold.

8. Our inkwells are round and made of horn; theirs are made of elongated pieces of stone
.

In Europe “horners” (a respected trade) cut, sawed, carved and pressed animal horn into sheets that were used for everything from window and lantern panes to combs, chess-pieces, and inkwells.
⁸
In English we can even call an inkwell an “inkhorn.” As one might imagine, these inkhorns ranged from simple to exquisitely carved works of art.

Frois' colleague, Rodrigues, elaborated on the Japanese inkstand, noting it was made of a slab of smooth marmoreal stone that was usually rectangular or oval in shape, or somewhere in between:

They have a raised rim around the edge and a reservoir in the middle where the ink is ground. At one end of this there is a small well, gracefully carved, wherein they pour the water with which the ink is mixed … This is rather like the stone or palette in which artists prepare and mix the colours that they use in painting.
⁹

One of the most magnificent Japanese inkstands that we know of has an otherworldly reservoir below the cosmic, Mt. Feng-lai, with its three peaks. Today, most inkstands have no well
per se
, but a graduated slope, resembling a boat-launching ramp.

9. Our inkwells have lids and pen wipers
¹⁰
; in Japan they have neither of these
.

Because the Japanese made ink as they needed it they had no need of a well to store it or a lid to keep the ink from drying out. Pen wipers (one or more little brushes for removing excess ink from the quill tip as one wrote) also were unnecessary. But the Japanese were not lacking accessories, as this contrast might seem to suggest. The Japanese had beautiful lacquered boxes in which they kept their writing supplies and equipment.

10. We have only four or five varieties of paper; in Japan they have more than fifty
.

European texts during the Middle Ages were inscribed on parchment made of specially prepared animal skins, often from sheep, which have soft skins. By the thirteenth century, rag-based paper was being used throughout much of Europe. With the advent of the printing press, which required a medium with an even and absorbent surface, it became the material of choice for all manner of writing and printing.

Europeans were “paper-poor” as compared with the Japanese and Chinese. In China, Marco Polo was amazed to find that paper money (made from the bark of the mulberry tree) was used throughout the empire and for every transaction. In Japan paper was made from dozens of plants. Alcock mentioned an “infinite variety of paper” and sent sixty-seven different kinds to The International Exhibition in London in 1862.
¹¹
Even today, the Japanese are rightly proud of their rich diversity in paper.

11. On official documents, we use the notary public's mark only; the Japanese each make their own mark on their letters, in addition to their signatures
.

The notary public had its origins during the Roman Empire, when scribes or
scribae
were entrusted with drafting petitions to the emperor, recording public proceedings, transcribing state papers, and registering the decrees and judgments of magistrates.
¹²
The Japanese had no such office; individuals applied their own personal seal to whatever they valued, be it a contract or prints and paintings. Documents could be both signed and stamped, or just stamped, but they were seldom just signed.

12. Among us, the mark of the notary public never changes; in Japan they change marks whenever they want to
.

Again, because there were no notary publics in Japan, it is hard to know who Frois was referring to with respect to the Japanese. Japanese “marks” or
kao
(“flower-stamp”) were a stylized signature or monogram, which changed when an individual was promoted, as might be expected given that individuals often changed their names upon securing a new office. Because they generally had more than one
kao
at any given time, individuals sometimes used different combinations of
kao
. Okada guesses that great men had an average of about twenty “official”
kao
over the course of their lives.

13. Among us, all paper is made from old pieces of cloth; in Japan it is all made from tree bark
.

The Chinese apparently were the first to make rag paper from discarded rags that were disassembled and mixed with water, making a pulp that was pressed into sheets. The technology spread across the Arab world in the ninth century, reaching Spain and the rest of Western Europe following the Crusades and by the late thirteenth century.

The Japanese knew how to make paper from rags but preferred paper made from tree bark and shrubs (e.g. hemp). Alcock found this tree-bark paper tougher than any paper in Europe. “Even the finer kinds can only be torn with difficulty, and the stronger qualities defy every effort.”
¹³
As noted above, Alcock sent over sixty different kinds of Japanese paper to the International Exhibition in London in 1862.

14. We cannot convey complex thoughts in our letters without going on at great length; in Japan, letters are extremely short and very concise
.

Frois was speaking from experience as regards the first part of this distich, as his lengthy annual reports even irritated Jesuit superiors. François Caron (1600–73), a French-born employee of the Dutch East-India Company, wrote that the terse writing style mentioned by Frois' was common to the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans:

A man that can contract much matter into a few lines, and [make it] intelligible, which is that which they all practice, is greatly esteemed amongst them; for such they employ to write their Letters, Petitions and the like to great persons; and truly it is admirable to see how full of substance, and with how few words these sort of writing is penned.
¹⁴