Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

On page 168, 2nd paragraph of Chapter XIX, refers to a Papal Bull promulgated by Pope Clement VII in 1860. This has been corrected to Pope Clement VIII who was pope when the Bull was promulgated in 1600.

There are a number of footnote references to an Appendix which is not included in this edition. The first of these are footnotes 1 and 2, which are linked, but subsequent references are marked by an unlinked [1}.

Volume II contains a complete index to both volumes. This has been copied into this volume.

“JAPAN AS IT WAS AND IS”
A HANDBOOK OF OLD JAPAN
I

Uniform with this Work

A HANDBOOK OF MODERN JAPAN.
By Ernest W. Clement. With two
maps and seventy-two illustrations
from photographs. Sixth edition.
Price, $1.40 net.

A. C. McClurg & Co.
Chicago

Image of Date Masamune

Hildreth’s
“Japan as it Was and Is”
A HANDBOOK OF OLD JAPAN

EDITED, WITH SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES, BY

ERNEST W. CLEMENT
AUTHOR OF “A HANDBOOK OF MODERN JAPAN,” ETC.

INTRODUCTION BY

WM. ELLIOT GRIFFIS

With One Hundred Illustrations and Maps

Volume I

CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1906

Copyright
A. C. McClurg & Co.
1906

Published September 29, 1906

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

CONTENTS

Volume I.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Volume I.

ADVERTISEMENT
TO ORIGINAL EDITION

In collecting materials for a biography of the first explorers and planters of New England and Virginia, I was carried to Japan, where I happened to arrive (in the spirit) almost simultaneously with Commodore Perry’s expedition. My interest thus roused in this secluded country has produced this book, into which I have put the cream skimmed, or, as I might say, in some cases, the juices laboriously expressed, from a good many volumes, the greater part not very accessible nor very inviting to the general reader, but still containing much that is curious and entertaining, and, to most readers, new; which curiosities, novelties, and palatable extracts, those who choose will thus be enabled to enjoy without the labor that I have undergone in their collection and arrangement—the former, indeed, a labor of love for my own satisfaction; the latter, one of duty—not to say of necessity—for the pleasure of the reading and book-buying public.

Instead of attempting, as others have done, to cast into a systematic shape observations of very different dates, I have preferred to follow the historic method, and to let the reader see Japan with the successive eyes of all those who have visited it, and who have committed their observations and reflections to paper and print. The number of these observers, it will be found, is very considerable; while their characters, objects, and points of view, have been widely different; and perhaps the reader may reach the same conclusion that I have: that, with all that is said of the seclusion of Japan, there are few countries of the East which we have the means of knowing better, or so well.

The complete history of the Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch relations with the Japanese is not to be found elsewhere in English; nor in any language, in a single work; while in no other book have the English and American relations been so fully treated. Many extraordinary characters and adventures make their appearance on the scene, and the reader will have no ground to complain at least of want of variety.

How little the history of Japan and of its former relations with Portugal and Holland are known—even in quarters where information on the subject might be said to constitute an official duty—is apparent in the following passage in a letter addressed from the State Department at Washington to the Secretary of the Navy, in explanation of the grounds, reasons, and objects, of our late mission to Japan, and intended as instruction to the envoy: “Since the islands of Japan were first visited by European nations, efforts have constantly been made by the various maritime powers to establish commercial intercourse with a country whose large population and reputed wealth hold out great temptations to mercantile enterprise. Portugal was the first to make the attempt, and her example was followed by Holland, England, Spain, and Russia, and finally by the United States. All these attempts, however, have thus far been unsuccessful; the permission enjoyed for a short period by the Portuguese, and that granted to Holland to send annually a single vessel to the port of Nagasaki, hardly deserving to be considered exceptions to this remark.”

From Kämpfer, whose name has become so identified with Japan, but into whose folios few have the opportunity or courage to look, I have made very liberal extracts. Few travellers have equalled him in picturesque power. His descriptions have indeed the completeness, and finish, and, at the same time, the naturalness, and absence of all affectation, with much of the same quiet humor, characteristic of the best Dutch pictures. I have preferred to introduce entire the work of such an artist, rather than to run the risk of spoiling it by attempting a paraphrase; only, as I had so many other volumes on hand, the substance, or at least the spirit, of which was to be transferred to mine, and as folios are no longer in fashion, I have found it necessary in quoting him to retrench a little the superabundance of his words. It is from his work also that the ornamental title-page[1] is copied, stated by his editor to be after a style fashionable in Japan, where dragons are held in great repute. Kämpfer says, that heads of these imaginary animals are placed over the doors of houses all over the East—among the Mahometans of Arabia and Persia, as well as in China and Japan—to keep off, as the Mahometans say, the envious from disturbing the peace of families. Perhaps the Japanese authors surround their title-pages with them in hopes to frighten away the critics.

The outline map,[1] copied principally from that given in the atlas of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, contains, with the observations annexed to it, and the note H[1] of the appendix, about all that we know of the geography of Japan—all at least that would interest the general reader. The contour of the coast is that delineated in our sea-charts, and though probably not very correct, is much more so than that of the Japanese maps; which, however large and particular, are not much to be relied upon, at least in this respect. The division into provinces of course rests upon Japanese authority.

In giving Japanese names and words, I have aimed at a certain uniformity; but, like all other writers on Japan, have failed to attain it. The Portuguese missionaries, or at least their translators into Latin, in representing Japanese names, employed c with the force of k before the vowels a, o, and u, and with the force of s before e and i; which same sound of s, in common with that of ts, they sometimes represented by x. In the earlier part of the book I have, in relation to several names known only, or chiefly, through these writers, followed their usage; though generally, in the representation of Japanese names and words, I have avoided the use of these ambiguous letters, and have endeavored to conform to the method of representing the Japanese syllables proposed by Siebold, and of which an account is given in the Appendix.[2]

The daguerreotype views and portraits taken by the artists attached to Commodore Perry’s expedition, the publication of which may soon be hoped for, will afford much more authentic pictures of the externals of Japan than yet have appeared; and, from the limited stay and opportunities of observation enjoyed by those attached to that expedition, must constitute their chief contribution to our knowledge of the Japanese empire.

R. H.

Boston, June 1st, 1855.

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

Hildreth’s “Japan as it Was and Is” was published in three editions,—in 1855, 1856, and 1861. In the last edition a new chapter was added to bring the book down to that date. The value of the book, as a compilation from all the important European writings on Old Japan, has always been acknowledged, but has been somewhat diminished by the various old-fashioned styles of transliteration, which rendered many Japanese words difficult of recognition. Therefore the present writer, more than ten years ago, conceived the idea of a revision of Hildreth’s work, especially by harmonizing the spelling of Japanese words with the modern system of Romanization, and by adding such other notes and explanations as might be necessary. This he has been doing gradually, as leisure afforded opportunity. In the meantime Mr. K. Murakawa, an alumnus of the Imperial University, Tōkyō, has issued, in two small limited editions, in 1902 and 1905, a reprint somewhat along that line. But as his work was done with the needs of Japanese in view, it does not entirely satisfy the needs of foreigners. The present writer acknowledges his indebtedness to Mr. Murakawa in some points, but he had done almost all his work before he saw the Japanese edition. He now offers an edition which is not merely a reprint, but also a revision, and is well illustrated. Of course the text of the original has been followed as closely as possible, and yet not only additions, but also excisions, have been made whenever necessary. For instance, some of the footnotes and several of the long notes in the Appendix have been omitted because they have become either wholly or comparatively valueless. The writer’s additional notes are signed “Edr.,” and where Mr. Murakawa’s notes have been used the initials “K. M.” are signed.

Mr. Murakawa says that Hildreth’s book “contains many errors,” because it was “written by an author who was not in a position to avail himself of the Japanese sources, at a time when Japan was yet closed against foreign intercourse, and at a place far away from Japan.” This statement is partly true but somewhat unjust, because it fails to take into consideration the fact that Hildreth’s work is chiefly a compilation, including lengthy quotations, from authors who did avail themselves as much as possible of Japanese sources, at the very time when they themselves were living in the very place, Japan itself. But these writers were, of course, far from infallible and made errors of fact or inference which Hildreth followed. And yet it is really remarkable that, with so many limitations and hindrances, they gained so good an insight into Japanese life.

It goes without saying that the present editor has not attempted to correct all the errors of details,—a task which would be as impossible as unprofitable. He has corrected the most flagrant mistakes so far as he has discovered them, but he may have overlooked errors needing attention. He would here call special attention to a few mistakes which were so frequent and so closely interwoven in the narrative as to render correction impracticable. The word “Nippon,” which is really the name of the whole country, is applied by the old writers to the main island, the real name of which is Hondo. The word “Emperor” almost always refers to the Shōgun, while the true Emperor is mentioned under the name of “Dairi.”

It is quite likely that the transliteration of Japanese words is not absolutely uniform, even in this revision. There is still difference of opinion among the best authorities on some points. But in this book there is not so much variety as to be confusing. On this subject see also the Introduction to the editor’s “Handbook of Modern Japan.”

A word of explanation may be needed concerning some of the illustrations of Japanese manners and customs. They are produced, of course, from modern photographs; but as there has been comparatively little change in those particulars, the illustrations practically represent the olden times under consideration in this volume.

The map in the original was so crude and inaccurate that it was not worth reproducing; therefore an entirely new map has been prepared to show Japan as it was during those days. In the map of Sakhalin a dotted line shows also the present division of the island between Russia and Japan, because it was the old one.

The editor is under obligations to his friend, Dr. Wm. Elliot Griffis, himself both an author and an authority on Japan and the Japanese, for his Introduction to this volume. Dr. Griffis, in “The Mikado’s Empire,” was the first to give in America a full account of the land and people of Japan.

The numerous references here and there and the bibliographical list in the Appendix ought to add considerably to the value of this edition. Many of the old books on Japan are out of print and difficult of access, but even those are included for the sake of any who may be so fortunate as to have access thereto. A few books ought without fail to be read in connection with this revision, because they give more accurate information than was possible in Hildreth’s day. These are “The Mikado’s Empire,” by Griffis, Rein’s “Japan” and “The Industries of Japan,” Brinkley’s eight encyclopædic volumes on Japan, and “History of Japan during the Earlier Century of Foreign Intercourse (1542-1651)” by Murdock and Yamagata. Frequent references have been made to the valuable papers in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, which are easily accessible in whole or in parts.

The bibliography is not complete, but contains the most important works in English. More extensive and specific bibliographies may be found in the editor’s “Handbook of Modern Japan,” Chamberlain’s “Things Japanese,” and especially Wenckstern’s (revised) “Bibliography of Japan.” Poole’s Index is also valuable. In the bibliography of this edition of Hildreth it has not been practicable, in all cases, to distinguish exactly between Old Japan and New Japan. There is still so much of the old remaining in this transition period that some writings of modern days may describe quite accurately conditions of olden days. With the increased facilities of the present it is possible to understand better the old conditions, especially as they were stereotyped for several centuries.

The original title of Hildreth’s work, “Japan as it Was and Is,” was proper in 1855 and 1856, but it is rather unsuitable in its entirety fifty years later. However, this revision of Hildreth, together with the editor’s “Handbook of Modern Japan,” may not unwarrantably be considered to cover Japan as it Was and Is.

ERNEST WILSON CLEMENT.

Tōkyō, July 1, 1906.

FOREWORD
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE MIKADO’S EMPIRE”

The first American teacher in Echizen (1870-1872) feels honored at the request of the first American teacher in Mito (1887-1891) to write for his revised and annotated edition of Hildreth’s “Japan” a few words concerning the author and his book and his most recent editor’s work. In the days of Townsend Harris and the premier Ii (1858), the feudal lords of Mito and Echizen, besides being blood relatives, had misunderstandings with the Yedo authorities, and, with unswerving loyalty to the Emperor and the most patriotic of motives, were linked together in strange experiences while manifesting a common desire to promote their country’s good.

After so long a time the pioneer American educator in Echizen salutes his fellow-worker who has done so much to make known to us the illustrious character of the lords of the house of Mito as patrons of literature and their unwearied devotion to the Imperial and national cause. I am sure that we are both proud of having been the servants of the Japanese people in helping to bring to pass that vision of Japan’s greatness, so tangible in A. D. 1906, to which Hildreth looked, yet died without ever seeing.

The personality of Richard Hildreth, the historian of the United States and the unquailing opponent of African slavery in America, was one of the very first that appealed to me when my own boyish literary aspirations were first awakened. His intensely powerful novel, “Archy Moore,” which had been published in 1837, reprinted in England and again republished in the United States in 1852, under the title of “The White Slave,” appeared just when Commodore Matthew C. Perry was making his preparations to sail for Japan. Philadelphia was agog with interest about the expedition, and many of her citizens were keenly interested, among them my father, John L. Griffis, who, like my grandfather, Captain John Griffis, had voyaged to the Philippines, China, and the Far East. He had built a platform in his coalyard, which directly adjoined the shiphouse and dock of the United States Navy Yard, wherein was building the United States steam frigate “Susquehanna,” which later in Japanese waters became the flagship of Commodore Perry. It is not so many miles from the upper waters of this noble river of the three States, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, that this “foreword” is written.

As a little boy, on the morning of April 6, 1850, at 8.35 A.M., I saw the graceful “Susquehanna” slide down the ways, float on the Delaware, and, like a bird of calm, “sit brooding on the charmèd wave.” I remember how, when sitting on my father’s knee, he put me down suddenly to rise and call for “three cheers for the future of the ‘Susquehanna.’” We could not then foresee what a noble part the frigate was to play in the annals of both peace and war. She bore the olive branch to Japan and she unchained her thunders in the destruction of slavery.

Richard Hildreth of Massachusetts, author, journalist, economist, and historian, was born in 1807. He graduated from Harvard College in 1826 and studied law in Newburyport, entering upon practice in Boston. He left the law for journalism, and, as an editor of the “Boston Atlas,” lifted up the moral world. In 1834, in poor health, he went South and, in order to get unbiassed ideas, lived on a slave plantation to study the workings of the system of unpaid African labor. It was during this time that he wrote his famous novel, “Archy Moore, The White Slave.” Returning North he became, with pen and voice, the tireless opponent of slavery. From 1840 to 1848 Hildreth lived in Demerara, British Guiana, editing two newspapers, in which he advocated the system of free instead of slave labor, writing there also his “Theory of Morals” and his “Theory of Politics.” In the perspective of history we can now note clearly that he was one of the potent forces in destroying human slavery in America, and in helping, as an ex-Confederate officer, now president of the first Woman’s College in the Southern States, told me a few days ago, “to emancipate eleven million white men.”

Hildreth’s “History of the United States,” though not of great literary interest, is an amazingly honest picture of the real character of the makers of the American Republic. He shows our fathers without transfiguration of their virtues or disguise of their faults or errors. How he came to write his book on Japan is told by him with sufficient fulness in his own introduction. Those who know his book best are those who appreciate it most.

It was while we were fellow-workers in the Imperial University in Tokio, from 1872 to 1874, that Mr. Edward H. House, who afterwards found a grave in the land he loved, gave me the details of Hildreth’s life and personality. Mr. House had been engaged with Mr. Hildreth on the staff of the “New York Tribune” from the completion of “Japan as it Was and Is” until the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln. Instead of appointing Hildreth as Minister to Japan, Mr. Lincoln did but follow the precedents of political succession, since Perry, Harris, Van Valkenburg, and Depew (who declined) were all citizens of the Empire State, and hence nominated the Hon. Robert H. Pruyn of Albany. It was my own beloved professor in Rutgers College, Dr. David Murray, also a native of New York State, later chief adviser to the Educational Department in Japan, who in Tokio first loaned me a copy of Hildreth’s valuable compilation, and I studied it with care. Notable among the many benefits which made the volume a boon to foreign students was the discovery, with its aid, in May, 1872, by Mr. James Walter of Yokohama, of the tomb of Will Adams at Yokosuka (p. 139).

Hildreth’s scarcely veiled satire on the ignorance of the Americans of 1852 concerning Japan in his “advertisement” is keen. None knew more than he how steadily the Hollanders had maintained commercial relations with the Japanese, had fertilized their minds for over two centuries, and had finally paved the way for American success.

In gratitude to Professor Clement for his unwearied researches and for his work as editor in this new presentation of the perennially interesting volume of Hildreth, in commendation of the publishers for issuing this uniquely valuable work, and in the faith that in its new dress “Japan as it Was and Is” will receive a warm welcome at the hands of the American public, we raise our cheer at this hopeful launch on the waters of literature. How the spirit of Hildreth must rejoice at free America and free Japan, with slavery and feudalism gone forever and the two nations in mutually beneficial rivalry for the uplifting of mankind.

WM. ELLIOT GRIFFIS.

Ithaca, N. Y., July 15, 1906.

JAPANESE PRONUNCIATION

i in the middle of a word and u in the middle or at the end of a word are sometimes almost inaudible.

The consonants are all sounded, as in English: g, however, has only the hard sound, as in give, although the nasal ng is often heard; ch and s are always soft, as in check and sin; and z before u has the sound of dz. In the case of double consonants, each one must be given its full sound.

There are as many syllables as vowels. There is practically no accent; but care must be taken to distinguish between o and ō, u and ū, of which the second is more prolonged than the first.

Be sure to avoid the flat sound of a, which is always pronounced ah.

Sketch Map of Old Japan
Adapted from map in original edition of Hildreth

Text within Map

The Japanese islands are studded by lofty volcanic mountains, especially Nipon, which is traversed through its whole length by a chain which forms the water shed of the island and the highest peaks of which are covered with perpetual snow. There are seven active volcanoes, three in Kiusiu and four in Nipon, besides four other mountains sending out hot springs; along the coast there are several burning islands, the rivers are numerous but short. The empire includes eight great subdivisions, called Do, or Ways, viz.: 1. Saikaidō, west sea way, nine provinces; 2. Nankaido, south sea way, six provinces; 3. Sanyodo, south mountain way, eight provinces; 4. Sanindo, north mountain way, eight provinces; 5. Gokinaido, five provinces, imperial domain; 6. Tōkaidō, east sea way, fifteen provinces; 7. Tosando, east mountain way, eight provinces; 8. Hokurokudo, way of the north districts, seven provinces. Tsu, Iki and Jezo are not included in this arrangement.

NOTE

In the pronunciation of Japanese names and words, and in their representation in European letters, an n is frequently added at the end of a syllable; as, Nangasaki for Nagasaki, Fingo for Figo, etc.

JAPAN
As It Was and Is

CHAPTER I

Earliest European Knowledge of Japan—Japanese Histories—Marco Polo’s Account of the Mongol or Tartar Invasion—Accounts of the same Event given by the Chinese and Japanese Annalists, A. D. 1281 or 1283.

The name Japan, pronounced in the country itself Nippon or Nihon, is of Chinese origin—in the Mandarin dialect Jih-pun, that is, sun-source, or Eastern Country.

The first account of Japan, or allusion to its existence, to be found in any European writer, is contained in the “Oriental Travels” of the Venetian, Marco Polo, first reduced to writing in the Latin tongue, about A. D. 1298, while the author was detained a prisoner of war at Genoa. Zipangu, Zipangri, Cyampagu, Cimpagu, as different editions of his work have it, is his method of representing the Chinese Jih-pun-quo, sun-source kingdom, or kingdom of the source of the sun. The Japanese chronicles go back for many centuries previous; but these chronicles seem to be little more than a bare list of names and dates, with some legendary statements interwoven, of which the authority does not appear very weighty, nor the historical value very considerable.

Marco Polo resided for seventeen years (A. D. 1275-1292) at the court of Kublai Khan (grandson of the celebrated Ghingis Khan,) and ruler, from A. D. 1260 to A. D. 1294, over the most extensive empire which the world has ever seen. This empire stretched across the breadth of the old continent, from the Japanese, the Yellow, the Blue, and the China Seas (embosoming the Caspian and the Black Seas), to the Levant, the Archipelago, the river Dniester, and beyond it. Not content with having added Anatolia and Russia to the western extremity of this vast kingdom,—the Greek empire being reduced, at this moment, to the vicinage of Constantinople and the western coasts of the Archipelago,—Kublai Khan, after completing the conquest of Southern China, sent an expedition against Japan; in which, however, the Mongols were no more successful than they had been in their attempts, a few years before, to penetrate through Hungary and Poland (which they overran and ravaged, to the terror of all Europe) in Germany, whence Teutonic valor repelled them.

The accounts given by Marco Polo, and by the Chinese and Japanese annalists, of this expedition, though somewhat contradictory as to the details, agree well enough as to the general result. As Marco Polo’s account is short, as well as curious, we insert it at length, from the English translation of his travels by Marsden, subjoining to it the statements which we have of the same event derived from Chinese and Japanese sources. We may add that Columbus was greatly stimulated to undertake his western voyages of discovery by the constant study of Marco Polo’s travels, confidently expecting to reach by that route the Cathay and Zipangu of that author—countries for which he sedulously inquired throughout the Archipelago of the West Indies, and along the southern and western shores of the Caribbean Sea.

The Invasion by the Mongol Tartars
From Official History of Japan

“Zipangu,” says Marco Polo, “is an island in the eastern ocean, situated at the distance of about fifteen hundred miles[3] from the mainland, or coast of Manji.[4] It is of considerable size; its inhabitants have fair complexions, are well made, and are civilized in their manners. Their religion is the worship of idols. They are independent of every foreign power, and governed only by their own kings. They have gold in the greatest abundance, its sources being inexhaustible; but as the king does not allow of its being exported, few merchants visit the country, nor is it frequented by much shipping from other parts. To this circumstance we are to attribute the extraordinary richness of the sovereign’s palace, according to what we are told by those who have access to the place. The entire roof is covered with a plating of gold, in the same manner as we cover houses, or, more properly, churches, with lead. The ceilings of the halls are of the same precious metal; many of the apartments have small tables of pure gold, considerably thick; and the windows, also, have golden ornaments. So vast, indeed, are the riches of the palace, that it is impossible to convey an idea of them. In this island there are pearls, also, in large quantities, of a pink color, round in shape, and of great size, equal in value to white pearls, or even exceeding them. It is customary with one part of the inhabitants to bury their dead, and with another part to burn them. The former have a practice of putting one of these pearls into the mouth of the corpse. There are also found there a number of precious stones.

“Of so great celebrity was the wealth of this island, that a desire was excited in the breast of the grand Khan Kublai, now reigning, to make the conquest of it, and to annex it to his dominions. In order to effect this, he fitted out a numerous fleet, and embarked a large body of troops under the command of two of his principal officers, one of whom was named Abbacatan, and the other Vonsancin. The expedition sailed from the ports of Zaitun and Kinsai,[5] and crossing the intermediate sea, reached the island in safety; but, in consequence of a jealousy that arose between the two commanders, one of whom treated the plans of the other with contempt, and resisted the execution of his orders, they were unable to gain possession of any city or fortified place, with the exception of one only, which was carried by assault, the garrison having refused to surrender. Directions were given for putting the whole to the sword, and, in obedience thereto, the heads of all were cut off except of eight persons, who, by the efficacy of a diabolical charm, consisting of a jewel or amulet introduced into the right arm, between the skin and the flesh, were rendered secure from the effects of iron either to kill or to wound. Upon this discovery being made, they were beaten with a heavy wooden club, and presently died.

“It happened, after some time, that a north wind began to blow with great force, and the ships of the Tartars, which lay near the shore of the island, were driven foul of each other. It was determined thereupon, in a council of the officers on board, that they ought to disengage themselves from the land; and accordingly, as soon as the troops were disembarked, they stood out to sea. The gale, however, increased to so violent a degree, that a number of the vessels foundered. The people belonging to them, by floating upon pieces of the wreck, saved themselves upon an island, about four miles from the coast of Zipangu. The other ships, which, not being so near to the land, did not suffer from the storm, and on which the two chiefs were embarked, together with the principal officers, or those whose rank entitled them to command a hundred thousand or ten thousand men, directed their course homeward, and returned to the grand Khan. Those of the Tartars who remained upon the island where they were wrecked, and who amounted to about thirty thousand men, finding themselves without shipping, abandoned by their leaders, and having neither arms nor provision, expected nothing less than to become captives or to perish; especially as the island afforded no habitations where they could take shelter and refresh themselves. As soon as the gale ceased, and the sea became smooth and calm, the people from the main island of Zipangu came over with a large force, in numerous boats, in order to make prisoners of these shipwrecked Tartars; and, having landed, proceeded in search of them, but in a straggling, disorderly manner. The Tartars, on their part, acted with prudent circumspection; and, being concealed from view by some high land in the centre of the island, whilst the enemy were hurrying in pursuit of them by one road, made a circuit of the coast by another, which brought them to the place where the fleet of boats was at anchor. Finding these all abandoned, but with their colors flying, they instantly seized them; and, pushing off from the island, stood for the principal city of Zipangu, into which, from the appearance of the colors, they were suffered to enter unmolested. Here they found few of the inhabitants besides women, whom they retained for their own use, and drove out all others. When the king was apprised of what had taken place, he was much afflicted, and immediately gave directions for a strict blockade of the city, which was so effectual that not any person was suffered to enter or to escape from it during six months that the siege continued. At the expiration of this time, the Tartars, despairing of succor, surrendered upon the condition of their lives being spared. This event took place in the course of the year 1264.”[6]

The above account Marco Polo no doubt derived from the Mongols, who endeavored, as far as possible, to gloss over with romantic and improbable incidents a repulse that could not be denied. The Chinese annalists, who have no partiality for their Mongol conquerors, tell a much less flattering story. According to their account, as given by Père Amiot, in his “Mémoires concernant les Chinois,” the fleet consisted of six hundred ships, fitted out in the provinces of Kiang-nan, Fou-kien, Ho-nan, and Chan-tong. The army, sailing from Corea, landed first on the island of Kuchi [?], whence they proceeded to that of Tsushima, where they learned that the Japanese had long been expecting them with a great army. On approaching the coast of Japan, they encountered a furious tempest, which sunk their vessels; so that of the whole army scarcely one or two in every ten persons escaped.

In the “Histoire Général de la China,” compiled by Father Malela from Chinese sources, the story is thus told: “The sixth month (1281) Alahan set out on the expedition against Japan; but scarcely had he reached the port of embarkation when he died. Atahai, appointed to succeed him, did not arrive till the fleet had already set sail. In the latitude of the isle of Pinghou [Hirado], it encountered a violent tempest, by which most of the vessels were driven on shore. The officers, selecting those least damaged, themselves returned, leaving behind them in that island more than a hundred thousand men. The soldiers, finding themselves thus abandoned, chose a leader, and set themselves to work to cut down trees to build new vessels, in which to escape. But the Japanese, apprised of their shipwreck, made a descent upon the island with a powerful army, and put them to the sword. They spared only ten or twelve thousand Chinese soldiers, of whom they made slaves; and, of the whole formidable invading army, hardly three persons returned to China.”

Father Gaubil, in his “Histoire de la Dynastie des Mongoux,” compiled also from Chinese sources, states the number of Chinese and Corean prisoners at eighty thousand, and of the Mongols who were slain at thirty thousand.

Kämpfer, in his elaborate work on Japan, gives the following as from the Japanese chronicles, Nippon Ōdaiki, and Nippon Ōkeizu: “Go-Uda succeeded his father in the year of Jimmu 1985, of Christ 1275.” “In the ninth year of his reign, the Tartar general, Mōko, appeared on the coasts of Japan, with a fleet of four thousand sail, and two hundred and forty thousand men. The then reigning Tartarian emperor, Lifsu [Kublai Khan], after he had conquered the empire of China, sent this general to subdue also the empire of Japan. But this expedition proved unsuccessful. The Kami, that is, the gods of the country, and protectors of the Japanese empire, were so incensed at the insult offered them by the Tartars, that, on the first day of the seventh month, they excited a violent and dreadful storm, which destroyed all this reputed invincible armada. Mōko himself perished in the waves, and but few of his men escaped.”

Entrance to the Temple of Jimmu Tennō

Siebold, in his recently published “Archives of Japan,” gives the following as the account of this invasion contained in the esteemed Japanese chronicle, Nikongi:[7] “So soon as Kublai Khan had ascended the Mogul throne, he turned his eyes upon distant Japan. This nation, like Kaou-le (one of the kingdoms of Corea), must become tributary. Accordingly, in the year 1268,[8] he summoned the ruler of Nippon to acknowledge his sovereignty. No notice was taken of this summons, nor of others in 1271 and 1273, the Mongol envoys being not admitted to an audience, but always dismissed by the governor of Dazaifu. Hereupon a Mongol fleet, with a Corean contingent, appeared off Tsushima

A Japanese encyclopædia, of quite recent date, quoted in Siebold’s work, besides giving Kublai Khan’s letter of summons, asserts that the Mongol fleet was met and defeated, after which, other Mongol envoys being sent to Japan, they were summoned into the presence of the Shōgun, by whom a decree was promulgated that no Mongol should land in Japan under pain of death. And it is even pretended that under this decree the persons composing two subsequent missions sent by Kublai Khan, in 1276 and 1279, were all put to death. This was followed, according to the same authority, by the appearance of a new Mongol-Corean fleet, in 1281, off the island of Hirado. This fleet was destroyed by a hurricane. Those who escaped to the shore were taken prisoners and executed, only three being saved to carry to Kublai Khan the news of this disaster. All these additions, however, to the story—the letter of Kublai Khan, the murder of the ambassadors, and the double invasion—may safely enough be set down as Japanese inventions.[9]

CHAPTER II

Portuguese Empire in the East—Discovery of Japan—Galvano’s Account of it—Fernam Mendez Pinto’s Account of his First Visit to Japan, and Adventures there—Japanese Account of the First Arrival of Portuguese, A. D. 1542-1545.

Vasco da Gama, by the route of the Cape of Good Hope, entered the Indian Ocean in November, 1497, and, after coasting the African continent as far north as Melinda, arrived in May, 1498, at Calicut, on the Malabar or southwestern coast of the peninsula of Hindustan,—a discovery speedily followed, on the part of the Portuguese, by extensive Eastern explorations, mercantile enterprises, and conquests. The trade of Europe with the East in silks, spices, and other luxuries, chiefly carried on for two or three centuries preceding, so far as related to their distribution through Europe, by the Venetians, aided in the north by the Hanse towns, and, so far as the collection of the articles of it throughout the East was concerned, by the Arabs (Cairo, in Egypt, being the point of exchange), was soon transferred to the Portuguese; and Lisbon, enriched by this transfer, which the Mahometan traders and the Venetians struggled in vain to prevent, rose rapidly, amid the decline of numerous rivals, to great commercial wealth and prosperity, and the headship of European commerce.

The Portuguese, from the necessity of the case, traded sword in hand; and their intercourse with the nations of the East was much more marked by the insolence of conquest, than by the complaisance of traders. Goa, some three hundred miles to the north of Calicut, which fell into their power in 1510, became a splendid city, the vice-royal and archiepiscopal seat, whence were governed a multitude of widespread dependencies. The rule of the Portuguese viceroy extended on the west by Diu, Ormus, and Socotra (commanding the entrances into the Gulf of Cambay, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea), along the east coast of Africa by Melinda to Sofala, opposite the south part of Madagascar. Malacca, near the extremity of the peninsula of Further India, occupied in 1511, became the capital of their possessions and conquests in the far East, and soon rose into a magnificent seat of empire and commerce, second only to Goa. Among the most valuable dependencies of Malacca were the Moluccas or Spice Islands. The islands of Sumatra, Java, and Borneo,—in the occupation of which the Mahometans had preceded them,—Celebes, Mindanao, and even New Guinea were coasted, and commercial and political relations established, to a greater or less degree, with the native chiefs. The coasts of Pegu, Siam, Cambodia, and the southern parts of China, were visited as early as 1516; but the usual insolence of the Portuguese, in attempting to establish a fortified post not far from Canton, resulted in the imprisonment and miserable death of an ambassador of theirs, then on his way to Pekin, while it gave a new impulse to the suspicious policy of the Chinese, which allowed no intercourse with foreigners, and even forbade the Chinese junks to trade to foreign ports. In spite, however, of this prohibition, numerous Chinese merchants, self-exiled from home, were established in the principal trading marts of the southeastern seas; and with their aid, and sometimes that of the corsairs, by whom the coasts of China were then, as now, greatly infested, and by bribing the mandarins, a sort of commerce, a cross between smuggling and privateering, was carried on along the Chinese coast. The principal marts of this commerce were Ningpo (known to the Portuguese as Liampo, on the continent, opposite the isle of Chusan, in the suburbs of which city the Portuguese managed to establish a trading settlement) and Sancian, an island near the entrance of the bay of Canton, where the Chinese merchants from Canton met the Portuguese traders, who, during a few months in each year, sojourned there in temporary huts while the trade was going on. Down, however, to the year 1542 nothing had yet been heard of Japan, beyond Marco Polo’s mention and brief account of it.

The first visit of the Portuguese to Japan is ascribed to that year, 1542, by Antonio Galvano, in his little book, first published, after his death, in 1557, containing a brief chronological recital of discoveries by sea and land, from the flood to the year of grace 1555, particularly the recent ones of the Spanish and Portuguese, in which Galvano had been an active participator, having greatly distinguished himself as the Portuguese governor of the Moluccas. With a disinterestedness as uncommon then as now, more intent upon the public service than his own enrichment, after repeatedly refusing the regency of the Moluccas tendered to him by the natives, and putting into the public treasury the rich presents of spices which were made to him, he had returned to Portugal, in 1540, a poor man; and so vain was his reliance on the gratitude of the court that he was obliged to pass the last seventeen years of his life as the inmate of a charitable foundation, solacing his leisure by composing the history of exploits in which he no longer participated. His account of the discovery of Japan, which he must have obtained at second hand, as it happened after he had left the Indies, is thus given in Hackluyt’s translation[10]:

“In the year of our Lord 1542, one Diego de Freitas being in the realm of Siam, and in the city of Dodra, as captain of a ship, there fled from him three Portuguese in a junco (which is a kind of ship) towards China. Their names were Antony de Moto, Francis Zimoro, and Antonio Perota. Directing their course to the city of Liampo [Ningpo], standing in 30° odd of latitude, there fell upon their stern such a storm, that it set them off the land; and in a few days they saw an island towards the east, standing in 32°, which they do name Japan, which seemeth to be the isle of Zipangry whereof Paulus Venetus [Marco Polo] maketh mention, and of the riches thereof. And this island of Japan hath gold, silver, and other riches.”

Upon the strength of this statement of Galvano’s, Maffei in his elegant Latin “Indian History,” first printed in 1589, and whom subsequent writers have generally followed, ascribes to the three Portuguese above mentioned the honor of the discovery of Japan, though it was claimed, he says, by several others. Of these others the only one known to us is Fernam Mendez Pinto, who in his “Peregrinations in the East,” first published in 1614, about thirty-six years after his death, seems to represent himself and two companions as the original Portuguese discoverers.

Pinto’s veracity has been very sharply called in question[11]; but the main facts of his residence in the East and early visits to Japan are amply established by contemporary letters, written from Malacca as early as 1564, and published at Rome as early as 1566, including one from Pinto himself. In the introduction to his “Peregrinations” he describes himself as the child of poor parents, born in the city of old Montemayor, in Portugal, but placed in the year 1521, when he was about ten or twelve years old,—he fixes the year by the breaking of the escutcheons on the death of King Manuel, a ceremony which he witnessed, and the oldest historical fact he could remember,—through the interest of an uncle, in the service of a noble lady of Lisbon. Having been with her for a year and a half, some catastrophe occurred—he does not tell what—which led him to fly in terror for his life; and, finding himself upon a pier, he embarked on a vessel just about to leave it. That vessel was taken by French pirates, who threatened at first to sell him and the other captives to the Moors of Barbary; but having taken another richer prize, after much ill treatment they put him and several others ashore on the Portuguese coast. After this he passed into the service successively of two noblemen; but finding their pay very small, he was prompted to embark to seek his fortune in the East, and, in pursuit of that object, landed at Diu in 1537.

It was by the daring and enterprise of just such adventurers as Pinto that the Portuguese, who, up to this time, had few regular troops in the East, had already acquired so extensive an empire there; just as a similar set of Spanish adventurers had acquired, and still were extending, a vast Spanish empire in America; the two nations, in their circuit round the globe, meeting at the Moluccas, the possession of which, though about this very time, as we shall see, contested by the Spaniards, the Portuguese succeeded in maintaining, as indeed they had been the first to visit and occupy them.

The Turks at this time were the terror and dread of all the Christian nations. In the West they had lately occupied Hungary, laid siege to Vienna, and possessed themselves of all the fortresses hitherto held by the Venetians in the Archipelago and the Morea. Having acquired the superiority over Egypt by dethroning the Mameluke sultans, and by the renunciation of the caliphs of Bagdad (long exiles in Egypt), the headship of the Mahometan church, they were now carrying on, with renewed energy, by way of the Red Sea, the perpetual war waged in the East, as well as in the West, by the Mussulmans against the infidels; and had, indeed, just before Pinto’s arrival at Diu, besieged that city in great force. Going to cruise against these Mussulman enemies, after various adventures and a visit to Abyssinia,—with which secluded Christian or semi-Christian kingdom the Portuguese had opened a communication,—Pinto was captured at the entrance of the Red Sea, carried to Mocha, and there sold to a Greek renegado, and by him to a Jew, from whom he was redeemed by the Portuguese governor of Ormus, who furnished him with the means of reaching Goa. At this centre of Portuguese enterprise and adventure Pinto entered into the service of Dom Pedro de Faria, captain-general of Malacca. Perceiving his superior intelligence and adroitness, Faria sent him on numerous missions to the native princes of those parts, by intermeddling in whose domestic affairs the Portuguese generally contrived to find a foothold for themselves. Despatched on one of these missions, he was shipwrecked, made a slave of, and sold to a Mussulman, who carried him to Malacca, whence he was again sent on a new mission, provided with money to redeem certain Portuguese captives, and taking with him also a small sum, which he had borrowed at Malacca, to trade upon for himself. While occupied with this mission, Pinto met, at Patana [present Patany] (on the east shore of the Malay peninsula, and some four hundred miles to the north of Malacca), with Antonio de Faria, a kinsman of his patron’s, sent thither on a political mission, but who had also improved the opportunity for trade, by borrowing at Malacca twelve thousand crusados,[12] which he had invested in cloths. Finding no market there for these goods, Faria was induced to despatch them to Lugor, on the same coast, further north; and Pinto, with his small adventure, was led by the hope of a profitable trade to embark in the same vessel. He arrived safely near Lugor; but the vessel, while lying in the river below that city, was boarded by a Saracen corsair. Pinto with two others plunged into the water and escaped, wounded, to the shore; and having succeeded in reaching Patana, he communicated to Antonio de Faria information of their mutual loss.

Overwhelmed by this news, and afraid to face his creditors at Malacca, Faria, with the remnant of his fortune and the assistance of his friends, fitted out a small cruiser, in which he embarked in May, 1540, with several Portuguese, and Pinto among the rest, nominally to seek out the pirate who had robbed him, but in fact to recruit his fortune as he might. After many adventures—the acquisition of great wealth by numerous captures of richly laden corsairs and others, its loss by shipwreck, the getting of a new vessel, the meeting with the corsair who had robbed them at Lugor, the taking of his vessel, another shipwreck, and the sack of a Chinese town, where some of their shipwrecked companions were detained as prisoners—they put into Liampo (Ningpo), finding on some islands at no great distance from that city, and known as the Gates of Liampo, a Portuguese settlement of a thousand houses, with six or seven churches, and with regular Portuguese officers and laws—as much so, says Pinto, as if the place had been situated between Lisbon and Santarem.[13] Here they met with a Chinese corsair, who told them a marvellous story of the island of Calempui, not far from Pekin, in which lay buried seventeen Chinese kings, and whose tombs, guarded and watched over by priests, contained vast treasures. Under the pilotage of this corsair, Faria set out in May, 1542, to rob these tombs. Pinto’s account of the voyage thither, and of the tombs themselves, from which, terrified by the alarm that was raised, they fled away, with their object only partially accomplished, forms one of the most questionable, and at all events the most distorted, portions of his narrative.

Shortly after, they were shipwrecked again on the Chinese coast. Faria with most of his countrymen were drowned; but Pinto with thirteen others escaped to the shore, where they lived a while by begging, but were presently taken up as vagabonds, harshly treated, sent to Nankin, and there, on suspicion of being thieves, condemned to lose their thumbs. They appealed from this sentence by the aid of certain officers appointed to look after the poor, and were taken to Pekin, where, after a residence of two months and a half, the charge of theft was dismissed for want of proof, the prosecutors being obliged to pay them damages; but still they were sent in confinement to the frontier town of Quansi for eight months, there to work in the maintenance of the great wall. From this imprisonment they were delivered by an inroad of Tartars, who laid siege to Pekin, and to whom one of the Portuguese, the party reduced by this time to nine, rendered essential military service. Accompanying these invaders back to Tartary, they were sent, except one, who remained behind, as attendants upon the train of an ambassador to Cochin China, by whose procurement they were conveyed to the island of Sancian, in hopes of finding a passage thence to Malacca. But the Portuguese ships had departed five days before; and so they proceeded on some leagues further to the island of Lampacau (the same upon which the Portuguese town of Macao was not long afterwards built, and already a resort for merchants and rovers). Here they found no other resource except to enlist in the service of a Chinese corsair, who arrived shortly after they did, with two ships, of which the crews were mostly wounded, having just escaped, with the loss of many other ships, from a recent engagement with a Chinese fleet off Chincheo, a great city, about half-way from Canton to Ningpo. The Portuguese had got into a quarrel among themselves, which they carried out, as Pinto says, with true Portuguese obstinacy. Five of them embarked in one of the corsair’s ships, and Pinto, with two companions, named Diego Zeimoto and Christopher Borello, in the other. The five, with the vessel in which they sailed, were soon after lost in a desperate naval engagement, which lasted a whole day, with seven large corsair junks, in which that vessel was burnt. The other, in which Pinto was, escaped with the greatest difficulty, by favor of the breeze, which freshened at night. This breeze changed soon into a gale, before which the corsair ran for the Lew Chew islands (Riū-Kiū), with which he was familiar; but being without a pilot, and the wind shifting to the northeast, they had to beat against it for twenty-three days before they made land. After running along the coast for some distance they anchored off an island in seventy fathoms.[14] “Immediately,” says Pinto, “two little skiffs put off the shore to meet us, in which were six men, who, on coming on board, after having saluted us courteously, asked us whence our junk came; and being answered that it came from China, with merchandise to trade there, if permission should be obtained, one of the six said to us that the Nantaquim (?), the lord of that island, which was called Tanegashima, would willingly permit us to trade if we would pay the duties customarily paid in Japan; ‘which,’said he, ‘is that great island which you see there over against us.’” Whereupon the ship was piloted into a good harbor, on which was situated a considerable town, and was soon surrounded with boats bringing provisions to sell.

In a short time they were visited by the Nantaquim (?) himself, accompanied by many gentlemen and merchants, with chests of silver. As he approached the ship, the first persons who attracted his attention were Pinto and his companions. Perceiving how different they were in complexion, features, and beard from the others, he eagerly inquired who they were. “The corsair captain made answer to him,” says Pinto, “that we were from a land called Malacca, to which many years before we had gone from another very distant country, called Portugal; at which the prince, greatly astonished, turning to those about him, said, ‘May I die, if these be not the Chenchicogins,[15] of whom it is written in our ancient books, that, flying on the tops of the waves, they will subdue all the lands about them until they become masters of all the countries in which God has placed the riches of the world! Wherefore we should esteem it a great piece of good fortune if they come to us with offers of friendship and good will.’ [16]” And then calling in the aid of a woman of Lew Chew, whom he employed as interpreter, he proceeded to make very particular inquiries of the captain as to where he had found these men, and why he had brought them thither. “To whom,” says Pinto, “our captain replied, that without doubt we were merchants and trusty people, whom, having found shipwrecked on the island of Lampacau, he had received on board his junk, as it was his custom to do by all whom he found in such case, having himself been saved in the same way from the like disaster, to which all were liable who ventured their lives and property against the impetuous fury of the waves.” Satisfied with this answer, the prince came on board; not with his whole retinue, though they were all eager for it, but with only a select few. After examining the ship very curiously, he seated himself under an awning, and asked the Portuguese many questions about their country, and what they had seen in their travels. Highly delighted with their answers and the new information they were able to give him, he invited them to visit him on shore the next day, assuring them that this curious information was the merchandise he most wished for, and of which he never could have enough. The next morning he sent to the junk a large boat loaded with grapes, pears, melons, and a great variety of vegetables, for which the captain returned a present of cloths and Chinese jewels. The next day, having first moored the ship securely, the captain went on shore with samples of his goods, taking with him the three Portuguese and ten or twelve of the best-looking of the Chinese. Their reception was very gracious, and the prince having called together the principal merchants, the samples were exhibited, and a tariff of prices agreed upon.

This matter arranged, the prince began to requestion the Portuguese; to which inquiries Pinto, who acted as spokesman, made answers dictated, as he confesses, less by strict regard to the truth than by his desire to satisfy the prince’s appetite for wonders, and to magnify the king and country of Portugal in his eyes. The prince wished to know whether it were true, as the Chinese and Lew Chewans had told him, that Portugal was larger and richer than China? Whether (a matter as to which he seemed very certain) the king of Portugal had really conquered the greater part of the world? And whether he actually had more than two thousand houses full of gold and silver? All which questions Pinto answered in the affirmative; though, as to the two thousand houses, he confessed that he had never actually counted them—a thing by no means easy in a kingdom so vast.

Well pleased with his guests, the king caused the Portuguese to be entertained, by a wealthy merchant, in a house near his own; and he assigned also warehouses to the Chinese captain to facilitate his trade, which proved so successful that a cargo, which had cost him in China twenty-five hundred taels[17] of silver, brought him in twelve times as much in Japan; thus reimbursing all the loss he had lately suffered by the capture of his vessels.

“Meanwhile we three Portuguese,” says Pinto, “as we had no merchandise to occupy ourselves about, enjoyed our time in fishing, hunting, and visiting the temples, where the priests, or bonzes, as they are called, gave us a very good reception, the Japanese being naturally well disposed and very conversable.” Diego Zeimoto went often forth to shoot with an espingarda [18]

At the end of three-and-twenty days, a ship arrived from the kingdom of Bungo, in which came many merchants, who, as soon as they had landed, waited on the prince with presents, as was customary. Among them was an old man, very well attended, and to whom all the rest paid great respect. He made prostrations before the prince, presenting him a letter, and a rich sword garnished with gold, and a box of fans, which the prince received with great ceremony. The reading of this letter seemed to disturb the prince, and, having sent the messengers away to refresh themselves, he informed the Portuguese, through the interpreter, that it came from the king of Bungo and Hakata, his uncle, father-in-law, and liege lord, as he was also the superior of several other principalities. This letter—which, as is usual with him in such cases, Pinto, by a marvellous stretch of memory, undertakes to give in precise words—declared that the writer had heard by persons from Satsuma that the prince had in his city “three Chenchicogins [Tenjikujin], from the end of the world, very like the Japanese, clothed in silk and girded with swords; not like merchants, whose business it is to trade, but like lovers of honor, seeking to gild their names therewith, and who had given great information, affirming, on their veracity, that there is another world, much larger than this of ours, and peopled with men of various complexions”; and the letter ended with begging that, by Hizen dono, his ambassador, the prince would send back one of these men, the king promising to return him safe and soon. It appeared from this letter, and from the explanations which the prince added to it, that the king of Bungo was a severe sufferer from a gouty affection and from fits of melancholy, from which he hoped, by the aid of these foreigners, to obtain some diversion, if not relief. The prince, anxious and bound as he was to oblige his relative and superior, was yet unwilling to send Zeimoto, his adopted kinsman, but one of the others he begged to consent to go; and when both volunteered, he chose Pinto, as he seemed the more gay and cheerful of the two, and so best fitted to divert the sick man’s melancholy; whereas the solemn gravity of the other, though of great account in more weighty matters, might, in the case of a sick man, rather tend to increase his ennui. And so, with many compliments, to which, says Pinto, the Japanese are much inclined, he was given in charge to the ambassador, with many injunctions for his good treatment, having first, however, received two hundred taels with which to equip himself.

They departed in a sort of galley; and stopping in various places, arrived in four or five days at Usuki, a fortress of the king of Bungo,[19] seven leagues distant from his capital of Fuchū (present Ōita), to which they proceeded by land. Arriving there in the middle of the day (not a proper time to wait upon the king), the ambassador took him to his own house, where they were joyfully met, and Pinto was well entertained by the ambassador’s wife and two sons. Proceeding to the palace on horseback, they were very graciously received by a son of the king, some nine or ten years old, who came forth richly dressed and with many attendants. After many ceremonies between the young prince and the ambassador, they were taken to the king, who, though sick abed, received the ambassador with many formalities. Presently Pinto was introduced, and by some well-turned compliments made a favorable impression, leading the courtiers to conclude—and so they told the king—that he could not be a merchant, who had passed his life in the low business of buying and selling, but rather some learned bonze, or at least some brave corsair of the seas. In this opinion the king coincided; and, being already somewhat relieved from his pains, proceeded to question the stranger as to the cure of the gout, which he suffered from, or at least some remedy for the total want of appetite by which he was afflicted. Pinto professed himself no doctor, but nevertheless undertook to cure the king by means of a sovereign herb which he had brought with him from China (ginseng, probably); and this drug he tried on the patient with such good effect that in thirty days he was up and walking, which he had not done for two years before. The next twenty days Pinto passed in answering an infinite number of questions, many of them very frivolous, put to him by the king and his courtiers, and in entertaining himself in observing their feasts, worship, martial exercises, ships of war, fisheries, and hunting, to which they were much given, and especially their hunting with hawks and falcons, quite after the European fashion.

A gun, which Pinto had taken with him, excited as much curiosity as it had done at Tanegashima, especially on the part of a second son of the king, named Arichandono (?), about seventeen or eighteen years old, who was very pressing to be allowed to shoot it. This Pinto declined to permit, as being dangerous for a person without experience; but, at the intercession of the king, he appointed a time at which the experiment should be made. The young prince, however, contrived beforehand to get possession of the gun while Pinto was asleep, and having greatly overloaded it, it burst, severely wounding his hand and greatly disabling one of his thumbs. Hearing the explosion, and running out to see what might be the matter, Pinto found the young prince abandoned by his frightened companions, and lying on the ground bleeding and insensible; and by the crowd who rushed in he was immediately accused of having murdered the king’s son, hired to do so, as was suspected, by the relations of two noblemen executed the day before as traitors. His life seemed to be in the most imminent danger; he was so frightened as not to be able to speak, and so beside himself that if they had killed him he hardly thinks he would have known it; when, fortunately, the young prince coming to, relieved him from all blame by telling how the accident had happened. The prince’s wounds, however, seemed so severe, that none of the bonzes called in dared to undertake the cure; and it was recommended, as a last resource, to send to Hakata, seventy leagues off, for another bonze, of great reputation, and ninety-two years old. But the young prince, who declared that he should die while waiting, preferred to entrust himself to the hands of Pinto, who, following the methods which he had seen adopted by Portuguese surgeons in India, in twenty days had the young prince able to walk about again; for which he received so many presents that the cure was worth to him more than fifteen hundred crusados. Information coming from Tanegashima that the Chinese corsair was ready to sail, Pinto was sent back by the king in a galley, manned by twenty rowers, commanded by a gentleman of the royal household, and provided with abundant supplies.

The corsair having taken him on board, they sailed for Liampo (Ningpo), where they arrived in safety. The three survivors of Antonio de Faria’s ship were received at that Portuguese settlement with the greatest astonishment, and many congratulations for their return; and the discovery they had made of the rich lands of Japan was celebrated by a religious procession, high mass, and a sermon.

These pious services over, all hastened with the greatest zeal and contention to get the start of the rest in fitting out ships for this new traffic, the Chinese taking advantage of this rivalry to put up the prices of their goods to the highest rates. In fifteen days nine junks, not half provided for the voyage, put to sea, Pinto himself being on board one of them. Overtaken on their passage by a terrible storm, seven of them foundered, with the loss of seven hundred men, of whom a hundred and forty were Portuguese, and cargoes to the value of three hundred thousand crusados. Two others, on board one of which was Pinto, escaped, and arrived near the Lew Chew Islands; where, in another storm, that in which Pinto was, lost sight of the other, nor was it ever afterwards heard of. “Towards evening,” says Pinto, “the wind coming east-northeast, the waves ran so boisterous, wild, and high, that it was most frightful to see. Our captain, Gaspar de Melo, an hidalgo and very brave, seeing that the junk had sprung a leak in her poop, and that the water stood already nine palms deep on the lower deck, ordered, with the advice of his officers, to cut away both masts, as, with their weight and the rolling, the junk was opening very fast. Yet, in spite of all care he could not prevent the mainmast from carrying away with it fourteen men, among whom were five Portuguese, crushed in the ruins,—a most mournful spectacle, which took away from us survivors all the little spirits we had left. So we suffered ourselves to be drifted along before the increasing tempest, which we had no means to resist, until about sunset, when the junk began to open at every seam. Then the captain and all of us, seeing the miserable condition in which we were, betook ourselves for succor to an image of our Lady, whom we besought with tears and groans to intercede for us with her blessed Son to forgive our sins.”

The night having passed in this manner, about dawn the junk struck a shoal and went to pieces, most of the crew being drowned. A few, however, escaped to the shore of what proved to be the Lew Chew Islands, now first made known to the Portuguese. Here happened many new dangers and adventures; but at last, by female aid, always a great resource with Pinto, he found his way back in a Chinese junk to Liampo, whence, after various other adventures, he again reached Malacca.

To these Portuguese accounts of the European discovery of Japan may be added the following, which Siebold gives as an extract from a Japanese book of annals: “Under the Mikado Go-Nara and the Shōgun Yoshiharu, in the twelfth year of the Nengō [era] Tembun,[20] on the twenty-second day of the eighth month [October, 1543], a strange ship made the island Tanegashima, near Koura, in the remote province Nishimura.[21] The crew, about two hundred in number, had a singular appearance; their language was unintelligible, their native land unknown. On board was a Chinese, named Gohow [Gobō], who understood writing. From him it was gathered that this was a nam-ban (Japanese form of the Chinese nan-man), that is, ‘southern barbarian,’ship. On the twenty-sixth this vessel was taken to Akuopi harbor on the northwest side of the island, and Tokitaka, governor of Tanegashima, instituted a strict investigation concerning her, the Japanese bonze, Tsyn-sigu-zu, acting as interpreter by means of Chinese characters. On board the nam-ban ship were two commanders, Mura-synkya and Krista-muta. They had fire-arms, and first made the Japanese acquainted with shooting arms and the preparation of shooting powder.” It is added that the Japanese have preserved portraits of these two distinguished strangers[22]; but, if so, it is much to be feared that the likenesses cannot be relied upon, as Fischer, one of the most recent writers on Japan, and who has himself published the finest specimens which have yet appeared of Japanese graphic art, says he never knew nor heard of a tolerable Japanese portrait-painter; while Golownin declares that the portraits taken of himself and his companions, prisoners on the island of Matsumai, in 1812, to be forwarded to Yedo, bore not the least resemblance to the originals.[23]

CHAPTER III

Pinto’s Second Visit to Japan—Anjirō, or Paul of the Holy Faith—A. D. 1547-1548.

After a great variety of haps and mishaps in Pegu, Siam, Java, and elsewhere, Fernam Mendez Pinto represents himself as having embarked a second time for Japan, in a ship commanded by George Alvarez, which sailed from Malacca in the year 1547. In twenty-six days they made the island of Tanegashima, nine leagues south of the mainland of Japan; and on the fifth day afterwards reached Fuchū, in the kingdom of Bungo, a hundred leagues to the north. The king and the inhabitants gave them a very friendly reception; but very shortly after their arrival a civil commotion broke out, in which the king was murdered with most of his family and a number of Portuguese who were in his service; the city being set on fire during the outbreak, and great numbers killed on both sides.

One of the king’s sons, who, when this event occurred, happened to be at the fortress of Usuki, seven leagues distant, would have proceeded at once to Fuchū but for the advice of his tutor, Hizen dono, the same name borne by the ambassador of the king of Bungo, under whose guidance Pinto, according to his former narrative, had first visited Fuchū. This person advised the young prince first to collect a sufficient army; and of the Japanese method of calling to arms Pinto gives the following account: Every housekeeper, high and low, was required to keep by him a conch-shell, which, under severe penalties, could be sounded on four occasions only,—tumults, fire, thieves, and treason. To distinguish what the alarm was for, the shell was sounded once for tumult, twice for fire, three times for thieves, and four times for treason. So soon as the alarm of treason was sounded, every householder who heard it was obliged to repeat it. And upon the signal thus given, and which spread from house to house and village to village, all were obliged to march armed to the spot whence it came, the whole population of the district being thus very soon collected.

By this means, in the course of seven days, during three of which the young prince lamented his murdered relatives at a convent of bonzes in a grove near the city, after which he proceeded to confiscate the estates of the rebels, Pinto collects for him an army,—he is generally pretty liberal in such matters,—estimated at one hundred and thirty thousand men, of whom seventeen thousand were cavalry. The multitude thus collected breeding a famine, the prince marched upon Fuchū, where he was received with great demonstrations of loyalty. But, before repairing to the palace, he stopped at the temple where the body of his father was lying, whose obsequies he celebrated with much pomp, the observance lasting through two nights, with a great display of torches and illuminations. The closing ceremony was the presentation to the son of the bloody garments of the father, on which he swore that he would show no mercy to the traitors, even though to save their lives they might turn bonzes; but that, rather than allow them to escape, he would destroy every convent or temple in which they might take refuge.

On the fourth day, having been inaugurated as king, but with little pomp, he marched with a still-increasing army against the rebels, who, to the number of ten thousand, had entrenched themselves on a neighboring hill, where, being surrounded by the royal forces, rather than surrender, they were cut off to a man.

The city of Fuchū was left almost in ruins by this civil war; and the Portuguese, despairing of being able to find purchasers for their goods, proceeded to the city of Hamanoichi [or Miyakonojō], ninety leagues to the southward, on the bay of Kagoshima, where they remained for two months and a half, unable to sell their cargo, as the market was completely overstocked by Chinese merchandise, which had been poured in such quantities into the Japanese ports as to be worth much less than it was in China. Pinto and his company were entirely at a loss what to do; but from this dilemma they were delivered, as Pinto will have it, by the special providence of the Most High; for at the new moon of December a terrible storm occurred, in which almost the whole of these foreign traders were destroyed, to the incredible number, as Pinto relates, of near two thousand vessels, including twenty-six belonging to the Portuguese. Of the whole number, only ten or a dozen escaped, among them that in which Pinto was, which afterwards disposed of her lading to very good profit. So they got ready to depart, well pleased to see themselves so rich, but sad at having made their gains at the cost of so many lives, both of countrymen and strangers. Three times, however, they were detained by accidents, the last time barely escaping—by the help of the Virgin Mary, as Pinto insists—being carried by the strong current upon a dangerous reef; just at which moment they saw approaching the shore, in great haste, two men on horseback, making signs to them with a cloth. The preceding night four slaves, one of whom belonged to Pinto, had escaped from the vessel; and, thinking to receive some news of them, Pinto went in the boat with two companions. “Coming to the shore,” he says, “where the two men on horseback awaited us, one of them, who seemed the principal person, said to me, ‘Sir, as the haste I am in admits of no delay, being in great fear of some people who are in pursuit of me, I beg of you, for the love of God, that, without suggesting doubts or weighing inconveniences, you will receive me at once on board your ship.’At which words of his I was so much embarrassed,” says Pinto, “as hardly to know what to do, and the more so as I recollected having twice seen him in Hamanoichi, in the company of some merchants of that city. Scarcely had I received him and his companion into the boat, when fourteen men on horseback made their appearance, approaching at full speed and crying out to me, ‘Give up that traitor, or we will kill you!’Others soon after came up, both horsemen and on foot; whereupon I put off to the distance of a good bow-shot, and inquired what they wanted. To which they made answer, ‘If thou dost carry off that Japanese, know that a thousand heads of fellows like thee shall pay the forfeit of it.’To all which,” says Pinto, “I replied not a word, but, pulling to the ship, got on board with the two Japanese, who were well received, and provided by the captain and the other Portuguese with everything necessary for so long a voyage.” The name of this fugitive was Anjirō, “an instrument selected by the Lord,” so Pinto piously observes, “for his praise and the exaltation of the holy faith.”

In fourteen days the ship reached Chincheo, but found the mouth of the river leading to it blockaded by a famous Chinese corsair with a great fleet, to avoid whom they turned aside and sailed for Malacca.

In this city Pinto met, apparently for the first time, with Master Francis Xavier, general superior or provincial of the order of the Jesuits in India, in all parts of which occupied by the Portuguese he had already attained a high reputation for self-devotion, sanctity, and miraculous power; and who was then at Malacca, on his return to Goa, from a mission on which he had lately been to the Moluccas. “The father,” says Pinto, “had received intelligence of our arrival, and that we had brought with us the Japanese Anjirō. He came to visit George Alvarez and myself in the house of one Cosmo Rodriguez, where we lodged, and passed almost a whole day with us in curious inquiries (all founded on his lively zeal for the honor of God) about the countries we had visited; in the course of which I told him, not knowing that he knew it already, that we had brought with us two Japanese, one of whom appeared to be a man of consideration, well skilled in the laws and religion of Japan. Whereupon he expressed great desire to see him; in consequence of which we brought him to the hospital, where the father lodged, who received him gladly and took him to India, whither he was then on his way. Having arrived at Goa, Anjirō there became a Christian, taking the name of Paulo de Santa Fe [Paul of the Holy Faith], and in a short time learned to read and write Portuguese, and mastered the whole Christian doctrine; so that the father only waited for the monsoon to go to announce to the heathen of the isle of Japan, Christ, the Son of the living God, nailed to the cross for our sins (as he was accustomed to do), and to take this man with him as an interpreter, as he afterwards did, and his companion also, who, as well as himself, professed the Christian faith, and received from the father the name of John.”

CHAPTER IV

Religious Faith Three Centuries ago—Zeal of the Portuguese Conquerors—Antonio Galvano—Missionary Seminaries at Ternate and Goa—Order of the Jesuits—Francis Xavier—His Mission to India—His Mission to Japan—His Companion, Cosme de Torres—The Philippine Islands—A. D. 1542-1550.

Three centuries ago the religious faith of Europe was much more energetic and active than at present. With all imaginative minds, even those of the highest order, the popular belief had at that time all the force of undoubted reality. Michael Angelo and Raphael embodied it in marble and colors; and it is difficult to say which impulse was the stronger with the Portuguese and Spanish adventurers of that age,—the fierce thirst for gold and glory, which they felt as we feel it now, or passionate desire for the propagation of their religious faith, such indeed as is still talked about, and feebly exhibited in action, but in which the great bulk of the community, especially the more cultivated part of it, takes at present either no interest, or a very slight one.

The Portuguese adventurers in the East, wherever they went, were accompanied by friars, mostly Franciscans, and the building of magnificent churches was one of the first things attended to.

Of all these adventurers, few, if indeed a single one, have left so respectable a character as Antonio Galvano, already mentioned, governor of the Moluccas from 1536 to 1540, which islands, from a state of violent hostility to the Portuguese, and rebellion against them, he brought back to quiet and willing submission. Not less distinguished for piety than for valor and disinterestedness, Galvano made every effort to diffuse among the natives of the Oriental archipelago a knowledge of the Catholic faith; and with that view he established at Ternate, seat of the Portuguese government of the Moluccas, a seminary for the education of boys of superior abilities, to be collected from various nations, who, upon arriving at maturity, might preach the gospel, each in his own country,—an institution which the Council of Trent not long after warmly approved.

By the efforts of Galvano and others a similar seminary, sometimes called “Paul’s,” and sometimes “Of the Holy Faith,” had been erected at Goa, lately made the seat of an Indian bishopric; and it was at this seminary, endowed and enriched by the spoils of many heathen temples, that the Japanese Anjirō was placed by Xavier for his education. The name which he adopted at his baptism, Paul of the Holy Faith, was, as it thus appears, taken from the seminary at which he had been educated.

But the efforts hitherto made in India on behalf of the Catholic faith, if earnest, had been desultory. The establishment of the order of Jesuits in 1540 laid the foundation for a systematic attack upon the religious systems of the East, and an attempt at a spiritual revolution there, neither less vigorous nor less pertinacious than that which, for the forty years preceding, had been carried on by the new-comers from the West against political, commercial, and social institutions of those countries.

The leader in this enterprise was Francis Aspilcota, surnamed Xavier, one of the seven associates of whom the infant Society of Jesus, destined soon to become so powerful and so famous, originally consisted. He was born in 1506, in Navarre, at the foot of the Pyrenees, the youngest son of a noble and numerous family, of whom the younger members, and he among the rest, bore the surname of Xavier. Not inclining to the profession of arms embraced by the rest of the family, after preliminary studies at home he went to Paris, and was first a student at the College of St. Barbe, and afterwards, at the age of twenty-two, professor of philosophy in that of Beauvais. It was in this latter station that he first became acquainted with Ignatius Loyola, who, fifteen years older than Xavier, had come to Paris to pursue, as preparatory to a course of theology, those rudimentary studies which had not been thought necessary for the military destination of his earlier days. This remarkable Spaniard, whose military career had been cut short by a wound which made him a cripple, had already been for years a religious devotee; and having been from his youth thoroughly impregnated with the current ideas of romantic chivalry, he was already turning in his mind the formation of a new monastic order, which should carry into religion the spirit of the romances. Xavier, with whom he lived at Paris on intimate terms,—they slept, indeed, in the same bed,—was one of Loyola’s first disciples; and on the day of the Assumption, August 16, 1534, they two, with five others, of whom three or four were still students, in a subterranean chapel of the church of the abbey of Montmartre, united at a celebration of mass by Le Fèvre, who was already a priest, and in the consecration of themselves by a solemn vow to religious duties. This rudimentary order included, along with Loyola and Xavier, three other Spaniards, Lainez, Salmaron, and Boabdilla, Rodriguez, a Portuguese, and Le Fèvre, a Savoyard,—all afterwards distinguished. A mission to Jerusalem, which Loyola had already visited, was at that time their leading idea.

St. Francis Xavier One of the Earliest Missionaries to Japan

Loyola then returned home, the others remaining at Paris; but with an agreement to meet at Venice before the close of the year 1536, at which meeting three more were added to their number. A scheme of the order was subsequently drawn up, which, besides the vows of chastity and poverty, and of absolute obedience, as to God, to a general of the order, to be elected for life, included, instead of the mission to Jerusalem, which the war with the Turks made impracticable, a vow to go wherever the Pope might send them for the salvation of souls. To procure the sanction of the Pope, Loyola, with Lainez and Le Fèvre, spent several years at Rome. The scheme, having been referred to a commission, was approved by Paul III., by a bull, bearing date September 27, 1540, in which the name of “Clerks of the Society of Jesus” was bestowed upon the order, which was limited, however, to sixty members. Loyola was elected, early in 1541, the first general; and by a subsequent bull of Julian III., dated March 15, 1543, the society was allowed to increase its members indefinitely. Its object was the maintenance of the absolute authority of the church as personified in the Pope, not only by resisting the rebellion against it, then lately set on foot by Luther in Germany, but by extending the domination of the Pope into all parts of the world. To guard against the corruptions of preceding orders, the members were not to accept of any church preferment, except by the positive command of the Pope, nor of any fees for religious services; nor could the houses of the professed and the coadjutors (the two highest ranks of the order) have any endowments, though the colleges and novitiates might.

That which gave the Jesuits their first success was their introduction of good works, acts of charity and humanity, a care for the salvation of others as well as their own, into the first class of duties. Instead of being bound, like the other Catholic orders, to a peculiar garb and the stated repetition of formal prayers and ceremonies, they wore the ordinary clerical dress, and their time was to be divided between mental prayers and good works, of which the education of youth, the direction of consciences, and the comfort and care of the poor and sick, were the principal. In this latter service novices, or probationers, who must be at least fourteen years of age, of sound body, of good abilities and fair character, were to be tried for two years. From the novitiate, after taking the vows, the neophytes passed into the colleges, to which also were attached schools for lay pupils. From the colleges they might be admitted coadjutors and professed, which latter class must have studied theology for four years. These two latter ranks were to live in professed houses, which, unlike the colleges and novitiates, could have no property, but must be supported by alms. The coadjutors were of two classes: those admitted to holy orders, from which class the rectors of the colleges were appointed; and the lay coadjutors, furnishing cooks, stewards, agents, and the business men generally of the society. The professed and the coadjutors must renounce all claim to hereditary succession, not for themselves only, but for the society also. There were, however, a class of lay coadjutors who simply took the vows, yet continued to enjoy their property and lived in the world.

What added to the efficiency of the order was its strict military organization. It had nothing about it of the republican cast of the other Catholic orders, in which rotation in office occurred, chapters were frequent, and many points were decided by a majority of votes. The general of the Jesuits, chosen for life by a select congregation, had absolute authority, as had also, under him, each in his sphere, the provincials, the vice-provincials, the superiors of professed houses, and the rectors of colleges, all of whom the general might appoint and remove at pleasure. The general received monthly reports from the provincials and vice-provincials, quarterly ones from the superiors of professed houses and rectors of colleges, and half-yearly ones from every professed member. Every member was bound to report to his immediate superior his own misconduct or that of any of his companions.

John III, of Portugal, though very desirous of sending out a competent supply of spiritual laborers to his dominions in the East, could hardly find the means for it at home. There was but a single university—that of Coimbra—in all Portugal, and that not much frequented. John, it is true, had exerted himself in behalf of that institution, by inviting professors not only from Spain, but from Germany and Italy; but as yet the few Portuguese who devoted themselves to study sought their education for the most part at Complutum or Salamanca, and some of them at Paris. In this dearth of Portuguese laborers, having heard some rumor of the new order of the Jesuits, John charged his ambassador at Rome to request the founder, Ignatius, to send him for service in India not less than six members of it. Loyola, who had other schemes on foot, could spare only two, one of whom, Rodriguez, the original Portuguese of the order, remained behind in Portugal to organize the society there, where he established at Coimbra the first Jesuit college. The other was Xavier, to whom, as a test of his obedience,—though, the order being as yet not formally authorized, Loyola had no legal authority over him,—the command for his departure was communicated only the day beforehand, leaving him scarcely time before setting out upon so distant a journey to say farewell to his friends, and to get the rents mended in his tattered and threadbare cloak. He was indeed able to get ready the easier, not having, like our modern missionaries, the incumbrance or the comfort of a wife and children, and no baggage to impede his movements beyond his prayer-book and the clothes on his back.

Arriving at Lisbon, he waited on the king, but immediately upon leaving the palace proceeded, as was his wont, to the public hospital, devoting all his time, till the ships were ready, to the care and consolation of the sick and dying. While here he received from the Pope the appointment of apostolic nuncio for India, with full powers. Of all the offers made to him of an outfit for the voyage he would for a long time accept of nothing; but at last, lest he should seem too obstinate, he consented to receive some coarse cloaks, to be used in passing the Cape of Good Hope, one for himself, and one for each of the two companions who were to accompany him; likewise a few books, of which he understood there was a great scarcity in India. To the offer pressed upon him of the service of a boy to attend to his daily wants during the voyage, he replied, “While I have hands and feet of my own I shall need no servant.” The matter being still urged, with the remark that it was unfitting for a man in his position to be openly seen among the crowd of sailors and passengers washing his clothes or cooking his daily food, “You see,” he answered, “to what a pass this art of preserving one’s dignity has brought the commonwealth of Christendom! For my part, there is no office, however humble, which, provided there be no sin in it, I cannot upon occasion perform.” This was a specimen of his whole conduct throughout the voyage, which commenced April 7, 1541, giving rise to a remark of the captain of the fleet that it was even harder to make Xavier accept anything than it was to get rid of other men’s importunities.

All this self-sacrifice, accompanied as it was by a most careful attention to the wants of others, was not without its reward. It gave Xavier—not to mention his subsequent canonization—an immense reputation with his fellow-voyagers, and a great influence over them, which he did not fail to exercise. Already, amid all this early austerity, the principles of Jesuitism were fully developed. Xavier addressed everybody, even the most notorious profligates, with mild familiarity, no severity in his face, no harshness in his words. He even volunteered himself as a sociable companion, and thus acquired an influence all the greater because it was hardly perceived by those who submitted to it, so that he was generally said by those who knew him best to have accomplished much more by his familiar conversation than even by his public preaching,—of the effects of which, however, very extraordinary stories were told.

He arrived at Goa in May, 1542, and, taking lodgings at a hospital, entered at once with great zeal on the duties of his office as Pope’s nuncio, provincial in India of the order of Jesuits, and apostolical missionary, professing, however, entire submission to the bishop of Goa. Passing through the streets, bell in hand, he called the children, women, and servants to be catechised, and to help the memory and catch the ear he put the catechism into rhyme. But it was not merely to the Christian population that he confined his labors. He had to encounter the scornful fanaticism of the Mahometans, who, setting out from Arabia, had preceded the Portuguese by centuries in commercial and military visits to the coasts of India and the eastern islands, and who had in many places largely diffused their religion. He had to meet the insolent bigotry of the twice-born Brahmins, who, through the system of castes, held society fast bound, helpless and stationary, in the fetters of an all-pervading superstition. Jewish scoffers were also to be met. In fact, all sects seemed to be brought together in southern India, including even an ancient form of Christianity, a remnant of the followers of Zoroaster, from Persia, and in Ceylon, Buddhists. After a year’s stay at Goa, Xavier proceeded to the southern point of Hindustan, about Cape Comorin, the pearl-fishers of which region had, for the sake of Portuguese protection, professed the Christian religion, of which, however, they knew nothing but the name. Having preached for a year or more in this district, he passed to the neighboring territories of the Coromandel coast, where there already existed the remains, before referred to, of an ancient Christianity, originally propagated, it seems probable, by Nestorian missionaries of the fifth or sixth century, but which the Portuguese insisted upon ascribing to St. Thomas, the apostle, about whose life and labors in the East a whole volume of fables was, between them and the native Christians, speedily manufactured.

Incapable of staying long in one place, from India Xavier soon proceeded to Malacca, where he arrived towards the close of 1545, and whence the next Spring he set out on a missionary journey through the Moluccas. It was on his return from this last expedition that he first met with the Japanese Anjirō, at Malacca,—as related, after Pinto, in the preceding chapter,—with whom he arrived at Goa in March, 1548. The Japanese were placed, as has been mentioned, in the seminary of St. Paul; and so delighted was Xavier with their progress and fervor, as to resolve to undertake, after visiting his churches at Cape Comorin, a new mission to Japan.

We have seen the account given by Pinto of the origin of the acquaintance between Xavier and Anjirō. The biographers of the saint and the Jesuit historians of the Japanese mission embellish this story by the addition of several romantic particulars. Anjirō, they tell us, had long been troubled with remorse of conscience, for which he could find no remedy, and which he only aggravated in the attempt to cure it by retiring for a time to a Japanese monastery of bonzes. Having made the acquaintance of some of the earliest Portuguese adventurers to Japan, he consulted them as to this malady, one of whom, by name Alvares Vaz, having heard the fame of Xavier, strongly advised the inquiring Japanese to seek his assistance. Anjirō was much inclined to do so; but the danger and distance of the voyage deterred him, till, having killed a man in a rencontre, the fear of arrest drove him to embark on the first vessel he could find, which happened to be a Portuguese ship bound for Malacca, and commanded by George Alvarez, a great admirer of Xavier’s. The good example and edifying discourse of this pious sea-captain brought Anjirō to the determination to become a Catholic; but being disappointed in finding Xavier as he had expected, or, according to other accounts, being refused baptism by the vicar of the bishop of Goa resident at Malacca, he thought no more but of returning home again, and with that object, not meeting with any ship bound direct for Japan, he embarked for Chincheo, in China. Thence he sailed for home; but a terrible storm drove him back to the port he had left, reviving also his almost forgotten resolution to become a Catholic, in which he was the more confirmed by happening to find in the harbor his old Portuguese friend, Alvares Vaz, in command of a ship on her way back to India. Yielding to the persuasions of this old friend, Anjirō sailed in his ship for Malacca; and, on landing there, the very first person whom he met was George Alvarez, who immediately took him to Xavier. These accounts also give him two Japanese servants, both of whom are stated to have accompanied him to Goa, and to have been baptized, one by the name of John, the other by that of Anthony. And this last part of the story is confirmed by a letter of Xavier’s, dated July, 1549, and written from Malacca on his way to Japan, in which letter he gives an interesting, and at the same time characteristic, account of his converts, very much in substance, and even in expression, like what we may read in the very latest missionary reports.

“No sooner,” he writes, “had they been cleansed by the waters of baptism, than the divine goodness shed upon them such delight, and brought them to such a sense of God’s beneficence towards them, that through pious and spiritual joy they melted into tears. In all the virtues they made such a progress as to afford us a pleasant and useful subject of conversation. They also learned to read and write, and diligently attended at the appointed seasons of prayer. When inquired of by me what subject of contemplation affected them most, they answered, the sufferings of our Lord; and, therefore, to this contemplation they chiefly applied themselves. They studied also the articles of faith, the means of redemption, and the other Christian mysteries. To my frequent inquiries what religious rites they found profited them the most, they always answered, confession and communion; adding, also, that they did not see how any reasonable man could hesitate to assent to and obey the requirements of Christian discipline. Paul of the Holy Faith, one of the number, I once heard bursting out, with sighs, into these exclamations: ‘O miserable Japanese! who adore as deities the very things which God has made for your service!’And when I asked him to what he referred, he answered, ‘Because they worship the sun and the moon, things made to serve those who know the Lord Jesus; for to what other end are they made, except to illuminate both day and night, in order that men may employ that light in the worship and to the glory of God and his Son?’”

He mentions, in the same letter, that the voyage to Japan was so dangerous, that not more than two vessels out of three were expected to arrive there in safety. He even seems to have had some temptations to abandon the enterprise; but in spite of numerous obstacles put in his way, as he will have it, by the great adversary of mankind, he determined to persevere, especially as letters from Japan gave encouraging information of the desire there for Christian instruction, on the part of a prince of the country who had been much impressed by the efficacy of the sign of the cross, as employed by certain Portuguese merchants, in driving the evil spirits from a haunted house.

Another letter of Xavier’s, written from Kagoshima, in Japan, and dated in November, 1549, about three months after his arrival, gives an account of his voyage thither.

Taking with him the three Japanese, Cosme de Torres, a priest, and Jean Fernandes, a brother of the society,—of which, besides several who had joined it in India, some ten or twelve members had followed Xavier from Portugal, and had been distributed in various services,—he sailed in the ship of Chinese merchants, who had agreed with the Portuguese commander at Malacca to carry him to Japan. As Pinto tells the story, this merchant was a corsair, and so notorious a one as to go by the name of the Robber. Xavier says nothing of that, but complains of the levity and vacillation natural to barbarians, which made the captain linger at the islands where he touched, at the risk of losing the monsoon and being obliged to winter in China. Xavier was also greatly shocked at the assiduous worship paid by the mariners to an idol which they had on board, and before which they burnt candles and odoriferous wood, seeking oracles from it as to the result of the voyage. “What were our feelings, and what we suffered, you can well imagine,” he exclaims, “at the thought that this demon should be consulted as to the whole course of our journey.”

After touching at Canton the Chinese captain, instead of sailing thence to Japan, as he had promised, followed the coast north toward Chincheo; but hearing, when he approached that port, that it was blockaded by a corsair, he put off in self-defence for Japan, and arrived safe in the port of Kagoshima.

Anjirō, or Paul as he was now called, was well received by his relations, and forty days were spent by Xavier in laborious application to the rudiments of the language, and by Paul in translating into Japanese the ten commandments, and other parts of the Christian faith, which Xavier determined, so he writes, to have printed as soon as possible, especially as most of the Japanese could read. Anjirō also devoted himself to exhortations and arguments among his relations and friends, and soon made converts of his wife and daughter, and many besides, of both sexes. An interview was had with the king of Satsuma,—in which province Kagoshima was situated,—and he presently issued an edict allowing his subjects to embrace the new faith. This beginning seemed promising; but Xavier already anticipated a violent opposition so soon as his object came to be fully understood. He drew consolation, however, from the spiritual benefits enjoyed by himself, “since in these remote regions,” so he wrote, “amid the impious worshippers of demons, so very far removed from almost every mortal aid and consolation, we almost of necessity, as it were, forget and lose ourselves in God, which hardly can happen in a Christian land, where the love of parents and country, intimacies, friendship and affinities, and helps at hand both for body and mind, intervene, as it were, between man and God, to the forgetfulness of the latter.” And what tended to confirm this spiritual state of mind was the entire freedom in Japan “from those delights which elsewhere stimulate the flesh and break down the strength of mind and body. The Japanese,” he wrote, “rear no animals for food. Sometimes they eat fish;—they have a moderate supply of rice and wheat; but they live, for the most part, on vegetables and fruits; and yet they attain to such a good old age, as clearly to show how little nature, elsewhere so insatiable, really demands.”

Anjirō himself wrote at the same time a short letter to the brethren at Goa, but it adds nothing to the information contained in Xavier’s.

The following account, which Cosme de Torres,[24] a Spaniard by birth, Xavier’s principal assistant, and his successor at the head of the mission, gives of himself in a letter written from Goa to the society in Europe, just before setting out, shows, like other cases to be mentioned hereafter, that it was by no means merely from the class of students that the order of the Jesuits was at its commencement recruited.

Though always inclined, so Cosme writes, to religion, yet many things and various desires for a long time distracted him. In the year 1538, in search he knew not of what, he sailed from Spain to the Canaries, whence he visited the West Indies and the continent of New Spain, where he passed four years in the greatest abundance, and satiety even, of this world’s goods. But desiring something greater and more solid, in 1542 he embarked on board a fleet of six ships, fitted out by Mendosa, the viceroy of New Spain, to explore and occupy the islands of the Pacific, discovered by Magellan in 1521. Standing westward, on the fifty-fifth day they fell in, so Cosme writes, with a numerous cluster of very small, low islands, of which the inhabitants lived on fish and the leaves of trees. Ten days after they saw a beautiful island, covered with palms, but the wind prevented their landing. In another ten or twelve days the ships reached the great island of Mindanao, two hundred leagues in circumference, but with few inhabitants. Sailing thence to the south they discovered a small island abounding in meat and rice; but having, during half a year’s residence, lost four hundred men in contests with the natives, who used poisoned arrows, they sailed to the Moluccas, where they remained about two years, till it was finally resolved, not having the means to get back to New Spain, to apply to the Portuguese governor to forward them to Goa. At Amboina, Cosme met with Xavier, whose conversation revived his religious inclinations; and, proceeding to Goa, he was ordained a priest by the bishop there, who placed him in charge of a cure. But he found no peace of mind till he betook himself to the college of St. Paul (which seems by this time to have passed into the hands of the Jesuits), being the more confirmed in his resolution to join the order, by the return of Xavier to Goa, whose invitation to accompany him to Japan he joyfully accepted, and where he continued for twenty years to labor as a missionary.

Cosme, in his letter above quoted, says nothing of any hostile collision of the Spanish ships, in which he reached the East, with the Portuguese; but it appears, from Galvano’s account of this expedition, that such collision did take place. He also gives, as the reason why the Spaniards did not land on Mindanao, the opposition they experienced from some of the princes of it, who, by his own recent efforts, had been converted to Catholicism; and who, owing their obedience to him, would by no means incur his displeasure by entertaining these interloping Spaniards.

One of the Spanish ships was sent back to New Spain with news of their success thus far. This ship passed among the northern islands of the group, which seem now first to have received the name of the Philippines. Another fleet sailed from Seville, in the year 1544, to coöperate with Rui Lopes; but none of the ships succeeded in passing the Straits of Magellan, except one small bark, which ran up the coast to Peru. The Spaniards made no further attempts in the East till the expiration of ten years or more, when the Philippines were finally colonized—an event not without its influence upon the affairs of Japan.

CHAPTER V

Political and Religious Condition of Japan, as found by the Portuguese—The Yakatas, or Kings, and their Vassals—Revenues—Money—Distinction of Ranks—The Kubō-Sama—The Dairi—Shintō—Buddhism—Judō—A.D. 1550.

Japan, as found by the Portuguese, embraced three large islands, besides many smaller ones. Shimo (or Kiūshiū), the most southern and western of the group, and the one with which the Portuguese first became acquainted, is separated at the north, by a narrow strait, from the much larger island of Nippon,[25] forming with its western portion a right angle, within which the third and much smaller island of Sikoku is included. These islands were found to be divided into sixty-six separate governments or kingdoms, of which Nippon contained fifty-three, Shimo (or Kiūshiū) nine, and Sikoku four—the numerous smaller islands being reckoned as appurtenant to one or another of the three larger ones. These kingdoms, grouped into eight, or rather nine, larger divisions, and subdivided into principalities, of which, in all, there were not less than six hundred, had originally (at least such was the Japanese tradition) been provinces of a consolidated empire; but by degrees and by dint of civil wars, by which the islands had been, and still were, very much distracted, they had reached at the period of the Portuguese discovery a state of almost complete independence. Indeed, several of the kingdoms, like that of Hizen, in the west part of Shimo, had still further disintegrated into independent principalities.

It still frequently happened, however, that several provinces were united under one ruler; and such was especially the case with five central provinces of Nippon, including the great cities of Miyako, Ōsaka and Sakai, which five provinces formed the patrimony of a prince who bore the title of Kubō-Sama—Sama meaning lord, and Kubō general or commander. This title the Portuguese rendered into Emperor, and it was almost precisely equivalent to the original sense of the Imperator of the Romans, though still more exactly corresponding to Cromwell’s title of Lord-general.

This Kubō or Shōgun, as he was otherwise called, was acknowledged by all the other princes as in some respect their superior and head. The other rulers of provinces bore the title of Shugo, or Yakata, which the Portuguese rendered by the term King. Reserving to themselves, as their personal domain, a good half of the whole extent of their territories, these chiefs divided the rest among certain great vassals, called Tono, Kunishū, or Kunidaimiō, who were bound to military service in proportion to the extent of the lands which they held; which lands, after reserving a portion for their private domain, these nobles distributed in their turn to other inferior lords, called Yoriki, who held of them upon similar conditions of military service, and who had still beneath them, upon the same footing, a class of military vassals and tenants, called Dōshin, and corresponding to the men-at-arms of the feudal times of Europe. The actual cultivators of the lands—as had also been, and still to a considerable extent was, the case in feudal Europe—were in the condition of serfs.

Thus it happened, that, as in feudal Europe, so in Japan, great armies might be very suddenly raised; and war being the chief employment of the superior classes, and the only occupation, that of the priesthood excepted, esteemed honorable, the whole country was in a constant state of turbulence and commotion.

All the classes above enumerated except the last enjoyed the highly prized honor of wearing two swords. One sword was worn by certain inferior officials; but merchants, traders, and artisans, were confounded, as to this matter, with the peasants, not being permitted to wear any. The revenue of the princes and other proprietors was, and still is, reckoned in koku of rice, each of three sacks or bales, each bale containing (according to Titsingh) thirty-three and one-third gantings [shō],—the universal Japanese measure for all articles, liquid or dry,—and weighing from eighty-two to eighty-three katties, or somewhat more than a hundred of our pounds.[26] Ten thousand koku make a mankoku, in which the revenues of the great princes are reckoned. The distinction of rank was very strictly observed, being even ingrained into the language. Inferiors being seated on their heels, according to the Japanese fashion, testified their respect for their superiors by laying the palms of their hands on the floor, and bending their bodies so low that their foreheads almost touched the ground, in which position they remained for some seconds. This is called the kitō. The superior responded by laying the palms of his hands upon his knees, and nodding or bowing, more or less low, according to the rank of the other party.

As to everything that required powers of analysis, or the capacity of taking general views, the Portuguese missionaries were but poor observers; yet they could not but perceive in the Dairi the surviving shadow, and indeed, in the earlier days of the missions, something more than a mere shadow, of a still more ancient form of government, in which the civil and ecclesiastical authority had both been united under one head.

The Dairi,[27] Ō, or Mikado, as he was otherwise designated, had for his residence the northeast quarter of Miyako (a great city not far from the centre of Nippon, but nearest the southern shore). This quarter was of vast extent, surrounded by a wall, with a ditch and rampart, by which it was separated from the rest of the city. In the midst of this fortified place, in a vast palace, easily distinguished from a distance by the height of its tower, the Dairi dwelt, with his empress or chief wife; his other eleven wives had adjoining palaces in a circle around, outside of which were the dwellings of his chamberlains and other officers. These Dairi claimed to be descended from Jimmu, who, it was said, had, A. D. 660, introduced civilization into Japan, and first established a regular government, and commencing with whom, the Japanese annals show a regular series of Dairi, who are represented as having been for many ages the sole lords and imperial rulers of Japan, till at length they had been insensibly set aside, as to the actual exercise of authority, by the Kubō-Sama, or commanders of the armies. Yet these gradually eclipsed and finally superseded emperors—equivalents of the “idle kings” of the Carlovingian race of France, or to the present nominal sovereign of the British empire—were, and still are, treated (as Queen Victoria is) with all the ceremonial of substantial power, and even with the respect and reverence due to the spiritual head of the national church, descended from a race of divinities, and destined at death to pass by a regular apotheosis into the list of the national gods.

All the revenue drawn from the city of Miyako and its dependencies was appropriated to their support, to which the Kubō-Sama added a further sum from his treasury. He himself treated the Dairi with as much ceremonious respect and semi-worship as the British prime minister bestows upon the British queen. He paid an annual visit to the court of the Dairi in great state, and, withal, the carriage of an inferior; but took care to maintain a garrison at Miyako, or its neighborhood, sufficient to repress any attempt on the part of the Dairi or his partisans to reëstablish the old order of things,—an idea which, when the islands first became known to the Portuguese, seems not yet to have been entirely abandoned.

We may trace a still further resemblance between the position of the Dairi of Japan and the Queen of England, in the circumstance that all public acts are dated by the years of his reign, and that all titles of honor nominally emanate from him, though of course obliged, as to this matter, to follow the suggestions of the Kubō-Sama. Even the Kubō-Sama himself condescends, like a British prime minister, to accept such decorations at the hands of the Dairi, affecting to feel extremely honored and flattered at titles which had been, in fact, dictated by himself.

The whole court of the Dairi, and all the inhabitants of the quarter of Miyako in which he dwelt, consisted of persons who plumed themselves upon the idea of being, like the Dairi himself, descended from Tenshō-daijin, the first of the demigods, and who in consequence looked down, like the Indian Brahmins, upon all the rest of the nation as an inferior race, distinguishing themselves as Kuge, and all the rest of the nation as Gege. These Kuge, who may be conjectured to have once formed a class resembling the old Roman patricians, all wore a particular dress, by which was indicated, not only their character as members of that order, but, by the length of their sashes, the particular rank which they held in it; a distinction the more necessary, since, as generally happens with these aristocracies of birth, many of the members were in a state of poverty, and obliged to support themselves by various handicrafts.[28]

Of the magnificence of the court of the Dairi, and of the ceremonials of it, the missionaries reported many stories, chiefly, of course, on the credit of hearsay. It was said that the Dairi was never allowed to breathe the common air, nor his foot to touch the ground; that he never wore the same garment twice, nor ate a second time from the same dishes, which, after each meal, were carefully broken,—for, should any other person attempt to dine from them, he would infallibly perish by an inflammation of the throat. Nor could any one who attempted to wear the Dairi’s cast-off garments, without his permission, escape a similar punishment. The Dairi, as we are told, was, in ancient times, obliged to seat himself every morning on his throne, with the crown on his head, and there to hold himself immovable for several hours like a statue. This immobility, it was imagined, was an augury of the tranquillity of the empire; and if he happened to move ever so little, or even to turn his eyes, war, famine, fire, or pestilence was expected soon to afflict the unhappy province toward which he had squinted. But as the country was thus kept in a state of perpetual agitation, the happy substitute was finally hit upon of placing the crown upon the throne without the Dairi—a more fixed immobility being thus assured; and, as Kämpfer dryly observes, one doubtless producing much the same good effects.

At the time of the arrival of Xavier in Japan the throne of the Dairi was filled by Go-Nara, the hundred and sixth, according to the Japanese chronicles, in the order of succession; while the throne of the Kubō-Sama was occupied by Yoshiharu, who was succeeded the next year by his son Yoshiteru, the twenty-fourth of these officers, according to the Japanese, since their assumption of sovereign power in the person of Yoritomo, A. D. 1185.

The Japanese annals, which are scarcely more than a chronological table of successions, cast little light upon the causes and progress of this revolution;[29] but, from the analogy of similar cases, we may conjecture that it was occasioned, at least in part, by the introduction into Japan, and the spread there, of a new religion, gradually superseding, to a great extent, the old system, of which the Dairi was the head.

Image of Yoritomo From Official History of Japan

One might have expected from the Portuguese missionaries a pretty exact account of the various creeds and sects of Japan, or, at least, of the two leading religions, between which the great bulk of the people were divided; instead of which they confound perpetually the ministers of the two religions under the common name of bonzes, taking very little pains to distinguish between the two systems, both of which they regarded as equally false and pernicious. Their attention, indeed, seems to have been principally fixed on the new religion, that of Buddha, or Ho, of which the adherents were by far the most numerous, and the hierarchy the most compact and formidable, presenting, in its organization and practices (with, however, on some points a very different set of doctrines), a most singular counterpart to the Catholic Church,—a similarity which the missionaries could only explain by the theory of a diabolical imitation; and which some subsequent Catholic writers have been inclined to ascribe, upon very unsatisfactory grounds, to the ancient labors of Armenian and Nestorian missionaries, being extremely unwilling to admit what seems, however, very probable, if not, indeed, certain,—little attention has as yet been given to this interesting inquiry,—that some leading ideas of the Catholic Church have been derived from Buddhist sources, whose missionaries, while penetrating, as we know they did, to the East, and converting entire nations, may well be supposed not to have been without their influence also on the West.

Notwithstanding, however, the general prevalence, at the time when Japan first became known to Europeans, of the doctrine of Buddha,—of which there would seem to have been quite a number of distinct observances, not unlike the different orders of monks and friars in the Catholic Church,—it appears, as well from the memoirs of the Jesuit missionaries, as from more exact and subsequent observations made by residents in the Dutch service, that there also existed another and more ancient religious system, with which the person and authority of the Dairi had been and still were closely identified. This system[30] was known as the religion of Shintō, or of the Kami,—a name given not only to the seven mythological personages, or celestial gods, who compose the first Japanese dynasty, and to the five demigods, or terrestrial gods, who compose the second (two dynasties which, as in the similar mythology of the Egyptians and Hindus, were imagined to have extended through immense and incomprehensible ages preceding the era of Jimmu), but including also the whole series of the Dairi, who traced their descent from the first of the demigods, and who, though regarded during their lives as mere men, yet at their deaths underwent, as in the case of the Roman Cæsars, a regular apotheosis, by which they were added to the number of the Kami, or Shin,—words both of which had the same signification, namely, inhabitants of heaven.[31] A like apotheosis was also extended to all who had seemed to deserve it by their sanctity, their miracles, or their great benefactions.

The Kami of the first dynasty, the seven superior gods, being regarded as too elevated above the earth to concern themselves in what is passing on it, the chief object of the worship of the adherents of this ancient system was the goddess Tenshō-daijin,[32] already mentioned as the first of the demigods, and the supposed progenitor of the Dairi, and of the whole order of the Kuge. Of this Tenshō-daijin, and of her heroic and miraculous deeds, a vast many fables were in circulation. Even those who had quitted the ancient religion to embrace the new sects paid a sort of worship to the pretended mother of the Japanese nation; and there was not a considerable city in the empire in which there was not a temple to her honor. On the other hand, the religion of the Kami, by its doctrine of the apotheosis of all great saints and great heroes, gave, like the old pagan religions, a hospitable reception to all new gods, so that even the rival demigod, Buddha, came to be regarded by many as identical with Tenshō-daijin,—a circumstance which will serve to explain the great intermixture of religious ideas found in Japan, and the alleged fact, very remarkable, if true, that, till after the arrival of the Portuguese missionaries, religious persecution had never been known there.

Each of these numerous demigods was supposed by the adherents of the religion of Shintō to preside over a special paradise of his own; this one in the air, that one at the bottom of the sea, one in the moon and another in the sun, and so on; and each devotee, choosing his god according to the paradise that pleased him best, spared no pains to gain admission into it. For what St. Paul had said of the Athenians, might, according to the missionaries, be applied with equal truth to the Japanese,—they were excessively superstitious, and this superstition had so multiplied temples, that there was scarcely a city in which, counting all the smaller chapels, the number did not seem at least equal to that of the most pious Catholic countries.

The temples of the Shintō religion, called Miya, were and are—for in this respect no change has taken place—ordinarily built upon eminences, in retired spots, at a distance from bustle and business, surrounded by groves and approached by a great avenue having a gate of stone or wood, and bearing a tablet or door-plate of a foot and a half square, which announces, in gilded letters, the name of the Kami to whom the temple is consecrated. These exterior appendages would seem to foretell a considerable structure; but within there is usually found only a wretched little building of wood, half hid among trees and shrubbery, about eighteen feet in length, breadth, and height, all its dimensions being equal, and with only a single grated window, through which the interior may be seen, empty, or containing merely a mirror of polished metal, set in a frame of braided straw, or hung about with fringes of white paper. Just within the entrance of the enclosure stands a basin of water, by washing in which the worshippers may purify themselves. Beside the temple is a great chest for the reception of alms, partly by which, and partly by an allowance from the Dairi, the guardians of the temples are supported, while at the gate hangs a gong, on which the visitant announces his arrival. Most of these temples have also an antechamber, in which sit those who have the charge, clothed in rich garments. There are commonly also in the enclosure a number of little chapels, or miniature temples, portable so as to be carried in religious processions. All of these temples are built after one model, the famous one of Ise, near the centre of the island of Nippon, and which within the enclosure is equally humble with all the rest.

Ise Temple

The worship consists in prayers and prostrations. Works of religious merit are, casting a contribution into the alms-chest, and avoiding or expiating the impurities supposed to be the consequence of being touched by blood, of eating of the flesh of any quadruped except the deer, and to a less extent even that of any bird, of killing any animal, of coming in contact with a dead person, or even, among the more scrupulous, of seeing, hearing of, or speaking of any such impurities. To these may be added, as works of religious merit, the celebration of festivals, of which there are two principal ones in each month, being the first and fifteenth day of it, besides five greater ones distributed through the year, and lasting, some of them, for several days, in which concerts, spectacles, and theatrical exhibitions form a leading part. We must add the going on pilgrimages, to which, indeed, all the religious of Japan are greatly addicted. The pilgrimage esteemed by the adherents of Shintō as the most meritorious, and which all are bound to make once a year, or, at least, once in their life, is that of Ise, the name of a central province on the south coast of Nippon, in which Tenshō-daijin was reported to have been born and to have died, and which contains a Miya, exceedingly venerated, and already mentioned as the model after which all the others are built.

Though it is not at all easy to distinguish what, either of ceremony or doctrine, was peculiar or original in the system of Shintō,[33] yet in general that system seems to have been much less austere than the rival doctrine of Buddha, which teaches that sorrow is inseparable from existence, the only escape from it being in annihilation. The adherents of Shintō were, on the other hand, much more disposed to look upon the bright side of things, turning their religious festivals into holidays, and regarding people in sorrow and distress as unfit for the worship of the gods, whose felicity ought not to be disturbed by the sight of pain and misery. And this, perhaps, was one of the causes that enabled the religion of Buddha, which addresses itself more to the sorrowing hearts of which the world is so full, to obtain that predominance of which the Portuguese missionaries found it in possession.

A Shintō Priest

Of this religion of Buddha, by no means peculiar to Japan, but prevailing through the whole of central and southeastern Asia, and having probably more adherents than any other religious creed, it is not necessary here to speak at any length. A much more correct idea of it is to be obtained from the recorded observations of our modern missionaries, and from the elaborate investigations of Abel Rémusat, and several other learned Orientalists, who have shed a flood of light upon this interesting subject, than can be gathered from the letters of the Portuguese missionaries, whose comprehension of the Buddhist doctrine was, on many important points, especially as to the cardinal one of annihilation, exceedingly confused, contradictory, and erroneous; and, indeed, the same confusion and error exists in almost all European travellers in the East, down to a very recent period. Suffice it to say, that in the austerities and contempt for the world and its pleasures, practised and professed by the bonzes of the Buddhists, even Xavier and his brother Jesuits found their match; while, in the hierarchy into which those bonzes were arranged; the foreign language, imperfectly known even to themselves, of their sacred books and their liturgy, and which recent investigations have detected to be, with the bonzes of China and Japan, not Pali alone, but also pure Sanscrit; their doctrine of celibacy; the establishment of monasteries and nunneries; their orders of begging devotees; their exterior of purity and self-denial, but supposed secret licentiousness;[34] their fasts; their garbs; the tinkling of bells; the sign of the cross; the rosaries on which they counted their prayers; the large number of persons of noble birth who entered upon the clerical life; their manner of preaching; their religious processions; their pilgrimages; the size, splendor, and magnificence of their temples, known as Tera, the roofs supported by tall pillars of cedar; the altar within, and the lamps and incense burning there; the right of asylum possessed by the Tera; and even the practice of confession, prayers for the dead, and the sale of merit;—in all these respects, this system presented a complete counterpart at least to the show and forms and priestly devices of that very scheme of Roman Catholic worship which Xavier and his brother missionaries sought to introduce into Japan. The only striking difference was in the images, often of gigantic size, to be found in the Tera, but which, after all, were no more than a set-off against the pictures of the Catholic churches.

At the head of the Buddhist hierarchy was a high priest called Shaku, resident at Miyako, and having much the same spiritual prerogative with the Pope of Rome, including the canonization of saints. With him rested the consecration of the Jūji, corresponding to the bishops, or rather to the abbots, of the Catholic Church—all the Buddhist clergy being, in the language of Rome, regulars (similar, that is, to the monks and friars), and living together in monasteries of which the Jūji were the heads. These Jūji, however, could not enter upon their offices, to which great revenues were attached, except by the consent of the temporal authorities, which took care to limit the interference of the Shaku and the Jūji strictly to spiritual matters.[35]

Pilgrims returning from a Temple

There was this further resemblance also to the regular orders of the Romish church, that the Buddhist clergy were divided into a number of observances, hardly less hostile to each other than the Dominicans to the Franciscans, or both to the Jesuits. But as the church and state were kept in Japan perfectly distinct,—as now in the United States,—and as the bonzes possessed no direct temporal power, there was no appeal to the secular arm, no civil punishments for heresy, and no religious vows perpetually binding, all being at liberty, so far as the civil law was concerned, to enter or leave the monasteries at pleasure. It was also another result of this separation of state and church—as here in the United States—that there was only needed a Jo Smith, a man hardy or self-deceived enough to pretend to inspiration, to set up a new observance; an occurrence by which the theology of Japan had become from time to time more and more diversified.

There were also, besides the more regular clergy, enthusiasts, or impostors, religious vagabonds who lived by beggary, and by pretending to drive away evil spirits, to find things lost, to discover robbers, to determine guilt or innocence of accused parties, to interpret dreams, to predict the future, to cure desperate maladies, and other similar feats, which they performed chiefly through the medium, not of a table, but of a child, into whom they pretended to make a spirit enter, able to answer all their questions. Such, in particular, were the Yamabushi, or mountain priests, an order of the religion of Shintō.

Yet, exceedingly superstitious as the Japanese were, there was not wanting among them a sect of Rationalists, the natural result of freedom of opinion, who regarded all these practices and doctrines, and all the various creeds of the country, with secret incredulity, and even contempt. These Rationalists, known as Jiudōshiu, and their doctrine as Judō, and found chiefly among the upper classes, looked up to the Chinese Confucius as their master and teacher. They treated the system of Buddha with open hostility, as mere imposture and falsehood; but, in order to avoid the odium of being destitute of all religion, conformed, at least so far as external observances were concerned, to the old national system of Shintō.[36]

A Buddhist Sermon

CHAPTER VI

Civilization of the Japanese—Animals—Agriculture—Arts—Houses—Ships—Literature—Jurisprudence—Character of the Japanese—Their Custom of cutting themselves open—A. D. 1550.

The doctrine of the transmigration of souls, one of the most distinguishing tenets of the Buddhist faith, had not failed to confirm the Japanese in a distaste for animal food, which had originated, perhaps, from the small number of animals natives of that insular country [sic],—an abstinence, indeed, which even the ancient religion of Shintō had countenanced by denouncing as impure the act of killing any animal, or being sprinkled with the slightest drop of blood. Of domestic tame animals, the Japanese possessed from time immemorial the horse, the ox, the buffalo, the dog, and the cat; but none of these were ever used as food. The Portuguese introduced the deer and the goat; but the Japanese, not eating their flesh nor understanding the art of working up their wool or hair, took no pains to multiply them. The Chinese introduced the hog; but the eating of that animal was confined to them and to other foreigners. The deer, the hare, and the wild boar were eaten by some sects, and some wild birds by the poorer classes. The fox was hunted for its skin, the hair of which was employed for the pencil used in painting and writing. The animal itself, owing to its roguery, was believed to be the residence of particularly wicked souls—an idea confirmed by many strange stories in common circulation. The tortoise and the crane were regarded in some sort as sacred animals, never to be killed nor injured. Whales of a small species were taken, then as now, near the coast, and were used as food, as were many other kinds of fish, the produce of the sea and rivers. Shell-fish and certain seaweeds were also eaten in large quantities.

The soil of Japan, being of volcanic origin, was in some places very fertile; but in many parts there were rugged and inaccessible mountains, the sides of which, not admitting the use of the plough, were built up in terraces cultivated by hand. Agriculture formed the chief occupation of the inhabitants, and they had carried it to considerable perfection, well understanding the use of composite manures. The chief crops were rice, which was the great article of food; barley, for the horses and cattle; wheat, used principally for vermicelli; and several kinds of peas and beans. They cultivated, also, a number of seeds, from which oils were expressed; likewise cotton, hemp, the white mulberry for the feeding of silkworms (silk being the stuff most in use), and the paper mulberry for the manufacture of paper. To these may be added the camphor-tree, which grew, however, only in the southwestern parts of Shimo, the Rhus vernix, which produces the celebrated Japanese varnish, and the tea-plant, spoken of by one of the early Portuguese missionaries as “a certain herb called Cha, of which they put as much as a walnut shell may contain into a dish of porcelain, and drink it with hot water.” From rice they produced by fermentation an intoxicating drink, called sake, which served them in the place of wine, and which was consumed in large quantities. A yeast, or rather vinegar, produced from this liquor, was largely employed in the pickling of vegetables. Their most useful woods were the bamboo, the fir of several species, and the cedar.

They understood in perfection the arts of weaving silks and of moulding porcelain, and excelled in gilding, engraving, and especially in the use of lacquer or varnish. They also were able to manufacture sword-blades of excellent temper.

As in other Eastern countries, the greater nobles exhibited an extreme magnificence; but trade and the arts were held in low esteem, and the mass of the people were excessively poor. Their buildings, though they had some few solid structures of stone, were principally light erections of wood, to avoid the effects of frequent earthquakes; but this and the varnish employed exposed them to conflagrations, which, in the towns, were very frequent and destructive. These towns consisted, for the most part, of very cheap structures (like most of those throughout the East), so that cities were built and destroyed with equal ease and celerity.

Their commerce was limited almost entirely to the interchange of domestic products, a vast number of vessels, of rather feeble structure, being employed in navigating the coasts of the islands, which abounded with deep bays and excellent harbors.

Of the sciences, whether mathematical, mixed, or purely physical, they knew but little. They had, however, a considerable number of books treating of religion, medicine, and their history and traditions. The young were instructed in eloquence, poetry, and a rude sort of painting and music, and they had a great fondness for theatrical representations, in which they decidedly excelled. Their writing, in which they greatly studied brevity, was in columns, as with the Chinese, from the top to the bottom of the page, for which they gave this reason: that writing ought to be a true representation of men’s thoughts, and that men naturally stood erect. These columns read from right to left. They employed, besides the Chinese ideographic signs, a syllabic alphabet of their own, though in many works the Chinese characters were freely introduced.[37]

Jurisprudence, as in most Eastern countries, was a very simple affair. The laws were very few. Heads of families exercised great power over their households. Most private disputes were settled by arbitration; but where this failed, and in all criminal cases, a decision was made on the spot by a magistrate, from whom there was seldom any appeal. The sentences were generally executed at once, and often with very great severity. Whether from their temperament, or their belief in the doctrines of transmigration and annihilation, it was observed that the Japanese met death with more courage than was common in Europe. It was, indeed, a point of honor, in many cases, to inflict it on themselves, which they did in a horrid manner, by cutting open their bowels by two gashes in the shape of a cross. The criminal who thus anticipated execution secured thereby the public sympathy and applause, saving his property from confiscation, and his family from death; and, upon the death of superiors or masters, the same fate was often, as a mark of personal devotion and attachment, self-inflicted; and sometimes, also, in consequence of a disgrace or affront, to escape or revenge which no other means appeared.[38] The missionaries especially noted in the Japanese a pride, a self-respect, a haughty magnanimity, a sense of personal honor, very uncommon in the East, but natural characteristics enough of a people who had never been conquered by invaders from abroad; while the great vicissitudes to which they were exposed—all vassals generally sharing the fate of their superiors—made them look upon the goods and evils of fortune in a very philosophical spirit.

Performance of Harakiri

Such was the condition in which Japan was found when it first became known to Europe through the letters and relations of Xavier and the other Portuguese missionaries, his successors.

CHAPTER VII

Preaching of Xavier—Pinto’s Third Visit to Japan—A. D. 1550-51.

It is not our purpose to trace minutely the progress and fluctuating fortunes of the Jesuit missionaries; nor, indeed, would it always be easy to extract the exact truth from relations into which the marvellous so largely enters. Xavier’s letters throw very little light on the subsequent history of his mission, which mainly depends upon accounts derived from an inquisition into the particulars of the apostle’s ministry and miracles in the East, ordered to be made shortly after his death by John III., of Portugal, and which resulted in a large collection of duly attested depositions, containing many marvellous statements, most of them purporting to come from eye-witnesses, from which source the Jesuit historians of the Eastern missions and the biographers of the saint have drawn most of their materials.

If we are to believe them, Xavier was not only always victorious in his disputes with bonzes; he went even so far, shortly after his arrival in Japan, as to raise the dead—a miracle which furnished Poussin with a subject for a celebrated picture. Xavier, we are told, had been charged in India with a similar interference with the laws of nature; it is true he attempted to explain it away, as, perhaps, he would have done this Japanese miracle; but that denial the historian Maffei thinks, instead of disproving the miracle, only proves the modest humility of Xavier.

Though at first well received, as we have seen, by the king of Satsuma, and though, in the course of near a year he remained there, the immediate family and many of the relations of Anjirō were persuaded to be baptized, yet the remonstrances of the bonzes, followed by the transfer of the Portuguese trade, for the sake of a better harbor, from Kagoshima to Hirado, caused the king of Satsuma to issue an edict forbidding his subjects, under pain of death, to renounce the worship of their national gods. In consequence of this edict, Xavier departed for Hirado, which island, off the west coast of Shimo, having separated from the kingdom of Hizen, had become independent under a prince of its own. Anjirō was left behind, but soon afterwards was obliged to fly to China, where, as Pinto informs us, he was killed by robbers.

At Hirado, in consequence of the representations of the Portuguese merchants, Xavier was well received; but, desirous to see the chief city of Japan, leaving Torres behind, he set out with Fernandez and two Japanese converts on a visit to Miyako.

Proceeding by water, he touched first at Hakata, a considerable town on the northwest coast of Shimo, and capital of the kingdom of Chikuzen, and then at Yamaguchi, at that time a large city, capital of Nagato, the most western kingdom or province of the great island of Nippon, separated at this point from Shimo by a narrow strait.

The populace of Yamaguchi, ridiculing Xavier’s mean appearance as contrasted with his pretensions, drove him out of the city with curses and stones. Winter had now set in, and the cold was severe. The coast was infested by pirates, and the interior by robbers, which obliged the saint to travel as servant to some merchants, who, themselves on horseback, required him, though on foot, and loaded with a heavy box of theirs, to keep up with them at full gallop. This, however, seems a little exaggerated, as Japanese travellers on horseback never exceed a walk; while the box which Xavier carried is represented by the earlier writers as containing the sacred vessels for the sacrifice of the mass.

Arriving thus at Miyako in rather sad plight, Xavier found that capital almost ruined by civil wars, and on the eve of becoming the field of a new battle. He could obtain no audience, as he had hoped, either of the Kubō-Sama or of the Shaku, nor any hearing except from the populace, so that he judged it best to return again to Hirado.

There are two means of working upon the imagination, both of which are employed by turns alike by the Romish and by the Buddhist clergy. One is by showing a contempt not merely for elegances, but even for common comforts and ordinary decencies: the other, by pomp, show, and display. Xavier, on his way to Miyako, entered the city of Yamaguchi barefoot and meanly clad, and had, as we have stated, been hooted and stoned by the populace. He now returned thither again from Hirado handsomely clothed, and taking with him certain presents and recommendatory letters from the Portuguese viceroy of the Indies and the governor of Malacca, addressed to the Japanese princes, but of which as yet he had made no use. Demanding an audience of the king, he was received with respect, and soon obtained leave to preach, and an unoccupied house of the bonzes to live in. Here, being soon surrounded by crowds, he renewed, say his biographers, the miracle of tongues, not only in preaching fluently in Japanese and in Chinese to the numerous merchants of that nation who traded there, but in being able by a single answer to satisfy a multitude of confused questions which the eager crowd simultaneously put to him. Such was his success that, in less than two months, five hundred persons, most of them of consideration, received baptism; and, though the king soon began to grow less favorable, the converts increased, during less than a year that he remained there, to three thousand.

The seed thus planted, Xavier resolved to return to the Indies for a fresh supply of laborers; and, having heard of the arrival of a Portuguese vessel at Fuchū, in the kingdom of Bungo, leaving De Torres and Fernandez at Yamaguchi, he proceeded to Fuchū for the purpose of embarking.

Among the merchants in this ship was Fernam Mendez Pinto, now in Japan for the third time, and who gives at some length the occurrences that took place after Xavier’s arrival at Fuchū, where he was received with great respect by the Portuguese, of whom more than thirty went out on horseback to meet him.

The young king, whose name was Kiuan,[39] had already obtained, through intercourse with Portuguese merchants, some knowledge of their religion. He invited Xavier to an audience, to which the Portuguese merchants accompanied him with so grand a display as somewhat to shock the modesty of the saint, but which strongly impressed in his favor the people of Bungo, to whom he had been represented by the bonzes as so miserable a vagabond as to disgust the very vermin with which he was covered. The young king received him very graciously; and he preached and disputed with such success as greatly to alarm the bonzes, who vainly attempted to excite a popular commotion against him as an enchanter, through whose mouth a demon spoke, and a cannibal, who fed on dead bodies which he dug up in the night.

Finally, after conquering, in a long dispute before the king of Bungo, the ablest and most celebrated champion of the bonzes,[40] and converting several of the order to the faith, Xavier embarked for Goa on the 20th of September, 1551, attended by two of his Japanese converts. Of those one died at Goa. The other, named Bernard, proceeded to Europe, and, after a visit to Rome, returned to Portugal, and, having entered the Society of Jesus, closed his life at the Jesuit college of Coimbra, a foundation endowed by John III for the support of a hundred pupils, to be prepared as missionaries to the East.

At Yamaguchi, after Xavier’s departure, the bonzes, enemies of Catholicity, were more successful. An insurrection which they raised so alarmed the king, that he shut himself up in his palace, set it on fire, and, having slain his only son with his own hand, ended by cutting himself open. The missionaries, however, were saved by an unconverted princess, who even induced certain bonzes to shelter them; and a brother of the king of Bungo having been elected king of Nagato, the Catholics, not one of whom, we are told, had been killed in the insurrection, were soon on a better footing than ever.[41]

CHAPTER VIII

Progress of the Missions under Fathers De Torres and Nugnes Barreto—Mendez Pinto a Fourth Time in Japan—A. D. 1551-1557.

The apostle of the Indies returned no more to Japan. He died in December, 1552, at the age of forty-six, on his way to China, at the island of Sancian, a little way from Macao, partly, it would seem, through vexation at having been disappointed, by the jealousy and obstinacy of the governor of Malacca, in a more direct mission to that empire, on which he had set his heart, and for which he had made every arrangement.

But already, before leaving for China, he had despatched from Malacca three new missionaries to Japan, Balthaza Gago, a priest, and two brothers, Peter d’Alcaceva and Edward de Sylva, who landed at Kagoshima, in August, 1552, whence they proceeded to Bungo, where, as well as at Yamaguchi, a site had been granted for a residence and a church. Father de Torres, now at the head of the mission, in a sort of general assembly of the faithful, to which the principal converts were admitted, regulated the policy of the infant church. To meet the objection of the bonzes, that the new converts had left their old religions to escape the usual contributions of alms, it was resolved to establish hospitals for the sick and poor, as well pagan as converted,—and the more so as poverty in Japan was regarded as peculiarly despicable, and the poor as condemned by the gods. To suit the taste of the Japanese for spectacles, an impressive burial service was agreed upon.

Great attention, according to the policy of the Catholic Church, and especially of the Jesuits, was bestowed on the education of the young. Not to be outdone by the bonzes, the missionaries practised great austerities; regular whipping of themselves in church by all the converts made a stated part of their religious exercises; but what most contributed to the spread of the new faith was, so we are told, the exceeding zeal, self-denial, and disinterestedness of the new converts, including among the number several bonzes of the old religions, some of whom were made Jesuits, and even ordained priests, and who soon gave examples of sublime piety, which even the missionaries themselves found it difficult to imitate.

Meanwhile, Peter d’Alcaceva, one of the newly arrived Jesuits, having been sent back to Goa for further aid, on his way to that capital found at Malacca the body of Xavier, preserved in quicklime, and also on its way to Goa, whither he attended it. At Goa he encountered Fernam Mendez Pinto, who, having amassed great wealth in the Indies, was about to return to Portugal. Preliminary to this voyage Pinto made a general confession to Father Nugnes Barreto, the vice-provincial of the Jesuits; after which, falling upon the subject of Xavier, whose dead body lying at Goa was reported to work numerous miracles, he related to his confessor many wonderful stories of the prodigies which he himself had witnessed while with Xavier at Bungo. Passing thence to the zeal and merits of the Japanese converts, he strongly urged Nugnes to proceed thither to take Xavier’s place, even offering himself to go as his companion, and to devote the whole of his fortune (except two thousand crowns to be sent to some poor relations in Portugal), partly to the founding of a seminary at Yamaguchi, whence the faith might be diffused through the whole of Japan, and partly in purchasing magnificent presents for the princes of the country, which he thought would be a good means of securing their favor for the new religion.

Pinto was accordingly appointed ambassador from the Portuguese viceroy to the king of Bungo, and Nugnes sailed for Malacca in his company, taking with him Father Gaspard Vilela, four brothers, not yet priests, and five young orphans from the Seminary of the Holy Faith, to act as catechists. Before setting out, Nugnes and his brother Jesuits renewed their vows, according to a rule of the order, which required such a renewal once every six months. Pinto was present at this ceremony, and his excitable temperament was so wrought upon by it, that, seized with a sudden impulse, he insisted upon himself repeating the vows, with an additional one to consecrate his person and his goods to the Japanese mission. As he was the viceroy’s ambassador, it was resolved that he should not adopt the Jesuit habit till after he had fulfilled his mission—a delay which proved a lucky thing for Pinto, whose zeal speedily began to evaporate. He served, indeed, for some time in the hospitals of Malacca, where they arrived in June, 1554, and where, by the sickness of Nugnes and other accidents, they were detained upwards of a year; and, according to the letters of Nugnes, he gave great edification, the people admiring to see so rich a man, and one lately so fond of display and good living, clothed in rags and begging alms from door to door, having given up all his wealth that he might the better obey the Lord.

Sailing from Malacca, Nugnes and his company, after perils from pirates, were driven by storms first to Sancian, and then to Macao, whence, in the spring of 1556, Nugnes proceeded to Canton, where he made many unavailing efforts for the introduction of Catholicism into China. Meanwhile, he received letters from Goa, urging his return, enclosing one from Loyola himself, disapproving of such long voyages by the vice-provincials of the order; but he was still induced to Japan by a pressing letter from the prince of Hirado, who hoped by this means to attract the Portuguese trade from Bungo to that port. He sailed accordingly for Hirado, but was compelled by stress of weather to find a harbor in Bungo.

Meanwhile, the parts of Japan occupied by the missionaries had been the seats of serious commotions. The king of Bungo had indeed confirmed his power by suppressing an insurrection; but his brother, the king of Nagato, had been driven from his throne and defeated and slain by Mōri Motonari, a relative of the late king; and during this civil war the city of Yamaguchi had been sacked and burnt, and the missionaries obliged to flee for their lives to Bungo. There, too, a new insurrection had been attempted, but again without success; though the king still kept himself shut up in a fortress at a distance from his capital. He returned, however, to receive Nugnes, which he did very graciously, but resisted, on grounds of expediency, all his exhortations to make an open profession of Catholicism. Thus disappointed, Nugnes, after sending Gago to establish himself at Hirado, thought it best to return to Goa.

The Kintai Bridge, Snō

On arriving in Japan, the zeal of Pinto had speedily declined, and he had begun to sigh for his liberty. Perhaps he was alarmed at the appearance of Cosme de Torres, who, from being plump and portly, had, under the thin diet of the country, and the labors of the mission, grown to be exceedingly lean and haggard. At all events, it was found impossible to revive his fervor, and, as the Jesuits wanted no unwilling members, it was decided to release him from his vows. He returned with Nugnes to Goa, whence, not long after, he sailed for Lisbon. In his book he relates his last visit to Japan, but with no mention of his having joined the Jesuits,—of which our knowledge is drawn from the published letters of the missionaries, including one dated in 1554, and written by Pinto himself, from the college at Malacca, addressed to the scholars of the college of Coimbra, and giving a sketch of his travels in the East.

Having arrived at Lisbon, September 22, 1558, he delivered to the queen regent a commendatory letter from the viceroy of Goa, and had the honor to explain to her what his long experience suggested as of most utility for the affairs of Portugal in the East, not forgetting also some private application for himself. The queen referred him to the minister, who gave him high hopes; but at the end of four or five years of tedious solicitation, which became more insupportable than all his past fatigues, he concluded to content himself with the little fortune which he had brought from India, and for which he was indebted to nobody but himself. Yet he piously and loyally concludes that, if he had been no better rewarded for twenty-one years’ services, during which he had been thirteen times a slave, and seventeen times sold, it could only be attributed to the divine justice, which disposes of all things for the best, and rather to his own sins than to any want of royal discernment. He died about 1580, leaving his narrative behind him, which was not printed till 1614, and which was written, as he says at the beginning of it, in his old age, that he might leave it a memorial and heritage to his children to excite their confidence in the aid of Heaven by the example of his own sufferings and deliverances.[42]

CHAPTER IX

Louis Almeida—The Missionaries establish themselves at Miyako (Kyōto)—Louis Froez—Princes converted in Shimo—Rise of Nobunaga—Prosperity of the Missions—Noble and Princely Converts—Nagasaki built—Nobunaga makes himself Emperor—A. D. 1557-1577.

The loss of Pinto and Nugnes, and even that of Father Gago, who, three or four years later, after a very zealous career as a missionary, grew weary of the work, and obtained permission to return to Goa, was more than made up for by the accession of William and Ruys Pereyra, two of the catechists brought by Nugnes, and whom, before his departure, he admitted into the order, and especially by that of Louis Almeida, who had arrived in Japan as surgeon to a trading vessel, and who, after amassing a large fortune, gave it all to pious uses,—of which a hospital for abandoned infants was one,—and, joining the Jesuits, soon became distinguished for his zeal and assiduity as a missionary.

The extension which, in the fluctuating condition of affairs, shortly afterwards took place of the dominions of the king of Bungo over the greater part of the island of Shimo, was very favorable to the new religion. The prince of Hirado was obliged to pay him tribute, and, notwithstanding the double-faced policy of that prince, the new doctrine continued to spread in his territories, where some of the members of the ruling family became converts. A new church was planted at Hakata, and the old original one at Kagoshima was reëstablished. Presently the new faith gained a footing also in the kingdoms of Arima and Gotō, which, as well as Hirado, had been dissevered from the ancient province of Hizen. The lord of Shimabara (afterwards famous as the last stronghold of the Catholics) invited the missionaries to his city. The king of Arima was also very friendly; he gave the missionaries an establishment, first at Yokoseura, and, after that city had been burned by the bonzes, at a port of his called Kuchinotsu, on the southern coast of the southwestern peninsula of Shimo. The prince of Ōmura, a dependency of Arima, and the prince of the island of Tanegashima, the same at which Pinto had first landed, then a dependency of Hirado, were both among the converts, and exceedingly zealous to induce their subjects to follow their example; and, notwithstanding the hostility of the bonzes, the frequent wars between the princes, and repeated internal commotions, by which the missionaries were often in danger, the new religion continued to spread in all parts of Shimo, and in fact to be carried by native converts to many parts of Nippon, which no missionary had yet reached. Meanwhile, new establishments also had been gained on the island of Nippon, in addition to that at Yamaguchi, at its western extremity. The fame of the missionaries had induced an old Jūji, or superior of a Buddhist monastery near Miyako (Kyōto), to send to Yamaguchi to ask information about the new religion. Father Vilela was despatched, in 1559, for his instruction, and though the Jūji died before the arrival of the missionary, his successor and many of the bonzes listened with respect to the words of Vilela. As none, however, were willing to receive baptism, he departed for Miyako, where he found means to approach Yoshiteru, the Kubō-Sama, and to obtain from him permission to preach. Having secured the favor of Miyoshi, the emperor’s principal minister, and presently that of Matsunaga, the chief judge, he converted many bonzes and nobles, and built up a large and flourishing church.

An attack upon the emperor by Mōri Motonari, king of Nagato, who forced the city of Miyako, and set it on fire, detained Vilela for a while in the neighboring town of Sakai, the most commercial place in Japan, which seems, at that time, to have been a free city, as it were, with an independent government of its own; and there also a church was planted. But the emperor soon reëstablished his affairs; and although, from the hostility of Mōri, the church at Yamaguchi was very much depressed, everything went on well at Miyako, where Vilela was joined, in 1565, by Louis Almeida, and by a young missionary, Louis Froez, lately arrived from Malacca. Of their journey from Kuchinotsu to Miyako we have a detailed account in a long and very interesting letter of Almeida’s. His visit to Miyako was only temporary. Froez remained there, and from him we have a long series of letters, historical and descriptive, as well as religious, which, for a period of thirty years following, throw great light on the history and internal condition of Japan.

At this time the entire empire, since and at present so stable, was the scene of constant revolutions. Very shortly after Froez’s arrival Miyoshi and Matsunaga conspired against their patron (i. e. the Shōgun Yoshiteru), dethroned him, and drove him to cut himself open, as did great numbers of his relatives and partisans. These nobles, hitherto favorable to the missionaries, now published an edict against them, probably to secure the favor of the bonzes; and Vilela and Froez were thus again driven to take refuge at Sakai, where they had a few converts. But the believers at Miyako stood firm, and a new revolution soon occurred, headed by a noble called Wada Iga-no-kami, and by Nobunaga (Oda Nobunaga), king of Owari,—which province adjoined the emperor’s special territory on the east, a prince whose military prowess had already made him from a petty noble the master of eighteen provinces in the eastern part of Nippon.

In 1566 Wada and Nobunaga proclaimed as emperor a brother of the late one—a bonze who had escaped from the rebels. Miyako was regained, and the new emperor established there A. D. 1567. All real authority remained, however, with Nobunaga, who showed himself very hostile to the Buddhist bonzes, they having generally taken the side of the late rebels. He even destroyed many of their temples, using the idols which they contained as materials for a new palace. He easily granted to Wada, who was himself a sort of half convert, the reëstablishment of the missionaries at Miyako, which was soon confirmed by an imperial edict, issued in 1568; and, in spite of an attempt at interference on the part of the Dairi, the new religion, under the protection of Wada, who was appointed governor of Miyako, soon reached a very flourishing condition.

Image of Oda Nobunaga
From Dening’s New Life of Toyotomi Hideyoshi

To this prosperity at Miyako a strong contrast was, however, presented by the state of things at Yamaguchi, whence the missionaries were expelled by the king of Nagato, though the church there was still kept alive by the zeal and constancy of some of the converts. In the island of Shimo the new religion continued to spread. Indeed, the baptized prince of Ōmura, not content with hacking idols to pieces, and refusing to join in the old national festivals, wished also to prohibit all the old ceremonies, and to compel his subjects to adopt the new ones,—an excess of zeal which, by displaying the intolerant spirit of the new sect, fostered a union of all the old ones against it, such as at last occasioned its destruction.

This prince had allowed certain Portuguese merchants to establish themselves at Nagasaki, then a mere fishing village, but having a capacious harbor, the port of Japan nearest to China and the Indies, at the head of a deep bay, opening to the west. Presently he built a church there, and, A. D. 1568, invited the missionaries to make it their headquarters, with a promise that no religion but theirs should be allowed. This invitation was accepted; many converts flocked thither, and Nagasaki soon became a considerable city. Fathers de Torres and Vilela both died in 1570,[43] worn out with years and labors, the latter being succeeded as head of the mission by Father Cabral, sent out from Goa as vice-provincial of the order, and accompanied by Father Gnecchi, who soon became an efficient laborer.

Meanwhile, an insurrection in the imperial provinces, on the part of the old rebels, which it cost the life of Wada to suppress, so provoked Nobunaga that he wreaked his vengeance anew upon the bonzes (who had again aided the insurgents), by destroying a great number of their monasteries on the famous mountain of Japan (Hieizan), and putting the inmates to death. This occurrence took place A. D. 1571, as the missionaries remarked, on the day of St. Michael, whom Xavier had named the patron saint of Japan. Cabral, the vice-provincial, having made a visit to Miyako, was very graciously received by Nobunaga. Shortly after the titular Kubō-Sama made a vain attempt to regain the exercise of authority. The defeated prince was still left in possession of his title, but Nobunaga was thenceforth regarded as, in fact, himself the emperor. This was in 1573. In 1576 the church received new and important accessions in Shimo. The king of Bungo, though from the beginning favorable to the missionaries, had, from reasons of policy, and through the influence of his wife, who was very hostile to the new religion, declined baptism; none of the courtiers had submitted to it, and the converts in that kingdom had consisted as yet of an inferior class. But the second son of the king having taken the resolution to be baptized, in spite of the violent opposition of the queen, his mother,—who had great influence over Yoshimune, the king’s eldest son, associated, according to a usual Japanese custom, in the government,—his example was followed by many persons of rank in the kingdom of Bungo, and even by the neighboring king of Arima, who died, however, shortly after, leaving his kingdom to an unbelieving successor.[44]

CHAPTER X

Father Valignani—State of the Missions—Conversion and Baptism of the King of Bungo—Growth of Nagasaki—Embassy to the Pope—Documents relating to this Embassy—A. D. 1577-1586.

Such was the state of things on the arrival, at the beginning of 1577, of Father Alexander Valignani, visitor-general of the Jesuit establishments in the East, and who in that capacity came to inspect the missions of Japan. He found there, in addition to a large number of native catechists, fifty-nine professed Jesuits (including twelve who had arrived but a short time before), of whom twenty-six were native Japanese; but, as only twenty-three of the whole number were ordained priests, it was found very difficult to meet the demand for ministers qualified to baptize and to administer the other sacraments. Hence the visitor was the more convinced of the necessity of establishing a novitiate of the order (a project already started by Father Cabral, the vice-provincial), and seminaries for the education of the children of the converts designed for the priesthood, especially those of superior rank; and in his letter to the general of the order and to the Pope, he recommended the appointment of a bishop, so that ordination might be had without the necessity of going to Malacca. He also settled, at a general assembly of the missionaries, who met him at Kuchinotsu, many points of discipline, and especially a difficult and much disputed question as to the wearing of silk garments, which, as being the stuff in use by all persons of consideration in Japan, some of the Jesuits wished to wear. The ground taken was that it would only be a new application of the policy, which had been agreed upon, of conforming as far as innocently might be to the customs of the country. This argument, however, had not satisfied Father Cabral; he had prohibited the wearing of silk, which the rule of the order did not allow; and that decision was now confirmed by the visitor.

There were, however, other points upon which the vice-provincial and the visitor did not so well agree. Of Cabral, Charlevoix draws the following character, one for which many originals might be found: “He was a holy professor, a great missionary, a vigilant and amiable superior; but he was one of those excellent persons who imagine themselves more clear-headed than other men, and who, in consequence, ask counsel of nobody but themselves; or rather, who believe themselves inspired, when they have once prayed to be so, regarding as decrees of Heaven, expressed by their mouth, all the resolutions which they have taken at the foot of the cross, where the last thing to be laid down is one’s own judgment.” Cabral had taken up the idea that persons of such vigorous understanding as the Japanese must be duly held in check; and the whole twenty-six of them received, up to this time, into the company, and almost all of whom aspired to the priesthood, he strictly limited to such studies as would suffice to qualify them for the subordinate parts of divine service. This policy Valignani did not approve; but when he sought to alter it, he encountered such opposition from Father Cabral, to be obliged to send him off to Goa, appointing Father Gaspard Cuello in his place.

Shortly after the arrival of Valignani, the church gained a new and distinguished accession in Kiuan,[45] king of Bungo, who, having repudiated his old pagan wife, to whom the Catholics gave the name of Jezebel, married a new one, and was baptized with all his household, taking the name of Francis, according to the custom of the missionaries in giving European names to their converts. There were even strong hopes of gaining over his eldest son and colleague, Yoshimune, when a war broke out with the king of Satsuma for the possession of the intervening kingdom of Hyūga, which resulted in the loss of all Kiuan’s conquests, and his reduction to his original province of Bungo, which also he was in danger of losing,—a change by no means favorable to the missionaries. Kuchinotsu was ruined in this war; and the spectacle of the vicissitudes to which everything in Japan was exposed induced Valignani to urge upon the Portuguese merchants and residents to fortify Nagasaki. This was done in 1579, and that port became thenceforward almost the sole one resorted to by the Portuguese. The converted king of Gotō having died, the guardian of his infant son showed himself hostile to the missionaries; but this circumstance was an advantage to Nagasaki, which received many fugitives from these islands.

The new king of Arima being brought, by the labors of the visitor, to a better disposition, was baptized, and became one of the most zealous of the converts. Both the emperor Nobunaga and his three sons still continued very well disposed to the missionaries, allowing Father Gnecchi, who was a favorite with him, to establish a house, a church, and a seminary at Azuchiyama, his local capital, which he had greatly beautified, and between which and Miyako he had caused a highway to be built, at great expense and with immense labor. His evident design to make his authority absolute had indeed led to a league against him, which, however, proved of no avail, this attempt at resistance resulting in the subjection of all the kings of the western half of Nippon, except Mōri of Nagato. The good service which the missionaries rendered, in persuading the Christian princes, and the Christian vassals of the unconverted ones, to submit to the emperor, as their superior lord, caused Valignani to be very graciously received, both at Miyako and also at Azuchiyama.

On the visitor’s return to Shimo, the converted kings of Bungo and Arima, and the prince of Ōmura, determined to send ambassadors to be the bearers of their submission to the Pope. For this purpose two young nobles were selected, scarcely sixteen years of age: one, prince of Hyūga, the son of a niece of the king of Bungo, the other, prince of Arima, cousin of the king of Arima, and nephew of the prince of Ōmura. They were attended by two counsellors somewhat older than themselves, by Father Diego de Mesquita, as their preceptor, and interpreter, and by a Japanese Jesuit, named George Loyola, and, in company with Father Valignani, they sailed from Nagasaki February 20, 1582, in a Portuguese ship bound for Macao, now the headquarters of the Portuguese trade to Japan. They arrived at Macao after a very stormy and dangerous passage of seventeen days; but the season of sailing for Malacca being past, they had to wait there six months. When at length they did sail, they encountered very violent storms; but at last, after twenty-nine days’ passage (January 27, 1583), they reached Malacca, passing, as they entered the harbor, the wreck of another richly laden Portuguese vessel, which had sailed from Macao in their company. After resting at Malacca eight days, they embarked for Goa, which third voyage proved not less trying than the two others. Delayed by calms, they ran short of provisions and water, and by the ignorance of the pilot were near being run ashore on the island of Ceylon. They disembarked at length at Travancore, at the southeastern extremity of the peninsula of India, whence they proceeded by land to the neighboring port of Cochin. Here, owing to the unfavorable monsoon, they had to wait six months before they could sail for Goa, at which capital of Portuguese India they arrived in September. The viceroy of the Indies received them with great hospitality, and furnished them with a good ship, in which they had a favorable passage round the Cape of Good Hope, arriving at Lisbon August 10, 1584.

Four years before, Portugal had passed under the rule of Philip II, of Spain, who had thus united on his single head the crowns of both the East and the West Indies; and to him these ambassadors were charged with a friendly message. The viceroy of Portugal received them at Lisbon with every attention. At Madrid they were received by Philip II himself with the greatest marks of distinction. Having traversed Spain, they embarked at Alicante, but were driven by a storm into the island of Majorca, thereby escaping an Algerine fleet and a Turkish squadron, both of which were cruising in that neighborhood. Sailing thence they landed at Leghorn, where Pierro de’ Medici, brother of the grand duke of Tuscany, was waiting to attend them. They spent the carnival at Pisa, and thence by Florence proceeded towards Rome.

Aquiviva, general of the Jesuits (the fourth successor of Loyola), was very pressing with the Pope for a reception without display; but Gregory XIII (the same to whom we owe the reform of the calendar) had determined in consistory that the honor of the church and of the holy see required a different course. The ambassadors were met at Viterbo by the Pope’s light horse, and were escorted into the city by a long cavalcade of Roman nobles. The whole of the corso up to Jesus, the church and house of the Jesuits, where the ambassadors were to lodge, was crowded with people, who greeted their arrival with deafening shouts. As they alighted from their carriage, they were received by Father Aquiviva, attended by all the Jesuits then at Rome, who conducted them to the church, where Te Deum was chanted.

The next day a magnificent procession was formed to escort them to the Vatican. It was headed by the light horse, followed by the Pope’s Swiss guard, the officers of the cardinals, the carriages of the ambassadors of Spain, France, Venice, and the Roman princes, the whole Roman nobility on horseback, the pages and officers of the ambassadors, with trumpets and cymbals, the chamberlains of the Pope, and the officers of the palace, all in red robes. Then followed the Japanese on horseback, in their national dress,[46] three silken gowns of a light fabric, one over the other, of a white ground, splendidly embroidered with fruits, leaves, and birds. In their girdles they wore the two swords, symbols of Japanese gentility. Their heads, shaven, except the hair round the ears and neck, which was gathered into a cue bent upwards, had no covering. Their features were hardly less divergent from the European standard than their dress, yet their whole expression, air, and manner, modest and amiable, but with a conscious sentiment of nobility, was such as impressed the bystanders very favorably. The prince of Hyūga came first, between two archbishops. The prince of Arima followed, between two bishops. Of their counsellors, one was kept away by sickness, the other followed between two nobles, and after him Father de Mesquita, the interpreter, also on horseback. A great number of richly dressed courtiers closed the procession. The crowds, which filled the streets and the windows, looked on in almost breathless silence. As the ambassadors crossed the bridge of St. Angelo, all the cannon of the castle were fired, to which those of the Vatican responded, at which signal all the bands struck up, and continued to play till the hall of audience was reached.

The ambassadors approached the foot of the papal throne, each with the letter of his prince in his hand. Prostrating themselves at the Pope’s feet, they declared in Japanese, in a voice loud and distinct, that they had come from the extremities of the earth to acknowledge in the person of the Pope the vicar of Jesus Christ, and to render obedience to him in the name of the princes of whom they were the envoys, and also for themselves. The Father de Mesquita expressed in Latin what they had said; but the appearance of the young men themselves, who had essayed so many dangers and fatigues to come to pay their homage to the holy see, was more expressive than any words; and it drew tears and sobs from the greater part of the audience. The Pope himself, greatly agitated, hastened to raise them up, kissed their foreheads, and embraced them many times, dropping tears upon them. They were then conducted to an alcove, while the secretary of the consistory read the letters from the Japanese princes, which Father de Mesquita had translated into Italian, and of which the following may serve as a specimen:

“LETTER OF THE KING OF BUNGO,

“To him who ought to be adored and who holds the place of the King of Heaven, the great and most holy Pope.

“Full of confidence in the grace of the supreme and almighty God, I write, with all possible submission, to your Holiness. The Lord, who governs heaven and earth, who holds under his empire the sun and all the celestial host, has made his light to shine upon one who was plunged in ignorance and buried in deep darkness. It is more than thirty years since this sovereign Master of nature, displaying all the treasures of his pity in favor of the inhabitants of these countries, sent thither the fathers of the Company of Jesus, who have sowed the seed of the divine Word in these kingdoms of Japan; and he has pleased, in his infinite bounty, to cause a part of it to fall into my heart: singular mercy, for which I think myself indebted, most holy Father of all the faithful, as well to the prayers and merits of your Holiness as to those of many others. If the wars which I have had to sustain, my old age, and my infirmities had not prevented me, I should myself have visited the holy places where you dwell, to render in person the obedience which I owe you. I would have devotedly kissed the feet of your Holiness, I would have placed them on my head, and would have besought you to make with your sacred hand the august sign of the cross on my heart. Constrained, by the reasons I have mentioned, to deprive myself of a consolation so sweet, I did design to send in my place Jerome, son of the king of Fiunga [Hyūga], and my grandson; but as he was too far distant from my court, and as the father-visitor could not delay his departure, I have substituted for him Mancio, his cousin and my great-nephew.

“I shall be infinitely obliged if your Holiness, holding upon earth the place of God himself, shall continue to shed your favor upon me, upon all Christians, and especially upon this little portion of the flock committed to your care. I have received from the hand of the father-visitor the reliquary with which your Holiness honored me, and I have placed it on my head with much respect. I have no words in which to express the gratitude with which I am penetrated for a gift so precious. I will add no more, as the father-visitor and my ambassador will more fully inform your Holiness as to all that regards my person and my realm. I truly adore you, most holy Father, and I write this to you trembling with respectful fear. The 11th day of January, in the year of our Lord 1582.

“Francis, King of Bungo,

“prostrate at the foot of your Holiness.”

The reading of this and of the other letters, translated into Italian, was followed by a “Discourse on Obedience,” pronounced, in the name of the princes and the ambassadors, by Father Gaspard Gonzales, a model of rhetorical elegance and comprehensive brevity—whatever may be thought of its ethical or theological doctrines—which some of the long-winded speakers of the present day, both lay and clerical, would do well to imitate. We give, as a specimen, a passage from the beginning:

“Nature has separated Japan from the countries in which we now are, by such an extent of land and sea, that, before the present age, there were very few persons who had any knowledge of it; and even now there are those who find it difficult to believe the accounts of it which we give. It is certain, nevertheless, most holy Father, that there are several Japanese islands, of a vast extent, and in these islands numerous fine cities, the inhabitants of which have a keen understanding, noble and courageous hearts, and obliging dispositions, politeness of manners, and inclinations disposed towards that which is good. Those who have known them have decidedly preferred them to all the other people of Asia, and it is only their lack of the true religion which prevents them from competing with the nations of Europe.

“For some years past this religion has been preached to them, under the authority of the holy see, by apostolical missionaries. Its commencements were small, as in the case of the primitive church; but God having given his blessing to this evangelical seed, it took root in the hearts of the nobles, and of late, under the pontificate of your Holiness, it has been received by the greatest lords, the princes and kings of Japan. This, most holy Father, ought to console you, for many reasons; but principally because, laboring as you do with an indefatigable zeal and vigor to reëstablish a religion, shaken and almost destroyed by the new heresies here in Europe, you see it take root and make great progress in the most distant country of the world.

“Hitherto your Holiness has heard, and with great pleasure, of the abundant fruits borne by this vine newly planted, with so much labor, at the extremities of the earth. Now you may see, touch, taste them, in this august assembly, and impart of them to all the faithful. What joy ought not all Christians to feel, and especially the Roman people, at seeing the ambassadors of such great princes come from the ends of the earth to prostrate themselves at the feet of your Holiness, through a pure motive of religion,—a thing which has never happened in any age! What satisfaction for them to see the most generous and valiant kings of the East, conquered by the arms of the faith and by the preaching of the gospel, submitting themselves to the empire of Jesus Christ, and, as they cannot, from their avocations, come in person to take the oath of obedience and fidelity to the holy see, acquitting themselves of this duty by ambassadors so nearly related to them, and whom they so tenderly love!”

In the following passage the orator alludes more at length to the revolt in Europe against the authority of the Pope, which Philip II, no less than the Pope, was at this moment vigorously laboring to put down, by the recent introduction of the Jesuits into the Netherlands, where the Protestant rebels had been suppressed, by war against Holland, by aiding the French leaguers, by countenancing the retrograde movement then in rapid progress in Germany, and by preparing to carry out against Elizabeth of England the sentence of deposition which the Pope had fulminated against her.

“O immortal God! What a stroke of thine arm! What an effect of thy grace! In places so distant from the holy see, where the name of Jesus had never been heard, nor his gospel ever preached, as soon as the true faith shed there the first rays of the truth, men of temperaments quite different from ours, kings illustrious by their nobility, redoubtable for their power, happy in the abundance of their possessions, conquerors and warriors signalized by their victories, acknowledge the greatness and dignity of the Roman church, and hold it a great honor to kiss the feet of the church’s head by the lips of persons infinitely dear to them; all this happens while we see men at our very gate blind and impious enough to wish to cut off with a parricidal hand the head of the mystic body of Jesus Christ, and to call in doubt, to their own ruin, the authority of the holy see, established by Jesus Christ himself, confirmed by the course of so many ages, defended by the writings of so many holy doctors, recognized and approved by so many councils!

“But it is not proper that I should give way to grief, or trouble the joys of this day by the recollection of our miseries!”

To this address, on behalf of the Japanese princes and their ambassadors, Monseigneur Antony Bocapaduli replied in Latin, in the Pope’s name, as follows:

“His Holiness commands me, most noble lords, to say to you that Dom Francis, king of Bungo, Dom Protais, king of Arima, and Dom Barthelemi, prince of Ōmura, have acted like wise and religious princes in sending you from the extremities of Asia to acknowledge the power with which God’s bounty hath clothed him on the earth, since there is but one faith, one church universal, and but a single chief and supreme pastor, whose authority extends to all parts of the earth where there are Christians, which pastor and only head is the bishop of Rome, the successor of St. Peter. He is charmed to see that they believe firmly and profess aloud this truth, with all the other articles that compose the Catholic faith. He gives ceaseless thanks to the divine goodness which has wrought these marvels; and this joy appears to him so much the more legitimate, as it has its foundation in the zeal by which he is animated for the glory of the Almighty, and the salvation of souls which the incarnate Word has purchased with his blood. This is why this venerable pontiff and all the sacred college of the cardinals of the Roman church receive, with a truly paternal affection, the protestation which you make to the vicar of Jesus Christ of faith, filial devotion, and obedience, on the part of the princes whom you represent. His Holiness earnestly desires and prays to God that all the kings and princes of Japan, and all those who rule in other parts of the world, may imitate so good an example, may renounce their idols and all their errors, may adore in spirit and in truth the sovereign Lord who has created this universe, and his only son, Jesus Christ, whom he has sent into the world; since it is in this knowledge and this faith that eternal life consists.”

The reply finished, the ambassadors were conducted around to the foot of the throne, and again kissed the feet of the Pope; after which the cardinals, drawing near, embraced them, and put to them many questions as to their travels and the rarities of their country: questions to which they replied with so much sense and acuteness as to cause no little admiration.

At length the Pope rose, exclaiming, Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine (which might by a pious Catholic be taken as a prophecy of his approaching death). The two chief ambassadors, who were of the blood royal, were directed to lift up the train of his robes,—an honor monopolized, as far as the princes of Europe were concerned, by the ambassador of the emperor. The holy father having been thus conducted to his apartment, the cardinal St. Sixtus, his nephew, the cardinal Guastavillani, and the duke of Sora entertained the Japanese at a magnificent dinner. A private audience followed, in which the ambassadors delivered the presents they had brought, and the Pope announced that he had endowed the proposed new seminary at Fuchū with an annual dotation of four thousand Roman crowns.

Gregory XIII died a few days after;[47] but his successor, Sixtus V, who, as cardinal of Monte Alto, had taken greatly to the Japanese, was not less favorable to them as Pope. They assisted, among the other ambassadors of kings, at his coronation, bearing the canopy and holding the basin for his Holiness to wash in when he said mass. They had the same honors when the pontiff was enthroned at Saint John Lateran. The holy father afterwards invited them to visit his country-house, where they were splendidly entertained and regaled on his behalf by his steward and four-and-twenty prelates.

Finally, on the eve of the Ascension, in the presence of all the Roman nobility, they were dubbed knights of the gilded spurs. The Pope himself girded on their swords, while the spurs of the two princes were buckled on by the ambassadors of France and Venice, and those of the two others by the Marquis Altemps; after which the Pope placed about their necks chains of gold, to which his medal was attached, and kissed and embraced them. The next day his Holiness said mass in person, and they communicated from his hand. He dismissed them with briefs, addressed to their princes, of which the following may serve as a sample:

“BRIEF OF POPE SIXTUS V TO THE KING OF ARIMA

“Noble prince and our well-beloved son, salvation and apostolical benediction.

“Our well-beloved son Dom Michael, your ambassador to this court, delivered to Pope Gregory XIII, our predecessor, of holy and happy memory, now, as we must presume, in glory, the letters with which your majesty had charged him; and after these letters had been publicly read, he rendered to that pontiff the obedience due to the vicar of Jesus Christ, and which all Catholic kings are accustomed to render to him. This was done in presence of all the cardinals of the holy church, then assembled at Rome, of which number we were. A greater concourse of persons of all conditions, and a greater public joy, had never been seen. Shortly after, it having pleased God to charge us, without our having in the least merited it, with the government of His church, we have also received with entirely paternal tenderness the same duties of obedience which Dom Michael has renewed to us, in the name of your majesty; whereupon we have thought proper to add you to the number of our very dear children, the Catholic kings of the holy church. We have seen, with much joy and satisfaction, the testimonies of your piety and religion; and, to give you the means of increasing these in your heart, we have sent you, by your before-named ambassador, inclosed in a cross of gold, a piece of the cross to which was nailed Jesus Christ, King of kings and eternal Priest, who, by the effusion of his blood, has made us also kings and priests of the living God. We send you, also, a sword and hat, which we have blessed, such as it is the custom of the Roman pontiff to send to all the Catholic kings, and we pray the Lord to be the support of your majesty in all your enterprises. According to the usage in the courts of the kings of Europe, the sword and hat should be received at the end of a mass, to which we shall attach a plenary indulgence for all sins for the benefit of all who may assist thereat, and who, after having confessed themselves, shall pray for the tranquillity of the Catholic church, the salvation of the Christian princes, and the extirpation of heresies—provided they have a true confidence in the divine mercy, in the power which has been given to the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and in that with which we are clothed. Given at Rome, at St. Peter’s, under the seal of the fisherman,” etc.

From Rome, escorted out of the city with all honors, the ambassadors went by way of Loretto, where they paid their devotions, to Venice, and thence to Milan and Genoa, at which latter place they embarked for Barcelona. They declined, as they had been so long from home, a pressing invitation from Henry III to visit France, and, after a new audience with Philip II, they hastened to sail from Lisbon on their return voyage, embarking April 13, 1586.[48]

CHAPTER XI

Events meanwhile in Japan—Downfall of Nobunaga—Accession of Hashiba, afterwards known as Kwambacudono, and, finally, as Taikōsama—Edict against the Jesuits—Return of the Ambassadors—A. D. 1582-1588.

While the ambassadors were on their way to Europe, great changes had taken place in the Japanese islands. A few months after they had sailed from Nagasaki, Akechi Mitsuhide, a favorite general of Nobunaga’s, had marched from Miyako to join Hashiba Hideyoshi, another favorite general, employed in prosecuting the war against Nagato. The stern severity of Nobunaga had rendered him very unpopular, of which Akechi took advantage to turn about and attack him, left as he was at Miyako almost without troops. Nobunaga, thus betrayed and surprised, having no other resource, set fire to his palace, and perished in it, June 15, 1580, with his eldest son. His second son, overwhelmed by this disaster, went mad, and in that condition set fire to his father’s patrimonial palace at Azuchiyama, thus kindling a conflagration which consumed almost the entire city, including a splendid temple, which Nobunaga had lately erected there, and in which, suspending all other worship by edict, he had required divine honors to be paid to a stone graven with his arms[49] and other devices. To the missionaries, who had all along counted upon making a convert of Nobunaga, this step had caused no less horror than surprise; and they found in it a ready explanation of the sudden ruin which had overtaken himself and his family, especially as his eldest son had been the first to pay the required worship.

Akechi now aspired to succeed the master he had betrayed and overthrown; but he was defeated by Ukondono [Kōyama Ukon], another general, a nephew of the Wada, who had played so conspicuous a part in previous revolutions, and a convert to the Catholic faith, who united with Hashiba to revenge their master’s death, the latter marching upon Miyako in the name of the late emperor’s third son, whom he proclaimed as Kubō-Sama, reserving, however, to himself all real authority; and thus again was Japan, as during part of Nobunaga’s reign, furnished with two “idle kings,”—a Dairi and a titular Kubō-Sama,—while the real power was in the hands of a third party.

Hashiba’s own very humble birth made him the more willing to begin, at first, with ruling in the name of another. Originally he was but a mere private soldier, who, having attracted the attention of Nobunaga, as well by his wit and drollery as by his courage and sagacity, had been gradually raised by him to the highest commands. This founder of the Japanese imperial authority, as it now exists, is described as having been short, but quite fat, and exceedingly strong, with six fingers on each hand, and something frightful in his face, his eyes protruding in a strange manner. It was he who completed what Nobunaga had begun, and who first gave to Japan, at least in modern times, a real and effective emperor, ruling supreme over the whole territory.

The son of Nobunaga, being restless under the humiliation to which he was reduced, was deprived of his place as Kubō-Sama, and obliged to be satisfied with the island of Shikoku, the smaller of the three larger Japanese islands which his father had assigned him as an appanage, while Hashiba declared himself the guardian of an infant child of Nobunaga’s eldest son, whom he set up as titular Kubō-Sama.

He showed at first the same favor to the Catholics as his predecessor had done, and the more so as Ukondono, his confederate against the rebel Akechi, was himself a convert, as were others of his great vassals and principal officers of his court and army.

As the son of Nobunaga could not keep quiet, he was presently stripped of all authority, though his life was spared, and Hashiba, assuming to himself the high title of Kwambakudono, strengthened himself still further by marrying a daughter of the Dairi.

Desirous to outdo his predecessor in everything, he converted Ōsaka, which had, till lately subdued by Nobunaga, been under the rule of a bonze, into a great city, and he built in its neighborhood a great stone castle. To this city, made his capital, the Jesuit seminary, originally established in the now ruined Azuchiyama, was removed, another being also set up in the neighboring city of Sakai. The king of Nagato was even induced to allow the reintroduction of missionaries into his territories. The king of Bungo having appealed to Hashiba for aid against his neighbors, the converted general Kodera Yoshitaka, the chief commander of his cavalry, whom he sent to Shimo, not only rescued the young king, Yoshimune, from his enemies, the kings of Chikuzen and Satsuma, who had taken his capital and ravaged his territories, but succeeded also in bringing up to the point of baptism that fickle and inconstant prince, who had long been a great trial to the missionaries, as well as to his pious father Civan, who, having given up to him the reins of government, had been treated thenceforth with very little respect. The result of this interference also was to reduce the whole of Shimo to the power of the emperor, who now reigned supreme over Shimo, Sikoku, and all the western part of Nippon, though still obliged to pay a certain deference and respect to the pretensions and power of the local kings and princes, whom, however, he required to be frequent attendants on his court, and to leave their wives and children there as hostages, and whose authority and consequence he sought by all means to diminish.

Peace thus reëstablished, everything seemed to favor the spread of Catholicity, when, all of a sudden, and in the most unexpected manner, in the month of July, 1587, the emperor signed an order for the banishment of the missionaries; and because Ukondono would not renounce his religion (at least such was the ostensible cause), stripped him at once of his place and his property. Father Cuello, the vice-provincial, was ordered to assemble all the missionaries at Hirado; and, in obedience to his order, they collected there to the number of about one hundred and twenty, only Father Gnecchi remaining concealed at Ōsaka, and one brother in Bungo. But when the emperor commanded them to embark on board a Portuguese vessel about to sail, they resolved not to obey. A few indeed went on board and sailed for China; but the greater part remained, a message being sent to the emperor that the vessel could not carry the others; to which he responded by ordering all the churches in Miyako, Ōsaka, and Sakai to be destroyed. The converted princes, however, in general, stood firm, except Yoshimune, king of Bungo; and even the unconverted ones are said to have protested against the emperor’s edict as in violation of the freedom of religious opinion heretofore allowed. The missionaries, in disguise, were distributed through the territories of their adherents. The emperor’s grand admiral, Konishi Settsu-no-Kami, who was viceroy of Shimo, though himself a convert, still kept the confidence of the emperor, as did also Kodera, the chief commander of his cavalry. The Portuguese merchants were admitted as before. After a little while the emperor seemed disposed to wink at the conduct of the converted princes, and the missionaries soon began to conceive hopes that, by caution on their part, the work of conversion might still go on, the stimulus of a prohibition not very strictly enforced, more than supplying all the benefits hitherto derived from the éclat of imperial favor.

Some difficulty about obtaining recruits for the imperial seraglio, especially from the province of Hizen, celebrated for its handsome women, but in which the converts were numerous, was said to have provoked the emperor, in a fit of drunken fury, to put forth so suddenly his edict of persecution. But, in fact, his policy brooked no power but his own. He did not fancy a religion which taught his subjects to look up with implicit reverence to a distant and foreign potentate; nor probably was his hostility to the Jesuits much different in substance from that sentiment which had caused Henry VIII, of England, fifty years earlier, to break with the holy see—a breach also ascribed by the Catholics to amorous passion.

But the cautious and artful emperor, who, however he might give way to sudden fits of violence and caprice, was a perfect master of all the arts of dissimulation, knowing, as well as Bonaparte, if not better, how to wait till the pear was ripe, was not yet wholly prepared to break with the converted kings and nobles, whom he found, perhaps, as well as the humbler converts, more attached to their faith than he had supposed. There were too many inflammable materials in his yet unconsolidated empire for him to run the risk of provoking a rebellion; and, besides, there still remained to be subdued eight independent provinces in the east and north of Nippon, including a kingdom of five provinces, in which were situated the great cities of Suruga and Yedo.

The conquest of this kingdom was speedily achieved, partly by arts and partly by arms. A new palace was erected for the Dairi, in place of the old one, which had been burnt during the late troubles at Miyako. A splendid temple had also been built near that city, in which it was suspected that the emperor intended to cause himself to be worshipped, as his predecessor had done; when, in August, 1588, Father Valignani, appointed ambassador to the emperor and kings of Japan, from the Portuguese viceroy of Goa, arrived at Macao, on his way to Nagasaki, having in his company the returning ambassadors to the Pope, who had touched at Goa on their way home, and who had stopped there a whole year before proceeding for Japan.[50]

CHAPTER XII

Recapitulation—Extent of the Japanese Empire—Valignani arrives at Nagasaki—Progress hitherto of the Catholic Faith—The Emperor’s Projects against China—Valignani’s Visit to the Emperor at Miyako—Ukondono—The returned Japanese Ambassadors—Audience given to Valignani—The Viceroy’s Letter—The Interpreter Rodriguez—A. D. 1588-1593.

The Japanese islands had been found by Xavier and his successors divided into numerous principalities, which, though they acknowledged a nominal subordination to one imperial head, were substantially independent, and engaged in perpetual wars with each other. The superior abilities of two successive military usurpers,—Nobunaga, who ruled from 1567 to 1582, and Hashiba Hideyoshi, who took first the title of Kwambacudono, and subsequently that of Taikō-Sama—had consolidated these numerous states into a real empire, embracing then as now the three principal islands of Nippon, Shimo (or Kiūshiū), and Shikoku, with many smaller ones, and some claims also of authority over parts, at least, of the large northerly island of Matsumaye, or Yezo, the latter the aboriginal name.

Among the dependencies, at present, of the Japanese empire, are reckoned at the north, besides this island, the southern half of the large island or peninsula of Sakhalin, called by the Japanese Oku Yezo (upper Jeso), or, as Siebold says, Karafuto, and the three smaller Kurile islands, Kunajiri, Etoropu, and Uruppu, numbered on the Russian charts as the 20th, 19th, and 18th Kurile islands, and the two latter called by the Dutch State’s Island and Company’s Island. On the south, the Lew Chew Islands form, or did form (for the Japanese seem lately to have renounced their claim of sovereignty), a dependency of the kingdom of Satsuma. But all these are of comparatively recent acquisition, subsequent to the accession of Hashiba. It is said, indeed, on Japanese authority, that Yezo was first invaded in 1443 by the Japanese family of Matsumae; but it is apparent from missionary letters that in 1620 it was a recent settlement. The Japanese annals date the conquest of the Lew Chew Islands from the year 1610; and, according to Golownin, the Japanese settlements on Sakhalin have been subsequent to the voyage of La Perouse in 1782.