[73] Iyeyasu was sixty-six years old in 1609.—K. M.

[74] It is customary among the Japanese, on receiving a present from a superior, to touch the top of the head with it. This custom is alluded to in the king of Bungo’s letter to the Pope, pages 107 and 108.

[75] Descriptions of it will be found in Chapter XXXV, and also a census taken in 1690.

[76] This image was first set up in the year 1576 by the Emperor Taikō. The temple in which it was placed was destroyed by the great earthquake of 1596. The rebuilding was commenced in 1602. The colossus, however, was seriously injured by another earthquake in 1662, after which it was melted down, and a substitute prepared of wood covered with gilt paper. For a description of it, see Chapter XXXVII.

[77] The total number of baptisms in Japan, in 1606, according to the annual letter of that year, was almost three thousand. According to the letter of 1603, the number of confessions heard that year was eighty thousand. It appears from these letters that many female converts were made, among the higher classes, by the reputed efficacy of relics and the prayers of the church in cases of difficult labor.

[78] Don Rodrigo published in Spanish a narrative of his residence in Japan. Of this very rare and curious work an abstract, with extracts, is given in the “Asiatic Journal,” vol. ii, new series, 1830. The Spaniard is rather excessive in his estimates of population, but appears to have been sensible and judicious. His accounts are well borne out, as we shall see, by those of Saris, Kämpfer, and others. His whole title was Don Rodrigo de Vivero y Velasco.

[79] There is a narrative of this journey, rather a perplexed one, apparently written by Spex himself, added to the Relation of Verhœven’s voyage in Recueil des Voyages qui out servi a l’establisement de la Compagnie des Indes Oriental dans les Provinces Unies. A full abstract of it is in the great collection, “Hist. Gen. des Voyages,” vol. viii.

[80] They had about four hundred, and the Spaniards about twice as many.

[81] Kämpfer gives this translation, and also a fac-simile of the original Japanese. The same translation is also given by Spex.

[82] The Franciscan martyrology says he was born at Seville of the blood royal.

[83] See paper on “Date Masamune,” in vol. xxi of the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.—Edr.

[84] An account in Italian of Sotelo’s embassy, Historia del Regno de Voxu del Giaponi, etc., e del Ambasciata, etc., was published at Rome the same year, 1615. There is no Japanese letter of later date than 1601, in the collection of Hay, or, as perhaps it ought rather to be called, of Martin Nutius (at least so his name was written in Latin), citizen and bookseller of Antwerp, at the sign of the two storks, “a man zealous for the Catholic faith,” so Hay says, and by whom the collection was projected. He applied to the rector of the Jesuit college at Antwerp for an editor, and Hay was appointed. A few of the letters were translated by Hay; the greater part had already appeared as separate pamphlets, translated by others. Hay’s vehement Scotch controversial spirit breaks out hotly in some of the dedicatory letters which he has introduced. Of the Japanese letters subsequent to 1601 there is no collection. They were published separately as they were received, translated into Italian, from which were made French and Spanish translations.

[85] See “Letters written by the English Residents in Japan, 1611-1623.”—Edr.

[86] “I am called in the Japanese tongue Angin Sama. By that name am I known all the coast along.”—Letters of Adams, Jan. 12, 1614.

[87] This is difficult to decipher, except kokoro warui (“heart bad”), and may not refer at all to Coreans.—Edr.

[88] Properly the spirit enshrined in the temple.—Edr.

[89] Saris makes no mention of tea, not yet known to the Europeans, and which, perhaps, he confounded with this hot water. All subsequent travellers have noted this practice of the Japanese of drinking everything warm even to water. Cold drinks might tend too much to check the digestion of their vegetable food; at any rate, they are thought to be frequently the occasion of a violent colic, one of the endemic diseases of Japan.

[90] London had at that time a population of two hundred and fifty thousand.

[91] Probably the one at Kamakura.—Edr.

[92] See “Letters written by the English Residents in Japan, 1611-1623.”—K. M.

[93] This word, though not to be found in any of our dictionaries, was in current use, at this time, in the signification of head merchant of a factory ship, or trading post,—cape being, probably, a contraction of captain.

[94] Yezo, otherwise called Matsumae, the island north of Nippon. There is in Purchas, “Pilgrimes,” vol. i., p. 364, a short account of this island, obtained from a Japanese, who had been there twice. It was visited in 1620 by Jerome de Angelis, who sent home an account of its gold-washings, which reads very much like a California letter. It was also then as now the seat of extensive fisheries. The gold which it produced made the Dutch and English anxious to explore it. The Dutch made some voyages in that direction and discovered some of the southern Kuriles; but the geography of those seas remained very confused till the voyages of La Perouse. Matsumae was the scene of Golownin’s captivity in 1812. [See chap. xliii.] One of the ports granted to the Americans (Hakodate) is on the southern coast of this island.

[95] These privileges are given by Purchas, “Pilgrimes,” vol. i., p. 357, with a fac-simile of the original Japanese.

[96] The old Gothic edifice, afterwards destroyed in the great fire of 1666, is the one here referred to.

[97] This is the same temple and idol seen and described by Don Rodrigo.

[98] Captain Saris states that the New Testament had been translated into Japanese for their use; but this is doubtless a mistake. A number of books of devotion were translated into Japanese, but we hear nowhere else of any New Testament, nor were such translations a part of the Jesuit missionary machinery.

[99] Of another festival, on the 23d of October, Cocks gives the following account: “The kings with all the rest of the nobility, accompanied with divers strangers, met together at a summer-house, set up before the great pagoda, to see a horse-race. Every nobleman went on horseback to the place, accompanied with a rout of slaves, some with pikes, some with small shot, and others with bows and arrows. The pikemen were placed on one side of the street, and the shot and archers on the other, the middest of the street being left void to run the race; and right before the summer-house, where the king and nobles sat, was a round buckler of straw hanging against the wall, at which the archers on horseback, running a full career, discharged their arrows, both in the street and summer-house where the nobles sat.” This, from the date, would seem to be the festival of Tenshō Daijin. See p. 359. Caron, “Relation du Japon,” gives a similar description.

[100] Captain Saris’ account of his voyage and travels in Japan (which agrees remarkably with the contemporaneous observations of Don Rodrigo, and with the subsequent ones of Kämpfer and others), may be found in Purchas, “His Pilgrimes,” part i, book iv, chap. i, sect. 4-8. Cocks’ not less curious observations may be found in chap. iii, sect. 1-3, of the same book and part. There is also a readable summary of what was then known of Japan, in Purchas, “His Pilgrimage,” book v, chap. xv.

Rundall, in his “Memorials of the Empire of Japan,” printed by the Hackluyt Society, 1850, has republished Adams’ first letter, from two MSS. in the archives of the East India Company; but the variations from the text, as given by Purchas, are hardly as important as he represents. He gives also from the same records four other letters from Adams, not before printed. It seems from these letters, and from certain memoranda of Cocks, that there were three reasons why Adams did not return with Saris, notwithstanding the emperor’s free consent to his doing so. Besides his wife and daughter in England, he had also a wife, son, and daughter in Japan. Though he had the estate mentioned as given him by the emperor (called Hemmi, about eight miles from Uraga), on which were near a hundred households, his vassals, over whom he had power of life and death, yet he had little money, and did not like to go home with an empty purse. He had quarrelled with Saris, who had attempted to drive a hard bargain with him. The East India Company had advanced twenty pounds to his wife in England. Saris wanted him to serve the company for that sum and such additional pay as they might see fit to give. But Adams, whom the Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese, were all anxious to engage in their service, insisted upon a stipulated hire. He asked twelve pounds a month, but consented to take a hundred pounds a year, to be paid at the end of two years.

See “History of the English Factory at Hirado,” in vol. xxvi. of the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, and “Diary of Richard Cocks,” edited by Mr. N. Murakami, and published in Tōkyō in 1899.—Edr.

[101] He was deified, and is still worshipped under the name of Gongen-Sama, given to him after his death. It is from him that the reigning emperors of Japan trace their descent. He is buried at the temple of Nikkō, three days’ journey from Yedo, of the splendor of which marvellous stories are told. Caron, who wrote about the time it was built, speaks as if he had seen it. In 1782, M. Titsingh, then Dutch director, solicited permission to visit this temple, but was refused, as there was no precedent for such a favor.

[102] These modified privileges have been printed for the first time by Rundall.

[103] Lopo de Vega, the poet, who held the office of procurator fiscal to the apostolic chamber of the archbishopric of Toledo, celebrated the constancy of the Japanese martyrs, in a pamphlet entitled “Triumpho de la Fe en los Regnos del Japon, pas los annos de 1614 y 1615,” published in 1617. “Take away from this work,” says Charlevoix, “the Latin and Spanish verses, the quotations foreign to the subject, and the flourish of the style, and there will be nothing left of it.” The subject was much more satisfactorily treated by Nicholas Trigault, himself a very distinguished member of the Chinese mission, which he had joined in 1610. He returned to Europe in 1615, travelling on foot through Persia, Arabia, and Egypt, to obtain a fresh supply of laborers. Besides an account of the Jesuit mission to China (from which, next to Marco Polo’s travels, Europe gathered its first distinct notions of that empire), and a summary of the Japanese mission from 1609 to 1612, published during this visit to Europe, just before his departure, in 1618 (taking with him forty-four missionaries, who had volunteered to follow him to China), he completed four books concerning the triumphs of the Christians in the late persecution in Japan, to which, while at Goa, on his way to China, he added a fifth book, bringing down the narrative to 1616. The whole, derived from the annual Japanese letters, was printed in 1623, in a small quarto of five hundred and twenty pages, illustrated by numerous engravings of martyrdoms, and containing also a short addition, bringing down the story to the years 1617-1620, and a list of Japanese martyrs, to the number of two hundred and sixty-eight. There is also added a list of thirty-eight houses and residences (including two colleges, one at Arima, the other at Nagasaki) which the Jesuits had been obliged to abandon; and of five Franciscan, four Dominican, and two Augustinian convents, from which the inmates had been driven. These works of Trigault, published originally in Latin, were translated into French and Spanish. Various other accounts of the same persecution appeared in Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. “A Brief Relation of the Persecution lately made against the Catholic Christians of Japan” was published at London, 1616. Meanwhile Purchas, in the successive editions of his “Pilgrimage,” gave an account of the Japanese missions, which is the best and almost the only one (though now obsolete and forgotten) in the English language. That contained in the fourth edition (annexed as a fifth part to the “Pilgrimes”), and published in 1625, is the fullest. Captain Saris, according to Purchas, ascribed the persecution to the discovery, by the Japanese, that the Jesuits, under the cloak of religion, were but merchants.

[104] Such was the charge of the English. The Dutch narratives, however, abound with similar charges against the English. Both probably were true enough, as both nations captured all the Chinese junks they met.

[105] The date, as given by Purchas (evidently by a misprint), is 1610.

[106] The “Swan” and the “Attendance.” The number of English runaways was three, not six.—K. M.

[107] From Jacatra Pring proceeded to England with a cargo of pepper. It would seem that he had not forgotten his early voyages to the coast of America, for while his ship lay in the road of Saldanha, near the Cape of Good Hope, a contribution of seventy pounds eight shillings and sixpence was raised among the ship’s company to endow a school, to be called the East India School, in the colony of Virginia. Other contributions were made for this school, and the Virginia Company endowed it with a farm of a thousand acres, which they sent tenants to cultivate; but this, like the Virginia University, and many other public-spirited and promising enterprises, was ruined and annihilated by the fatal Indian massacre of 1622.

The “Royal James” carried also to England a copy in Japanese, still preserved in the archives of the East India Company, of Adams’ will. With commendable impartiality he divided his property, which, by the inventory annexed, amounted to nineteen hundred and seventy-two tael, two mas, four kandarins (two thousand four hundred and sixty-five dollars and twenty-nine cents), equally between his Japanese and his English family,—the English share to go, one half to the wife and the other half to the daughter, it not being his mind, so Cocks wrote, “his wife should have all, in regard she might marry another husband, and carry all from his child.” By the same ship Cocks made a remittance to the English family, having delivered “one hundred pounds sterling to diverse of the ‘Royal James’Company, entered into the purser’s books, to pay in England, two for one,”—a very handsome rate of exchange, which throws some light on the profits of East India trade in those days. Adams’ Japanese estate probably descended to his Japanese son; and who knows but the family survives to this day? The situation of this estate was but a very short distance from the spot where the recent American treaty was made; nor is the distance great from Shimoda, one of the ports granted by that treaty. The command of the fleet left behind, on Pring’s departure, devolved on Captain Robert Adams. According to Cocks’ account, the crews, both Dutch and English, inferior officers as well as men, were a drunken, dissolute, quarrelsome set. Rundall gives a curious record of the trial by jury and execution of an Englishman of this fleet for the murder of a Dutchman; and it seems the Dutch reciprocated by hanging a Dutchman for killing an Englishman. Master Arthur Hatch was chaplain of this fleet. Purchas gives (vol. i, part ii, book x, ch. i) a letter from him, written after his return, containing a brief sketch of his observations in Japan. Purchas also gives a letter from Cocks, which, in reference to the koku of rice, agrees very well with Titsingh’s statement quoted on page fifty-nine. Cocks represents the revenues of the Japanese princes as being estimated in mankoku of rice, each containing ten thousand koku, and each koku containing one hundred gantas (gantings), a ganta being a measure equal to three English ale pints.

Cocks states the revenue of the king of Hirado at six mankoku. He maintained four thousand soldiers, his quota for the emperor’s service being two thousand. The income of Kodzuke-no-Suke, formerly three, had lately been raised to fifteen mankoku. That of the king of Satsuma was one hundred, and that of the prince next in rank to the emperor, two hundred mankoku. The value of the mankoku was calculated at the English factory at nine thousand three hundred and seventy-five pounds, which would make the koku worth eighteen shillings and sixpence sterling, or four dollars and fifty cents, and agrees very well with Caron’s estimates of the koku, which he calls cokien, as worth ten Dutch florins, or four dollars. The estimates of Kämpfer and Titsingh, given on page fifty-nine, are higher.

[108] Dr. Riess estimates the loss at less than ten thousand pounds.—Edr.

[109] See Appendix F.

[110] 1624 ought to be 1616.—K. M.

[111] It may be found in Thevenot’s Collection of Voyages, also in “Voyages des Indes,” tom. v.

[112] A candid and conclusive answer to Sotelo, or the false Sotelo, as the Jesuits persisted in calling him, was published at Madrid immediately after the appearance of his letter, by Don Jean Cevicos, a commissary of the holy office, who was able to speak from personal observation. Cevicos had been captain of the galleon “St. Francis,” the ship in which Don Rodrigo de Vivero had been wrecked on the coast of Japan, as related in a former chapter. After a six months’ stay in Japan, and an acquaintance there with Sotelo, Cevicos sailed for Manila, was captured on the passage by the Dutch, but recaptured by a Spanish fleet. Arrived at Manila, he renounced the seas, commenced the study of theology, was ordained priest, and became provisor of the archbishopric of the Philippines. The business of this office brought him to Spain, and being at Madrid when the letter ascribed to Sotelo appeared, he thought it his duty to reply to it. A full abstract of this answer, as well as of Sotelo’s charges, may be found at the end of Charlevoix’s “Histoire du Japon.” It appears, from documents quoted in it, that the missionaries of the other orders agreed with the Jesuits in ascribing the persecution mainly to the idea, which the Dutch made themselves very busy in insinuating, that the independence of Japan was in danger from the Spaniards and the Pope, who were on the watch to gain, by means of the missionaries, the mastery of Japan, as they had of Portugal and so many other countries.

The charges made in the name of Sotelo against the Jesuits are of more interest from the fact that, at the time of the Jansenist quarrel, they were revived and reurged with a bitterness of hatred little short of that which had prompted their original concoction.

A Spanish history of the Franciscan mission, full of bitter hatred against the Jesuits, was published at Madrid in 1632, written down to 1620, by Father Fray Jacinto Orfanel, who was arrested that year, and burnt two years after, and continued by Collado, who was also the author of a Japanese grammar and dictionary.

[113] Shōgun-Sama seems to be only a title, not a name. This is Lyemitsu, the “third Shōgun.”—Edr.

[114] A shuet of silver weighs about five ounces, so that the reward offered was from $2,000 to $2,500.

[115] A narrative of this transaction was published at Rome in 1643. A short but curious document, purporting to be a translation of a Japanese imperial edict, commanding the destruction of all Portuguese vessels attempting to approach the coasts of Japan, is given in “Voyages au Nord,” tom. iv. Ships of other nations were to be sent under a strong guard to Nagasaki. [See Appendix, Note 1.]

[116] This curious piece may be found in French, in the “Voyages des Indes,” tom. v.

[117] Haganaar’s travels may be found in “Voyages des Indes,” tom. v., and a narrative of Nuyts’ affair in “Voyages au Nord,” tom. iv.

[118] According to Titsingh, they amounted in his time (1780) to eighty thousand in number. Apparently they are the Dōshin, or imperial soldiers, of whom we shall have occasion hereafter to speak.

[119] This quantity of rice would suffice for the support of twelve million persons or more. The cultivators of the imperial domains retained, according to Kämpfer, six-tenths of the produce, and those who cultivated the lands of inferior lords four-tenths. Hence it may be conjectured that the estimate of twenty-five millions of people for Japan is not excessive.

[120] These lists were doubtless copied from the Yedo Kagami (Mirror of Yedo), a kind of Blue Book, still published twice a year, and containing similar lists. See “Annals des Empereurs du Japon” (Titsingh and Klaproth), p. 37, note.

[See paper on Japanese feudalism, in vol. xv of the “Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.”—Edr.]

[121] There are two versions of Caron’s account of Japan, materially different from each other; one with the original questions, as furnished by Caron himself to Thevenot, the other in the form of a continuous narrative, with large additions by Haganaar. The first may be found in Thevenot’s “Voyages Curieuse,” also in “Voyages au Nord,” tom. iv. The other in “Voyages des Indes,” tom. v, and an English translation of it in Pinkerton’s collection, vol. vii.

[122] A curious contemporary narrative of this affair is given, among other tracts relating to Japan, in “Voyages au Nord,” tom. iv. It is not unlikely that the military operations of the Dutch in the neighboring island of Formosa, and their strong fort of Zelandia, recently erected there, might have aroused the suspicions of the Japanese.

[123] There is an account of the voyage of the “Castricoom” in Thevenot’s collection. It is also contained in “Voyages au Nord,” tom. iii. Charlevoix gives a full and interesting abstract of the adventures of Captain Schaëp and his companions, derived from two different French versions of a Dutch original; but I know not where either the versions or the original can be found.

[124] The journals of these embassies of Waganaar, Frisius, and others, generally pretty dry documents, with extracts from Caron, furnished the basis for the “Memorable Embassies of the Dutch to the Emperors of Japan,” a splendid folio, with more than a hundred copper plates, published at Amsterdam in 1669, purporting to be compiled by Arnold Montanus, of which an English translation, made by Ogilvy, with the same cuts, appeared the next year at London, under the title of Atlas Japonensis, and a French translation, with some additions and alterations, ten years later at Amsterdam.

The materials are thrown together in the most careless and disorderly manner, and are eked out by drawing largely upon the letters of the Jesuit missionaries. The cuts, whence most of the current prints representing Japanese objects are derived, are destitute of any authenticity. Those representing Japanese idols and temples evidently were based on the descriptions of Froez, whose accounts do not seem quite to agree in all respects with the observations of more recent travellers.

The dedication of Ogilvy’s translation outdoes anything Japanese in the way of prostration, nor can the language of it hardly be called English. It is as follows: “To the supreme, most high and mighty prince, Charles II., by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France and Ireland, king, defender of the faith, &c. These strange and novel relations concerning the ancient and present state of the so populous and wealthy empire of Japan, being a book of wonders, dedicated with all humility, lies prostrate at the sacred feet of your most serene majesty, by the humblest of your servants, and most loyal subject, John Ogilvy.”

[125] This letter, with the instructions and a memoir of Caron’s on the subject, may be found in “Voyages au Nord,” tom. iv. Caron, who spent several years in the French service in the East Indies, perished by shipwreck, near Lisbon, on his return to France in 1674. He was president of the Dutch factory at the time of its removal to Deshima; and Kämpfer undertakes to represent his mismanagement as in some degree the cause of that removal. This story was doubtless current at Deshima in Kämpfer’s time, but probably it grew out of disgust of the Dutch at Caron’s having passed into the French service.

[126] A curious narrative of this visit is printed in Pinkerton’s great collection, vol. vii.

[See also “Diary of Richard Cocks.”—K. M.]

[127] For a further account of Fitch and his travels, see Appendix, Note E.

[128] The China trade was shared at this time between the Portuguese of Macao and the Spaniards of the Philippines. On the Spanish trade, and the profits of it, some light is thrown by extracts from letters found on board Spanish prizes taken by the English, which Hackluyt translated and published in his fourth volume. Thus Hieronymo de Nabores writes from Panama (August 24, 1590), where he was waiting for the ship for the Philippines: “My meaning is to carry my commodities thither, for it is constantly reported that for every one hundred ducats a man shall get six hundred ducats clearly.” This, however, was only the talk at Panama; but Sebastian Biscanio had made the voyage, and he writes to his father from Acapulco (June 20, 1590): “In this harbor here are four great ships of Mexico, of six hundred or eight hundred tons apiece, which only serve to carry our commodities to China, and so to return back again. The order is thus. From hence to China is about two thousand leagues further than from hence to Spain; and from hence the two first ships depart together to China, and are thirteen or fourteen months returning back again. And when these ships are returned, then the other twain, two months after, depart from hence. They go now from hence very strong with soldiers. I can certify you of one thing: that two hundred ducats in Spanish commodities, and some Flemish woods which I carried with me thither, I made worth fourteen hundred ducats there in that country. So I make account that with those silks and other commodities with me from thence to Mexico, I got twenty-five hundred ducats by the voyage; and had gotten more, if one pack of fine silks had not been spoiled with salt water. So, as I said, there is great gain to be gotten, if that a man return in safety. But the year 1588, I had great mischance coming in a ship from China to New Spain; which, being laden with rich commodities, was taken by an Englishman [this was Cavendish, then on his voyage round the world], which robbed us and afterwards burnt our ship, wherein I lost a great deal of treasure and commodities.”

[129] The tael, reckoning the picul at one hundred and thirty-three and one-third pounds avoirdupois, contains five hundred and eighty-three grains troy. Our dollar weighs four hundred and twelve and a half grains; and supposing the Japanese silver to be of equal fineness, the tael is worth just about one dollar and forty cents. Kämpfer reckons it as equivalent to three and a half florins, which is precisely one dollar and forty cents, taking the florin at the usual valuation of forty cents. This, however, was rather above the valuation of the Dutch East India Company. There were, it seems, two kinds of Japanese silver, known among the Dutch as heavy and light money, the latter sometimes distinguished as bar-silver. Both kinds were carried to account without distinction down to the year 1635, at the rate of sixty-two and a half silvers, or one dollar and twenty-five cents per tael. After that period the bar-silver was reckoned at fifty-seven stivers, or one dollar and fourteen cents per tael. Reckoning the tael, as the Dutch commonly did, at one dollar and twenty-five cents of our money, and the mas is precisely equivalent to the Spanish eighth of a dollar. This statement is derived from a Dutch memoir by Imhoff, quoted by Raffles (“History of Java,” Appendix B), and found by him, it would seem, among the Dutch records at Batavia. Of the chests of silver and gold, particularly the former, so often mentioned in the old accounts of the Dutch and Portuguese trade, I have met with no description, except in Montanus’ “Memorable Embassies.” Unreliable and worthless as that huge volume generally is, its compilers certainly had access to valuable Dutch papers, and it is apparently from that source that they have drawn what they say of the moneys, weights, and measures of Japan. Of the chests of silver and gold they speak as follows: “Moreover, their paying of money is very strange; for the Japanese, having great store of gold and silver, observe a custom to receive their money without telling or seeing it. The mint-master puts the gold in papers, which contain the value of two hundred pounds sterling; these, sealed up, pass from one to another without being questioned. They also use little wooden boxes, in which they put twenty sealed papers of gold, which is as much as a man can handsomely carry; every box amounts to four thousand pounds sterling; and the like boxes, but of another fashion, they use for their silver, in every one of which is twelve hundred crowns, and is sealed with the coiner’s seal. But doth it not seem strange that never any deceit is found in that blind way of paying money?” “The silver, though weighed and coined, is of no certain value. The coiners put it together into little packs worth sixty crowns,”—I suppose taels. Caron says, however, that these packages contained fifty taels.

[130] These temples, built in Japan by the Chinese merchants, remind one of the temples built in Egypt by the Greek merchants, who first opened a trade with that country. See Grote’s “History of Greece,” chap. xx.

[131] The kamishimo is a state dress, composed of two garments (kami signifies what is above, and shimo what is below), a short cloak, without sleeves, called kataginu, and breeches, called hakama. Both are of a particular form (the breeches being like a petticoat sewed up between the legs), and of colored stuffs. They are used only on days of ceremony and at funerals.—Titsingh.

[132] Unfortunately for the English, their attempt at a revival of intercourse, mentioned in the last chapter, was made the very year of the introduction of this new check on foreign trade. The appraisement extended as well to the Chinese as the Dutch cargoes, as is apparent from the following closing paragraph of the English narrative: “During the time (July and August, 1673) we were in port, there came twelve junks in all, eight from Batavia, two from Siam, one from Canton, one from Cambodia, and six Dutch ships of the Company’s. They had not any from Taiwan (Formosa), by reason the year before they put the price upon their sugar and skins; and so they intend to do for all other people, for whatsoever goods shall be brought to their port; which if they do, few will seek after their commodities on such unequal terms.”

There is strong reason to suppose that these new restrictions on foreign trade grew out of the diminished produce of the mines, which furnished the chief article of export. The working of these mines seems to have greatly increased after the pacification of Japan by its subjection to the imperial authority. Such is the statement in the Japanese tract on the wealth of Japan, already referred to. According to this tract the first gold coins were struck by Taikō-Sama. This increase of metallic product seems to have given, about the time of the commencement of the Dutch trade, a new impulse to foreign commerce. Though the Portuguese trade had been stopped, it had been a good deal more than replaced by the increase of the Chinese traffic, and already the metallic drain appears to have been seriously felt. This is a much more likely reason for the policy now adopted than the mere personal hostility of certain Japanese grandees, to which the Dutch at Deshima, and Kämpfer as their echo, ascribed it.

[133] According to Titsingh, the Chinese factory was removed, in 1780, to a new situation, the site of an ancient temple. He gives a plan of the new factory after a Japanese draft.

[134] Thunberg notices an odd mistake by the engravers, in representing the Japanese as wearing their swords as we do, with the edge downward, whereas their custom is just the reverse, the edge being turned upwards.

[135] See also an “Abstract” of Kämpfer’s History in vol. ii of the “Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.”—Edr.

[136] A translation of one of these tablets is given by Kämpfer as follows:

“Courtesans only, but no other women, shall be admitted. Only the ecclesiastics of the mountain Kōya shall be admitted. All other priests, and all Yamabushi, shall stand excluded.” (Note by Kämpfer. —Kōyais stated to be a mountain near Miyako, a sanctuary and asylum for criminals, no officers of justice being suffered to come there. Its inhabitants, many thousand in number, lead an ecclesiastical life. All are admitted that desire it, or who fly there for shelter, and are afterwards maintained for life, if they can but bring in thirty taels for the use of the convent, and are otherwise willing to serve the community in their several capacities. These monks are not absolutely confined to this mountain, but many travel up and down the country in what manner or business they please. Very many of them betake themselves to trade and commerce.)

“All beggars, and all persons that live on charity, shall be denied entrance.

“Nobody shall presume with any ship or boat to come within the palisades of Deshima. Nobody shall presume with any ship or boat to pass under the bridge of Deshima.

“No Hollander shall be permitted to come out, but for weighty reasons.”

[137] For a full account of this journey, see Chap. XXXI, etc.

[138] For an account of this festival, see Chap. XXIX.

[139] The custom of using an emblem, or device, instead of a signature, or to certify it, prevails with the Japanese, as with so many other nations.

[140] See further, in relation to this ceremony, Chap. XXIX.

[141] Properly kuriki, but abbreviated to kuri, to approximate “coolie.” See note on page 309.—Edr.

[142] See also “Formosa under the Dutch” (Campbell), and “The Island of Formosa” (Davidson).—Edr.

[143] The smuggling affair mentioned on page 327.

[144] This is, evidently, the word coolie, employed in India and China to designate laborers of the lowest class. [See note on page 300.—Edr.]

[145] Along the east coast of Asia, and as far north as the southern coasts of Japan, the winds, during the six months from April to September inclusive, blow from southwest to northeast This is called the southwest monsoon. During the other six months they blow from northeast to southwest. This is called the northeast monsoon.