Hildreth's "Japan as It Was and Is": A Handbook of Old Japan, Volume 1 (of 2)

[1] Omitted in this edition.—Edr.

[2] Omitted in this edition.—Edr.

[3] The true distance is about five hundred miles; but, possibly, by miles Marco Polo may have intended Chinese li, of which there are nearly three in our mile.

[4] A name applied to part of China, south of the Hoang-ho, held by the Sung Dynasty till A. D. 1276.—K. M.

[5] Marsden, the English translator and annotator of Marco Polo, supposes that Zaitun was the modern Amoy, and Kinsai either Ningpo or Chusan. The Chinese annalists, on the other hand, seem to make the expedition start from Corea, which is much more probable, as that province is separated from Japan by a strait of only about a hundred miles in breadth. It was by this Corean strait that, three hundred years later, the Japanese retorted this invasion.

[6] Marsden remarks upon this date as evidently wrong. Indeed, it is given quite differently in different early editions of the travels. Marsden thinks it should be 1281. This is the date assigned to the invasion by the Chinese books. The older Japanese annals place it in 1284. In the chapter of Marco Polo which follows the one above quoted, and which is mainly devoted to the islands of southeastern Asia, he seems to ascribe to the Japanese the custom of eating their prisoners of war—a mistake which, as his English translator and commentator observes, might easily arise from transferring to them what he had heard of the savage inhabitants of some of the more southern islands.

The Mongol invasion took place in the fourth year of Kōan [A. D. 1281].—K. M.

[7] As this chronicle, which is the oldest Japanese history, is stated to have been originally published A. D. 720, it must be from a continuation of it that Siebold, or rather his assistant, Hoffman, translates.

[A translation by W. G. Aston is published by the Japan Society, London.—Edr.]

[8] This is the equivalent, it is to be supposed, of the Japanese date mentioned in the chronicle.

[9] Hildreth is here too skeptical. All the events mentioned in the text really took place between A. D. 1268 and 1281.—K. M.

[10] Galvano’s book in the translation, published by Hackluyt, in 1601, may be found in the supplement to Hackluyt’s collection of voyages, London, 1811. The original work was printed by the pious care of Francis de Sousa Tauares, to whom Galvano left it, on his death-bed.

[11] See Appendix, Note D.

[12] A Portuguese coin, as corresponding to which in value the Spanish translator of Pinto gives ducats, which, of silver, were about equal to a dollar of our money.

[13] This Portuguese colony was of no long continuance. It was soon broken up by the Chinese, as Pinto intimates, through the folly of the Portuguese residents.

[14] It is difficult to understand by what mistake Charlevoix, in his “Histoire du Japan,” ascribes this discovery to the same year, 1542, as that of the three Portuguese mentioned by Galvano. Pinto’s chronology is rather confused, but it is impossible to fix this voyage to Japan earlier than 1545.

[15] Probably a corruption of Tenjikujin, or the people of Tenjiku (India).—Edr.

[16] The terms Chengecu and Chenghequu are represented in two letters, one dated in 1651 (“Selectarum Epistolarum ex India,” Lib. i.), addressed to Xavier by a companion of his; the other, dated in 1560, and written by Lawrence, a converted Japanese and a Jesuit (Ibid., Lib. ii), as commonly employed in Japan to designate Europe.

Golownin mentions that at the time of his imprisonment (1812) he found a prophecy in circulation among the Japanese that they should be conquered by a people from the north. Possibly both these prophecies—that mentioned by Pinto and that by Golownin—might be a little colored by the patriotic hopes of the European relaters.

[17] A tael is about an ounce and a third English. The tael is divided into ten mas; the mas into ten kandarins; the kandarin into ten kas; and these denominations (the silver passing by weight) are in general use throughout the far East. Sixteen taels make a katty (about a pound and a third avoirdupois), and one hundred katties a picul,—these being the mercantile weights in common use.

[18] See Appendix, Note C.

[19] The kingdom or province of Bungo is situated on the east coast of the second in size and southernmost in situation of the three larger Japanese islands, off the southeast extremity of which lies the small island of Tanegashima, where Pinto represents himself as having first landed.

The name “Bungo” was frequently extended by the Portuguese to the whole large island of which it formed a part, though among them the more common designation of that island, after they knew it to be such (for they seem at first to have considered it a part of Nippon), was Shimo.[A] This name, Shimo, appears to have been only a modification of the term shima (or, as the Portuguese wrote it, xima), the Japanese word for island, and as such terminating many names of places. On our maps this island is called Kiūshiū, meaning, as Kämpfer tells us, “Country of Nine,” from the circumstance of its being divided into nine provinces, which latter appears to be the correct interpretation. There are in use in Japan Chinese as well as Japanese names of provinces and officers (the Chinese probably a translation of the Japanese); and not only the names Nippon and Kiūshiū, but that of Bungo (to judge from the terminal n of the first syllable), are of Chinese origin.

[20] The Japanese date by the years of the reign of the Dairi, or Mikado (of whom more hereafter), and they also, for ordinary purposes, employ the Chinese device of nengō. These are periods, or eras, of arbitrary length, from one year to many, appointed at the pleasure of the reigning Dairi, named by him, and lasting till the establishment of a new nengō. For convenience, every new nengō, and also every new reign, begins chronologically with the new year, the old nengō and old reign being protracted to the end of the year in which it closes. [See Notes G and H in Appendix.—Edr.]

The Japanese month is alternately twenty-nine and thirty days, of which every year has twelve, with a repetition of one of the months, in seven years out of every nineteen, so as to bring this reckoning by lunar months into correspondency with the course of the earth round the sun; this method being based on a knowledge of the correspondency of two hundred and thirty-five lunations with nineteen solar years. According to Titsingh, every thirty-third month is repeated, so as to make up the necessary number of intercalary months, the number of days in these intercalary months being fixed by the almanacs issued at Miyako. The commencement of the Japanese year is generally in February. The months are divided into two distinct portions, of fifteen days, each having a distinct name, and the first day of each of which serves as a Sunday, or holiday. This regulation of the Japanese calendar is borrowed from the Chinese, as also the use of the period of sixty years corresponding to our century. [See also paper on “Japanese Calendars,” in vol. xxx of the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.—Edr.]

[21] No such province is mentioned in the lists of Japanese provinces by Father Rodriguez, Kämpfer, and Klaproth. [Name of a bay.—Edr.]

[22] Regarding the portrait of the Portuguese, we know not on what authority Siebold based his statement.—K. M.

[23] “They wished to have our portraits taken at full length, and Teisuke, who knew how to draw, was appointed to execute them. He drew them in India ink, but in such a style that each portrait would have passed for that of any other individual as well as of him it was intended for. Except the long beard, we could trace no resemblance in them. The Japanese, however, sent them to the capital, where they were probably hung up in some of their galleries of pictures.”—Golownin’s “Captivity in Japan,” vol. i, ch. 4.

[24] In the Latin version of the Jesuit letters he is called Cosmus Turrianus.

[25] Nippon is the name of the whole country; Kondo, of the main island.—Edr.

[26] It appears from Golownin that there are also smaller packages, of which three make the large one. The price of rice varied, of course; but Kämpfer gives five or six taels of silver as the average value of the koku. Titsingh represents the koku as corresponding to the gold koban, the national coin of the Japanese. The original koban weighed forty-seven kandarins, or rather more than our eagle; but till the year 1672 it passed in Japan as equivalent to about six taels of silver. The present koban contains only half as much gold; and yet, as compared with silver, is rated still higher. The koban is figured by Kämpfer as an oblong coin rounded at the ends, the surface, on one side, marked with four rows of indented lines, and bearing at each end the arms or symbol of the Dairi, and between them a mark showing the value, and the signature of the master of the mint. The other side was smooth, and had only the stamp of the inspector-general of gold and silver money. Kämpfer also figures the ōban, which even in his time had become very rare, similar to the koban, but of ten times the weight and value. A third gold coin was the ichibu, figured by Kämpfer as an oblong square. According to Thunburg, it was of the value of a quarter of the koban. Silver passed by weight. The Japanese do not appear to have had any silver coins, unless lumps of irregular shape and weight, but bearing certain marks and stamps, were to be so considered. In ordinary retail transactions copper zeni, or kas, as the Chinese name was, were employed. They were round, with a square hole in the middle, by which they were strung. Some were of double size and value, and some of iron. For further information on the Japanese monetary system, and on the present state and value of the Japanese circulating medium, see Chapters XXV, XXXVIII, and XLV.

[27] Dairi, in its original sense, is said by Rodriguez, in his Japanese grammar, to signify rather the court than the person of the theocratic chief to whom it is applied; and so of most of the titles mentioned in the text.

[28] According to Rodriguez, there had been also an ancient military nobility, called buke; but in the course of the civil wars many families of it had become extinct, while other humble families, who had risen by way of arms, mostly formed the existing nobility.

[29] According to the Japanese historical legends, the office of Kubō-Sama, originally limited to the infliction of punishments and the suppression of crimes, was shared, for many ages, between the two families of Genji and Heiji, till about 1180, when a civil war broke out between these families, and the latter, having triumphed, assumed such power that the Dairi commissioned Yoritomo, a member of the defeated family of Genji, to inflict punishment upon him. Yoritomo renewed the war, killed Heiji, and was himself appointed Kubō-Sama, but ended with usurping a greater power than any of his predecessors.

[30] See Satow’s papers on “Pure Shintō” and “Japanese Rituals,” in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.—Edr.

[31] The word Kami is also doubly used as a title of honor conferred with the sanction of the Dairi, somewhat equivalent, says Kämpfer, in one case, to the European title of chevalier, and in the other, to that of count. Golownin insists that it implies something spiritual.

[32] The Sun-Goddess, also called Ama-terasu-no-Mikoto.—Edr.

[33] The following system of Japanese cosmogony is given by Klaproth, as contained in an imperfect volume of Chinese and Japanese chronology, printed in Japan, in Chinese characters, without date, but which for more than a hundred years past has been in the Royal Library of Paris: “At first the heaven and the earth were not separated, the perfect principle and the imperfect principle were not disjoined; chaos, under the form of an egg, contained the breath [of life], self-produced, including the germs of all things. Then what was pure and perfect ascended upwards, and formed the heavens (or sky), while what was dense and impure coagulated, was precipitated, and produced the earth. The pure and excellent principles formed whatever is light, whilst whatever was dense and impure descended by its own gravity; consequently the sky was formed prior to the earth. After their completion, a divine being (Kami) was born in the midst of them. Hence, it has been said, that at the reduction of chaos, an island of soft earth emerged, as a fish swims upon the water. At this period a thing resembling a shoot of the plant ashi [Eryanthus Japonicus] was produced between the heavens and the earth. This shoot was metamorphosed and became the god [first of the seven superior gods] who bears the honorific title of Kuni-toko-dachi-no-mikoto, that is to say, the venerable one who constantly supports the empire.”

[34] In reading the accounts of the bonzes, and of the delusions which they practised on the people, contained in the letters of the Catholic missionaries, and the denunciations levelled against them in consequence, in those letters, one might almost suppose himself to be reading a Protestant sermon against Popery, or an indignant leader against the papists in an evangelical newspaper. The missionaries found, however, at least they say so, among other theological absurdities maintained by the bonzes, a number of the “damnable Lutheran tenets.”

[35] Buddha, or the sage (which the Chinese, by the metamorphosis made by their pronunciation of most foreign proper names, have changed first into Fuh-hi, and then into Fuh, or Ho), is not the personal name of the great saint, the first preacher of the religion of the Buddhists, but a title of honor given to him after he had attained to eminent sanctity. According to the concurrent traditions of the Buddhists in various parts of Asia, he was the son of a king of central India, Suddho-dana, meaning in Sanscrit pure-eating king, or eater of pure food, which the Chinese have translated into their language by Zung-fung-wang. His original name was Lêh-ta; after he became a priest he was called Sakia-mouni, that is, devotee of the race of Sakia, whence the appellation Shaka, by which he is commonly known in Japan, and also the name Shaku, applied to the patriarch or head of the Buddhist church. Another Sanscrit patronymic of Buddha is Gautama, which in different Buddhist nations has, in conjunction with other epithets applied to him, been variously changed and corrupted. Thus among the Siamese he is called Summana-kodom.

The Buddhist mythology includes several Buddhas who preceded Sakia-mouni, and the first of whom, Adi-Buddha, or the first Buddha, was, when nothing else was, being in fact the primal deity and origin of all things. It seems to be this first Buddha who is worshipped in Japan under the name of Amida, and whose priests form the most numerous and influential of the Buddhist orders. Siebold seems inclined to regard them as pure monotheists.

The birth of Shaka is fixed by the Japanese annalists, or at least by the book of chronology quoted in a previous note, in the twenty-sixth year of the emperor Chaou-wang, of the Chinese Chew Dynasty, 1027 B. C. 1006 B. C., he fled from his father’s house to become a priest; 998 B. C., he reached the highest step of philosophical knowledge; 949 B. C., being seventy-nine years of age, he entered into Nirvana, that is, died. He was succeeded by a regular succession of Buddhist patriarchs, of whom twenty-eight were natives of Hindustan. The twenty-eighth emigrated to China, A. D. 490, where he had five Chinese successors. Under the second of these, A. D. 552, Buddhism was introduced into Japan. A. D. 713, the sixth and the last Chinese patriarch died, since which the Chinese Buddhists, and those who have received the religion from them, seem not to have acknowledged any general, but only a local, head in each country.

[36] In connection with this chapter, read “The Religions of Japan” (Griffis).—Edr.

[37] For an account of the Japanese language, literature, etc., see “A Handbook of Modern Japan” (Clement).—Edr.

[38] “All military men, the servants of the Shōgun, and persons holding civil offices under the government, are bound, when they have committed any crime, to rip themselves up, but not till they have received an order from the court to that effect; for, if they were to anticipate this order, their heirs would run the risk of being deprived of their places and property. For this reason all the officers of government are provided, in addition to their usual dress, and that which they put on in the case of fire, with a suit necessary on such occasions, which they carry with them whenever they travel from home. It consists of a white robe and a habit of ceremony, made of hempen cloth, and without armorial bearings.

“As soon as the order of the court has been communicated to the culprit, he invites his intimate friends for the appointed day, and regales them with sake. After they have drank together some time, he takes leave of them, and the order of the court is then read to him once more. The person who performs the principal part of this tragic scene then addresses a speech or compliment to the company, after which he inclines his head towards the floor, draws his sabre, and cuts himself with it across the belly, penetrating to the bowels. One of his confidential servants, who takes his place behind him, then strikes off his head. Such as wish to display superior courage, after the cross-cut, inflict a second longitudinally, and then a third in the throat. No disgrace attaches to such a death, and the son succeeds to his father’s place.

“When a person is conscious of having committed some crime, and apprehensive of being thereby disgraced, he puts an end to his own life, to spare his family the ruinous consequences of judicial proceedings. This practice is so common that scarcely any notice is taken of such an event. The sons of all persons of quality exercise themselves in their youth, for five or six years, with a view that they may perform the operation, in case of need, with gracefulness and dexterity; and they take as much pains to acquire this accomplishment, as youth among us to become elegant dancers or skilful horsemen; hence the profound contempt of death which they imbibe in their earliest years. This disregard of death, which they prefer to the slightest disgrace, extends to the very lowest classes among the Japanese.”—Titsingh, “Illustrations of Japan,” p. 147.

[39] His family name was Ōtomo, and his given name was Yoshishige.—Edr.

[40] Pinto gives a long account of this dispute, which has been substantially adopted by Lucina, the Portuguese biographer of Xavier, whose life of the saint was published in 1600, and who, in composing it, had the use of Pinto’s yet unpublished manuscript. Tursellini’s Latin biography of Xavier was published at Rome and Antwerp, 1596. From these was compiled the French life, by Bouhours, which our Dryden translated. Tursellini published also four books of Xavier’s epistles, translated into Latin. Eight books of new epistles afterwards appeared. Charlevoix remarks of them, “that they are memoirs, of which it is not allowable to question the sincerity, but which furnish very little for history, which was not the writer’s object.” They are chiefly homilies.

[41] See Satow’s paper in vol. vii of the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.—Edr.

[42] For some further remarks on Pinto and his book, see Appendix, Note D.

[43] Of Father de Torres we have four letters rendered into Latin, and of Vilela, in the same collections, seven, giving, among other things, a pretty full account of his visit to and residence at Miyako. For the description, however, of that capital, and the road to it, I prefer to rely on lay travellers, of whose observations, during a series of visits extending through more than two centuries, a full abstract will be found in subsequent chapters.

[44] The following passage, from Titsingh’s “Memoirs of the Shōguns,” may serve to shed some light upon the civil war raging in Japan when first visited by the Portuguese, and which continued down to the time of Nobunaga: “Takauji was of the family of Yoshiiye, who was descended from Seiwa-tennō, the fifty-sixth Dairi. He divided the supreme power between his two sons, Yoshi-nori and Motouji, giving to each the government of thirty-three provinces. The latter, who ruled over the eastern part, was styled Kamakura-no-Shōgun, and kept his court at Kamakura, in the province of Sagami. Yoshi-nori, to whom were allotted the western provinces, resided at Miyako, with the title of Fuku-Shōgun.

“Takauji, in dividing the empire between his two sons, was influenced by the expectation that, in case either of them should be attacked, his brother would afford him assistance. This partition, on the contrary, only served to arm them one against the other; the country was involved in continual war, and the princes, though brothers, were engaged in frequent hostilities, which terminated only with the destruction of the branch of Miyako.”

[45] See note on page 84.

[46] For a particular description of the dress of Japanese, see Chap. XLI.

[47] His reception of the Japanese and his reformation of the calendar are both recorded together in his epitaph.

[48] The Letters, Briefs, and the Discourse on Obedience, above quoted, may be found at length in Latin, in the very valuable and rich collection, De Rebus Japonicis Indicis and Peruvianis Epistolæ Recentiores, edited by John Hay, of Dalgetty, a Scotch Jesuit, and a sharp controversialist, published in 1605; in Spanish, in Father Luys de Gusman’s Historia de los Missiones, que han hecho los Religioses de la Compania de Jesus, etc., published in 1601, of which the larger part is devoted to the Japanese mission; in Italian, in Father Daniel Batoli’s “Historia de la Compagnia de Gesu”; and in French, in Charlevoix’s “Histoire du Japon.” An Italian history of the mission was printed at Rome, 1585,—the same, I suppose, of which a Latin translation is given in Hay’s collection; and still rarer and more valuable one at Macao, in 1590, of which a further account will be found in a note at the end of the next chapter.

[49] The princes and nobles of Japan, and indeed most private individuals, have certain devices embroidered on their gowns, etc., which the Portuguese and the missionaries compared to the armorial bearings of Europe. [See paper on “Japanese Heraldry” in vol. v of the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.—Edr.]

[50] During this residence at Macao the Japanese ambassadors were not idle. They were engaged upon a very remarkable work, printed at Macao in 1590 in Japanese and Latin, purporting to be composed by the ambassadors, and giving, by way of dialogue, an account not only of the embassy, but of Japan and of all the countries, European and Oriental, which they had visited. The Latin title is De Missione Legatorum Japonensium ad Romanam curiam, rebusque in Europa ac toto in itinere animadversis, Dialogus, etc.—“A Dialogue concerning the Japanese Embassy to the Court of Rome, and the things observed in Europe and on the whole journey, collected from the journal of the ambassadors, and rendered into Latin by Ed. de Laude, priest of the Society of Jesus.” It is from this work, though he does not give the title of it, that Hackluyt extracted the “Excellent Treatise of the Kingdom of China and of the Estate and Government thereof,” contained in his second volume, and of which he speaks in his epistle dedicatory to that volume, first published in 1599, as “the most exact account of those parts that is yet come to light.” “It was printed,” he tells us, “in Latin, in Makoa, a city of China, in China paper, in the year 1590, and was intercepted in the great carac Madre de Dios, two years after, enclosed in a case of sweet cedar wood, and lapped up almost a hundred fold in fine Calicut cloth, as though it had been some incomparable jewel.”

[51] This letter, with the reply in the next chapter, is given by Froez, from whom Gusman has copied them.

[52] Letters from the ambassadors to Sixtus V, written at Nagasaki after their arrival there, and giving an account of their voyage home, may be found in Hay’s collection.

[53] Valignani was not the first European to obtain an imperial audience. The same favor had been granted, as already mentioned, by Yoshiteru to Father Vilela in 1559. Louis Froez had also been admitted, in 1565, to an audience of the same emperor, of which he has given a short but interesting account.

[54] See Satow’s paper on “The Origin of Spanish and Portuguese Rivalry in Japan,” in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.—Edr.

[55] We regret that the original of this letter has been lost, and we cannot, therefore, compare the translation with the original. But, at any rate, the date here given is erroneous. Valignani’s departure from Japan being in 1592, as is mentioned at the end of the next chapter, this letter must have been written in 1592 (first year of Bunroku).—K. M.

[56] The number of troops here set down is too small.—K. M.

[57] According to the letters of Louis Froez, the prince of Ōmura joined the army against Corea with one thousand men, the king of Arima with two thousand, and the king of Bungo with ten thousand, besides mariners and mean people to carry the baggage. The entire number of men-at-arms in the empire, at this time, is stated to have been, by a written catalogue, three hundred thousand. The victories mentioned in the text were gained by an advanced body of fifteen thousand men. The Coreans are described by Froez as different from the Chinese in race and language, and superior to them in personal prowess, yet as in a manner tributary to China, whose laws, customs, and arts they had borrowed. They are represented as good bowmen, but scantily provided with other weapons, and therefore not able to encounter the cannon, lances, and swords of the Japanese, who had been, beside, practised by continual wars among themselves. But in nautical affairs Froez reckons the Chinese and Coreans as decidedly superior to the Japanese. Translations from several Jesuit letters relating to the Corean war will be found in Hackluyt, vol. iv, near the end. Siebold, relying upon Japanese authorities, insists that it was through Corea that the arts, knowledge, language, and written characters of China were introduced into Japan.

[58] See Aston’s papers on “Hideyoshi’s Invasion of Korea,” in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.—Edr.

[59] Yet Taikō-Sama was not in general cruel. A curious letter of Father Organtino Brixiano, written in 1594, enumerates, among the reasons of Taikō’s great success, his clemency to the conquered princes, whom he never put to death after having once promised them their lives, and to whom he granted a revenue, small, but sufficient to maintain them, and which served to keep them quiet. Another reason was his having established for his soldiers during war a commissariat, of which he paid the expense, by which they were rendered much more efficient. He also kept them employed, for, besides the army maintained in Corea, he set them to work in building or repairing palaces and fortresses, or in other public works. At this time he had thirty thousand men at work upon one castle near Miyako, one hundred thousand at Fushimi. He also broke the power of the princes by transferring them to distant parts, while he inspired general respect by his strict justice, from which he was swerved by no considerations of relationship, family, or influence, secular or religious. Another reason mentioned by the missionary does not correspond so well with Taikō’s letter to the viceroy of Goa. He is said not only to have disarmed the country people, by whose strength and wealth the petty kingdoms had been sustained, but also to have reduced them to extreme poverty; but this, perhaps, applies rather to the petty lords than to the actual cultivators. This letter is in Hay’s collection, and a part of it, in English, may be found in Hackluyt’s fourth volume.

[Dening’s “New Life of Toyotomi Hideyoshi” is the best work dealing with the career of “the Napoleon of Japan.”—Edr.]

[60] Some curious information respecting the Philippines is contained in a letter dated Mexico, 1590, intercepted on its way to Spain by some English cruiser, and translated and published by Hackluyt in his fourth volume. This letter represents the country as very unhealthy “for us Spaniards,” of whom not more than one thousand were left alive out of fourteen thousand who had gone there in the twenty years preceding. It seems, too, that the Spaniards at Manila, not less than the Portuguese at Macao, had succeeded in opening a trade with China. “There is a place in China, which is an harbor called Macaran, which the king has given to the Spaniards freely; which shall be the place where the ships shall come to traffic. For in this harbor there is a great river, which goeth up into the main land, unto divers towns and cities, which are near to this river.” Where was this Spanish Chinese port?

The annual galleons to New Spain were to Manila what the annual carac to Japan was to Macao,—a main support of the place. The privilege of putting a certain amount of goods on board was distributed among all the resident merchants, offices, and public institutions.

[61] That any Japanese had been in America earlier than 1610 A. D. is not to be found in any Japanese sources.—K. M.

[62] The fathers resident at this college had been by no means idle. They had printed there, in 1593, a Japanese grammar, prepared by Father Alvarez, and, in 1595, in a thick quarto of upwards of nine hundred pages, a Portuguese, Latin, and Japanese Lexicon. A vocabulary entirely Japanese was printed at Nagasaki, 1598.

[63] Yet the Japanese are said to maintain to this day a garrison on the coast (Golownin, vol. iii, ch. 9), and to receive tribute from Corea; but this seems doubtful.

[64] Go-kirai, including Yamashiro, Yamato, Kawachi, Izumi, and Settsu.—Edr.

[65] Father Valignani died in 1606, at Macao, whither he had gone to look after the Chinese missions, a few Jesuits having at length got admission into that empire. Father Rodriguez, in his annual letter of 1606, from Miyako, in noticing Valignani’s death, speaks of him as justly entitled to be called the apostle of the missions of Japan and China,—a title, indeed, which he had already received from the king of Portugal. Purchas, who published a few years later, mentions him as the “great Jesuit.” He enjoyed in his own day, and deservedly, a reputation quite equal to that of our most famous modern missionaries; but these missionary reputations are apt not to be very long-lived. Five of his letters are in the collection of Hay, “De Rebus Japonicis,” etc.

The death of Father Louis Froez has been mentioned in the previous chapter. We have of his letters, in Maffei’s “Select Epistles,” nine, written between the years 1563 and 1573; and in Hay’s collection, eight, written between 1577 and 1596. Many of these are of great length. That of February, 1565, contains a curious account of what he saw at Miyako, on his going thither with Almeida to aid Vilela, who had labored there alone for six years with only Japanese assistants. The translation of it in Hackluyt has an important passage in the beginning, giving a general account of the Japanese, not in the Latin editions that I have seen. Those in Hay’s collection are rather reports than letters. That of 1586 contains an account of Valignani’s first interview with Taikō-Sama, that of 1592 a full account of Valignani’s embassy, the second of 1595 the history of Taikō-Sama’s quarrel with his nephew, and the two of 1596 a full account of the first martyrdoms and of the state of the church at the time.

Almeida had died in 1583, after a missionary life of twenty-eight years. We have five of his letters, which show him a good man, but exceedingly credulous, even for a Portuguese Jesuit.

[66] This chapter, also the twenty-second, is taken, with alterations and additions, from an article (written by the compiler of this work) in “Harper’s Magazine” for January, 1854.

[67] See Appendix, Note E.

[68] An account of Adams’ voyage, in two letters of his from Japan, may be found in Purchas, “His Pilgrimes,” part i, book iii, sect. 5. Purchas also gives, book ii, chap. v, Captain Wert’s adventures and return; and in book iii, chap. i, sect. 4, a narrative by Davis, who acted as chief pilot of the first Dutch voyage to the East Indies, under Houtman. Hackluyt gives, in his second volume, a narrative of Lancaster’s voyage, taken down from the mouth of Edmund Baker, Lancaster’s lieutenant. Henry May’s narrative of the same voyage is given in Hackluyt’s second volume. What is known of the English expedition, fitted out in 1594, will be found in Hackluyt, vol. iv, and “Pilgrimes,” book iii, chap. i, sect. 2. The English East India Company was formed in 1600, and Lancaster was immediately despatched on a second voyage “with four tall ships and a victualler,” and by him the English trade was commenced.—Pilgrimes, book iii, chap. iii, sect. 1. [Ten extant letters of Will Adams may be found in “Letters written by the English Residents in Japan,” edited by K. Murakawn, and published in Tōkyō. See also paper by Dr. L. Riess on the “History of the English Factory at Kirado,” in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.—Edr.]

[69] See Klaproth’s translation (“Nov. Journal Asiatique,” tom. ii), of a curious Japanese tract on the Wealth of Japan, written in 1708.

See note on page 152.—Edr.

[70] This letter is given by Purchas, vol. i, p. 406. It has neither date nor signature, nor does it appear who is responsible for the correctness of the translation.

[71] It must have been in the next year (1609).—K. M.

[72] Most likely this “box” was formed by movable screens. See Chapter XXXVIII.