The First European Description of Japan, 1585 (63 page)

It so happens that what Frois describes for Japan is common on television “Easterns” in Japan today: a woman goes in search of a noble or
tono
, to right things for her wronged husband, or for a loan to pay for a sick child's medicine, only to be sexually assaulted, after which, or during which, she commits suicide! The coincidence with Frois' observation makes one wonder, although clearly not all
tonos
were monstrous.

59. Among us, those who make up [
after a disagreement
] ask forgiveness of each other or embrace; in Japan, the guilty one rubs his hands in front of the other and drinks from his sake cup
.

Hand rubbing is a sign of being contrite and
sake
is offered to say “I forgive you.”

60. Among us, the blade of a hoe is short and broad; in Japan, they are very long, narrow, and curved inward
.

Actually European farmers made use of a variety of hoes, depending on the soil being worked and the crops cultivated. The short, broad-bladed hoe mentioned by Frois is what is commonly sold today in hardware stores and might be described as an all-purpose or “standard” hoe.

After the eighth century the Japanese increasingly shifted to dry farming, with occasional flooding of rice paddies, as opposed to a “constant deep-irrigation system” of rice cultivation. This shift meant less reliance on the Chinese plow (a shallow draft plow) and more reliance on hoes that were capable of deep tillage. As Morse suggested, the Japanese hoe may have looked “clumsy,” but it's long, slightly curved blade (with sharp cutting edges) made it excellent for reaching down into the soil and cutting and extracting roots.
⁹⁶

61. Flutes in Europe are made of wood and have orifices that are fingered; in Japan they are made of cane [
bamboo
] and are open on both ends
.

European flutes were made from a dense wood such as boxwood and fell into one of two general categories: a somewhat shrill “military” instrument that had a limited range and was used to direct troops on the battlefield, and a softer-sounding chamber instrument that played in the upper range and came in many different sizes and with different pitches.
⁹⁷

The Japanese flute works like the South American
cana
; one blows across the end of it, rather than across a hole, as in the case of the European “transverse” (side-blown) flute. Playing a Japanese flute is somewhat like producing sound by blowing across the top of a pop bottle; your breath has to strike the acoustic edge at a perfect angle to produce any sound. As a result, many people cannot even make a noise come from Japanese flutes (especially the large
shakuhachi
).
Once mastered, however, the great freedom of attack, coupled with different fingerings, permits remarkable nuance or tone color.

62. Among us, the hair of young servants is kept short and the manes of horses are allowed to grow; in Japan, they cut the horses' manes and let the hair of the komonos [
servants
] grow
.

In
Chapter 1
we noted that in Europe long flowing hair was a sign of power and virility; short hair was a sign of subordination (the heads of slaves and some vassals were completely shaven).

63. We find the grapes and figs of Portugal to be pleasing and very delicious; the Japanese abhor figs and do not particularly enjoy grapes
.

During the long Arab occupation of Iberia (710–1492) the invaders shared with the locals their love of fountains, gardens, and orchards (the
Qur'an
repeatedly speaks of heaven as “gardens graced with flowing streams”). By the time Frois wrote, figs were grown and consumed throughout southern Spain and Portugal; grapes had been cultivated for at least two thousand years (even before the wine-loving Phoenicians showed up in 1100 BC).

As Frois suggests, the Japanese did not have fig trees and they were not wild about the dried figs introduced by the Portuguese.

64. Among us, it is not customary for domestic servants to invite their masters and mistresses into their homes; in Japan this is done frequently, sometimes out of obligation and sometimes not
.

More house parties (see
#34
above)! Again, Frois' description of Japanese practice is absolutely different from what is now the norm in Japan. Today people do not ordinarily invite others, particularly their superiors, into their homes.

65. In Europe, a servant does not wear his master's clothes when he accompanies him; the lords in Japan lend their servants their clothing and gilded katanas to increase their own pomp and authority
.
⁹⁸

In Frois' Europe it was common for servants to wear “liveries”—simple garments or uniforms that often signaled through particular color combinations or emblems the noble family to which the servants were “attached.” That being said, apparently it was not uncommon for domestic servants to be given their employer's hand-me-down clothing. Although servants often sold this clothing to second-hand clothes dealers,
⁹⁹
Roberto de Nola complained in 1529 of maidservants who, “forgetting the humility of old Portugal,” wore the same good clothing of their mistresses.
¹⁰⁰

Frois exaggerates when he suggests that Japanese nobles “lent” their fancy clothes and swords to their servants. More commonly Japanese nobles lavishly outfitted their servants to better reflect the wealth and authority of the master's household or lineage.

1
  
Supis
[
supi
: winnow/s].

2
  A good part of Lisbon was destroyed by fire in 1369 and the “great fire of London” in 1666 destroyed as much as eighty percent of the city and some 13,000 homes. A.H. de Oliveira Marques,
Daily Life in Portugal in the Late Middle Ages
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971), 100–101; Adrian Tinniswood,
By Permission of Heaven
(New York: Riverhead Books, 2004).

3
  Tinniswood,
By Permission of Heaven
, 43–45; Penny Roberts, “Agencies Human and Divine: Fire in French Cities, 1520–1570”. In
Fear in Early Modern Society
, eds. William G. Naphy and Penny Roberts, pp. 9–27 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 13–14.

4
  Akiom Okada, trans. and ed.,
Yoroppa-Bunka to Nihon-Bunka
[European Culture and Japanese Culture] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1965).

5
  Edward S. Morse,
Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings
(New York: Dover Publications, 1961:[1886]),13.

6
  Basil Hall Chamberlain,
Things Japanese, Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected with Japan
. Fourth revised and enlarged edition (London: John Murray, 1902), 164.

7
  Ibid.

8
  Edward Muir,
Mad Blood Stirring: Vendetta in Renaissance Italy
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).

9
  Georgina Dopico Black,
Perfect Wives, Other Women: Adultery and the Inquisition in early Modern Spain
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 12.

10
  William E. Deal,
Handbook To Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 101; Paul Varley, “Law and Precepts for the Warrior Houses.” In
Sources of Japanese Tradition, Second Edition, Volume One: From Earliest Times to 1600
, eds. Wm. Theodore de Bary, D. Keene, G. Tanabe, and P. Varley, pp. 413–433 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).

11
  Wolhelm Heitmeyer and John Hagan, eds.
International Handbook of Violence Research
(Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), 48.

12
  Julius Ralph Ruff,
Violence in Early Modern Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 120–121.

13
  Valignano actually wrote to the Father General in Rome inquiring about a dispensation from the Church's prohibition on admitting individuals to religious orders that had killed another human being. Josef Franz Schütte, S.J.
Valignano's Mission Principles for Japan 1573–1582
. Volume I, Part II, trans. J. Coyne (St. Louis: Institute for Jesuit Sources, 1985), 62.

14
  Norbert Elias,
The History of Manners
(New York: Pantheon, 1978[1939]), 191–205.

15
  Edward Muir,
Ritual in Early Modern Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000[1997]), 147.

16
  John Briggs et. al.,
Crime and Punishment in England: An Introductory History
(London: Routledge, 1996), 73–74. See also Pieter Spierenburg, “The Body and State, Early Modern Europe.” In
The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society
, 44–71, eds. Norval Morris and David J. Rothman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

17
  Edward S. Morse,
Japan Day By Day, 1877, 1878–1879, 1882–1883
. 2 Vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917), II, 426.

18
  Natalie Zemon Davis,
Fiction in the Archives
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 36.

19
  Davis,
Fiction in the Archives
, 74–75.

20
  Varley, “Law and Precepts,” 421.

21
  Deal,
Handbook
, 102–103.

22
  Engelbert Kaempfer,
The History of Japan, Together with a Description of the Kingdom of Siam, 1690–92
. 3 Vols. (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons. 1906[1690–92]), II, 119–120.

23
  Sir Rutherford Alcock,
The Capital of the Tycoon: A Narrative of a Three Years' Residence in Japan
(London: Longman, Green, and Roberts, 1863), I, 64–65. 24 Spierenburg, “The Body and the State,” 46–50.

24
  Spierenburg, “The Body and the State,” 46–50.

25
  Michael Cooper,
They Came to Japan
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995[1965]), 166–167.

26
  Carletti, Francesco,
My Voyage Around the World
. Trans. Herbert Weinstock (New York: Pantheon Books, 1964[1610]).

27
  
Aubrey, John Brief Lives
, Volume II (I-Y). Andrew Clark ed.(Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1898), 84.

28
  Deal,
Handbook
, 103.

29
  
Sumario de Las Cosas de Japon (1583), Adiciones del Sumario de Japon
(1592). Ed. José Luis Alvarez-Taladriz (Tokyo: Sophia University), 29.

30
  Varley, “Law and Precepts,” 423.

31
  Frois speaks of
troncos
, which can be rendered as the stake or stocks but also as prison or jail;
alcaides
(judicial authorities),
meirinhos
(civil servants in the justice system) and
belenguins
(seconds-in-command to the
alcaides
, responsible for prisons).

32
  Spierenburg, “The Body and the State;” Edward M. Peters, “Prison before Prison: The Ancient and Medieval Worlds.” In
The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society
, 3–43, eds. Norval Morris and David J. Rothman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

33
  See Natasha Korda, “The Case of Moll Firth: Women's Work and the ‘All-Male Stage.'” In
Women Players in England, 1500–1660, Beyond the ‘All-Male Stage
,' eds. Pamela A. Brown and Peter Parolin, 71–88. (Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2005).

34
  H.C. Erik Midelfort,
History of Madness in Sixteenth Century Germany
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 117.

35
  Eliza R. Scidmore,
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1897), 144.

36
  Piero Camporesi,
The Fear of Hell: Images of Damnation and Salvation in Early Modern Europe
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991).

37
  
Tono
.

38
  
Historia de Japam
, ed. Jose Wicki, S.J. 5 vols. Lisbon: Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa. 1976–1984 [1597]) I, 120–123.

39
  Frois neglects to mention that this calendar also was common in Japan; it was only the degree to which the Islanders heeded it that was unique.

40
  Ibid., I, 121.

41
  
Correm em pedacos sempre a peso
.

42
  Vitorino Magálhes Godinho,
Os Descobrimentos E A Economia Mundial
(Lisbon: Editora Arcádia, 1963), I, 373.

43
  Herman van der Wee, “Money, Credit, and Banking Systems,” In The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Volume 5,
The Economic Organization of Early Modern Europe
, eds. Edwin Ernest Rich, C. H. Wilson, Michael Moïssey Postan, Peter Mathias, pp. 290–394 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 290–303.

44
  Diogo Ramada Curto, “Portuguese Navigations, The Pitfalls of National Histories.” In
Encompassing the Globe, Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries
, ed. J. Levinson, pp. 37–44. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 2007), 43.

45
  See Ethan Segal,
Coins, Trade, and the State: Economic Growth in Early Modern Japan
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011).

46
  
Dachen
, which is written in contemporary Portuguese as
dachém
. From the Malay
daching
, which in turn comes from the Chinese
tá-ching
, a large Chinese scale made of steel. Ricardo de la Fuente Ballesteros, ed. and trans.,
Tratado sobre las contradicciones y diferencias de costumbres entre los europeos y japoneses por Luis Frois
(Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca 2003[1585]).123, f.2.

47
  Disney,
A History of Portugal
, 140.