The First European Description of Japan, 1585 (57 page)

17
  See Sakanishi,
Kyôgen
, xiv–xv.

18
  
The Noh Theater
, 140.

19
  Kakuzo Okakura,
The Ideals of the East, with Special Reference to the Art of Japan
(New York: IGG Muse Inc., 2000[1903]), 184.

20
  This was especially true given that Catholics and Protestants were literally killing each other over the Catholic belief that the consecrated host was truly God incarnate.

21
  Steven Mullaney,
The Place of the Stage, License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 48–49
.

22
  Mira Felner,
The World of Theater, Tradition and Innovation
(Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2006), 32.

23
  During the second half of the sixteenth century (Frois left Europe in 1548) women increasingly appeared on stage in Spanish theaters, perhaps as result of the example set by Italian touring companies.

24
  Perarik,“Noh Masks,” 291.

25
  Ibid., 292. Perarik suggests that the masks are not altogether typological in that an experienced actor can convey different feelings or emotions by lifting a mask or tilting it in various directions.

26
  Lynn Matluck Brooks,
The Art of Dancing in Seventeenth-Century Spain
(Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2003), 24–26.

27
  See Kanõ Hideyori's screen painting “Maple Viewing at Mount Takao” (Ca. 1577). Money L. Hickman, “Painting.” In
Japan's Golden Age, Momoyama
, ed. Money L. Hickman, pp. 93–181 New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 114–115.

28
  William P. Malm, “Music Cultures of Momoyama Japan.” In
Warlords, Artists, and Commoners, Japan in the Sixteenth Century.eds
. George Elison and Bardwell L. Smith, pp. 163–186 (Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press, 1981), 166, 175–176.

29
  The Portuguese original is missing a word or two; “stooped over” would seem to be implied by the remainder of the distich.

30
  Rui Vieira Nery,
História da Música
(Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1991); Brooks,
The Art of Dancing
, 138–139.

31
  Gayle Kassing,
History of Dance
:
An Interactive Arts Approach
(Champaign, IL.: Human Kinetics, 2007),77–79; Rodney Gallop, “The Folk Music of Portugal: I.”
Music & Letters
14(1933):220–230.

32
  In their Japanese-language edition of the
Tratado
, Matsuda and Jorissen have taken issue with this contrast, citing numerous instances of night dancing in Europe. However, it seems that Frois is talking about formal as opposed to social dancing.

33
  Not that all European dance featured leaps and jumps; for instance, during circle dances such as the
ballo Sardo
(Sardinian dance) the feet stay close to the ground.

34
  William E. Deal,
Handbook of Life In Medieval And Early Modern Japan
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 268.

35
  Marques,
Daily Life in Portugal
, 259–260, states that there is no evidence of the use of polyphony in Portugal before the fifteenth century. There are a number of extant collections of Portuguese
cantigas
or songbooks from the sixteenth century, including the
Cancioneiro de Elvas
, which was compiled around 1560. The Elvas songbook has sixty-five songs written in three-part harmony. Manuel Morais,
Cancioneiro Musical d'Elvas
(Lisbon, Fundacão Calouste Gulbenkian, 1977).

36
  Tamba,
The Musical Structure of Noh
, 35–37.

37
  
Unbeaten Tracks in Japan
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1987[1880]), II, 210.

38
  James Stark,
Bel Canto: A History of Vocal Pedagogy
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 123–124.

39
  Tamba,
The Musical Structure of Noh
, 37–39.

40
  
Cravo
. The perhaps more familiar harpsichord (
espineta
in Portuguese) is older and smaller than the
cravo
. Portuguese also has the word
clavicórdio
, which refers to an instrument that is similar to the cravo, yet somehow different. Antônio Houaiss, Mauro de Salles Villar, and Francisco Manoel de Mello Franco, eds.,
Dicionário Houaiss Da Língua Portuguesa
. (Rio de Janiero: Objetiva, 2001).

41
  The
doçaina
was a reed instrument belonging to the oboe family that was very popular in Europe from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. Houaiss et al.,
Dicionário Houaiss
, 1068.

42
  Michael Cooper,
The Japanese Mission to Europe, 1582–1590
(Kent UK: Global Oriental, 2005), 158. See also Harich-Schneider,
History of Japanese Music
, 445–486.

43
  Josef Franz Schütte, S.J.,
Valignano's Mission Principles for Japan
, Volume I, Part II, trans. John J. Coyne, S.J. (St. Louis: Institute for Jesuit Sources, 1985), 117.

44
  
Things Japanese: Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected With Japan
. Fourth edition (London: John Murray, 1902), 248.

45
  
Canto d'orgão
. Houaiss et. al.,
Dicionário Houaiss Da Língua Portuguesa
, 614.

46
  
Caxi maxi
(
kashimashi
), a word that refers to noise made by the inclusion of too many elements. To use modern idiom, “cacophonous.” It is often written with a Chinese character (despised by Japanese feminists) for three women.

47
  Jeanice Brooks,
Courtly Song in Late Sixteenth Century France
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 129.

48
  Edward S. Morse,
Japan Day By Day, 1877, 1878–1879, 1882–1883
. 2 Vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917), I, 422.

49
  Peter H. Lee,
The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Korean Poetry
, edited by Peter H. Lee (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); Hoff, “City and Country.”

50
  The second half or Japanese part of this contrast has stumped many of Frois' translators, particularly “…
em que o tipre estaa descansado
.” The Portuguese word is, in fact,
tiple
, which means treble or soprano. Treble is the name assigned to one of the clefs in which music can be composed, the other most common one being bass clef. ‘Treble clef' in Portuguese is
clave de soprano
(=
tiple
), or
clave de sol na segunda linha
, which means that the clef symbol rests on the second line of the musical staff, representing the note
sol
or G. Frois' text says
em que o tipre esta descansado
, meaning ‘the note on which the treble rests,' which means the line on the staff around which the curl of the treble clef is centered, hence our translation as rendered.

51
  Kate van Orden, “Children's Voices: Singing and Literacy in Sixteenth-Century France.”
Early Music History
25(2006):209–256.

52
  Marques,
Daily Life in Portugal
, 221–222.

53
  
Dobradas
.

54
  Houaiss et. al.,
Dicionário Houaiss
, 2865, note that the
viola braguesa
(from the Braga region in northwestern Portugal) was plucked rather than bowed and had five or six pairs of strings, which were tuned in the same manner as a guitar.

55
  
Sanfonineiros
.

56
  Marques,
Daily Life in Portugal
, 259. In his
A History of Song
(New York: W.W. Norton, 1970), 20, Denis Stevens seemingly takes issue with Frois, suggesting that many or most troubadours were from the upper class.

57
  Manuel da Costa Fontes, “Between Ballad and Parallelistic Song: A
Condessa Traidora
in the Portuguese Oral Tradition.” In
Medieval and Renaissance Spain and Portugal
, eds. Martha E. Schaffer and Antonio Corijo Ocaña, pp.182–196 (Rochester: Tamesis, 2006), 182.

58
  Baldesar Castiglione,
The Book of the Courtier
, trans. George Bull (London: Penguin Books, 1967[1528]), 120.

59
  Shelley Fenno Quinn, “Oral and Vocal Traditions of Japan,” In
Teaching Oral Traditions
, ed. John M. Foley, pp. 258–266 (New York: Modern Language Association, 1998), 262; Helen Craig McCullough, trans.,
The Tale of the Heike
, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988).

60
  Quoted in Henry Davenport Northrop and John Ruseell Young, eds.,
The Flowery Kingdom and the Land of the Mikado or China, Japan and Chorea
(J.H Moore and Company, 1894), 486.

61
  Bernard Brauchli,
The Clavichord
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 54.

62
  Ibid., 54.

63
  
Vaqizaxis
[
wakizashi
= dagger(s)].

64
  Irina Metzler,
Disability in Medieval Europe
(London: Routledge, 2006), 78.

65
  In Korea, too, the blind were not thought of as handicapped and a burden for others. Specifically, in Korea shamanism (fortune-telling, exorcism and benediction all in one) was “big business” and one of the two principle classes of shamans was blind. In China as well, blind men often found work turning power-wheels for mills, while blind women became prostitutes (as was often the case in Japan).

66
  Roger Ekrich,
At Day's End: Night in Times Past
(New York: W.W. Norton, 2005).

67
  George Irving Hale, “Games and Social Pastimes in the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age.”
Hispanic Review
: 8(1940):219–241. See also Alessandro Arcangeli,
Recreation in the Renaissance
(London: Palgrave, 2003).

68
  Norbert Elias,
The History of Manners
(New York: Pantheon, 1978 [1939]), 203–204; Norman Davies,
Europe: A History
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 543.

69
  
Serões
, which does indeed translate as ‘
soirées
.' However, most contemporary English speakers think of a
soirée
as an evening party that does not involve a theatrical presentation. We believe Frois had the latter in mind and thus our qualifying bracket [theatrical].

70
  
Sacana
(
sakana
).

71
  
Nas fulias
. Note the plural rather than the singular, which is why we have rendered it as ‘merrymaking,' rather than as the old Portuguese dance known as the
fulia
. It is actually this former sense that has come to be associated with the singular
fulia
in Portuguese today.

72
  According to James Murdoch,
A History of Japan
. 3 Vols. (New York: Ungar Publishing, 1964), II, P.I, 79, the Jesuits bitterly complained about the scandalous behavior of Portuguese seamen and merchants who began arriving in Japan after c. 1585; previously they had been well behaved.

73
  Dilwyn Knox, “
Disciplina
: The Monastic and Clerical Origins of European Civility,” In
Renaissance Society and Culture
, John Monfasani and Ronald G. Musto, eds., pp. 107–137 (New York: Italica Press, 1991).

74
  Edward S. Morse,
Japan Day By Day, 1877, 1878–1879, 1882–1883
. 2 Vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917), I, 128.

75
  See Paul Lacroix,
Manners, Customs and Dress During the Middle Ages and Renaissance
(Ebook 10940, 2004; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ploughmen_Fac_simile_of_a_Miniature_in_a_very_ancient_Anglo_Saxon_Manuscript_published_by_Shaw_with_legend_God_Spede_ye_Plough_and_send_us_Korne_enow.png).

76
  Morse,
Japan Day by Day
, I, 139. See also Jiro Iinuma, “The Meiji System: The Revolution of Rice Cultivation Technology in Japan.” Agricultural History: 43 (1969): 289–296.

14   Various and extraordinary things that do not fit neatly in the preceding chapters

1. We strike a fire using the right hand, with the left hand holding the flint; they strike with the left, holding the flint in the right
.

This chapter certainly lives up to its billing as
miscellanea
, as Frois contrasts everything from picking your nose to matters of crime and punishment. Frois nevertheless understood that “simple things” like gift wrapping or assisting others could have profound consequences in Japan. To give an example, back home in Europe a teenager or adult who got in trouble with the law was apt to call for a priest. A Jesuit priest in Japan, where “mandatory sentencing” was more the rule (see
#7
and
#8
below), did not have the power and authority that he might have enjoyed in Europe. It was important for a Jesuit not to offend a
daimyo
or samurai by asserting himself in situations where, from a Japanese perspective, a priest did not belong.

Frois got this very first contrast half right, for while the Japanese held the flint with their right hand, they also struck with it. The left hand held a piece of wood shaped like a blackboard-eraser with a runner of metal embedded in it (often a piece of sickle blade). Because it was larger and heavier than the flint, it remained stationary while the flint or firestone did the moving/striking. Note that this Japanese method of spark-generation, called
kiribi
, also was used for healing, exorcism, and in Edo at least, for what might be called “charming departures.” In the last case, the eraser-shaped wood with the metal blade was held up by the host, above and behind the shoulder of a departing guest. Just before the guest stepped away, the steel was struck with the stone, sending a small shower of sparks out in front of the guest.