The First European Description of Japan, 1585 (28 page)

The scroll, which was popular in the West during antiquity and the Middle Ages, continued in use longer in Japan, probably because the vertical ordering of Japanese characters (rather than the left-to-right ordering of written Latin) permitted the scroll to be rolled open horizontally, which is no more tiring or less efficient than turning a page. But the Japanese also had folded books at this time, and before long most sutra would be printed on long pages folded accordion style into books. Since the paper was thin, the pages were printed on only one side.
⁹

5. Our images for the most part are painted retablos; all of the images
¹⁰
in the bonzes' temples are sculpted
.

Frois is probably correct that most Catholic devotional images were
retablos
—panels of wood with low-relief paintings of scenes from the Bible and the lives of the saints. Note that canvas was only beginning to replace walls and wood panels as the preferred substrate for painting. Today in Lisbon's Ancient Art Museum one can view Nuno Gonçalves' multi-panel
retablo
of the Adoration of Saint Anthony of Padua, who hailed from Portugal. Gonçalves' work is an outstanding example of fifteenth-century Portuguese painting. During Frois' lifetime Portugal also imported thousands of
retablos
by Flemish painters. Indeed, the demand was so great that Flemish artists moved to Lisbon and Evora, where they adopted Portuguese names (e.g. Francisco Henriques)
and opened workshops that made Portugal a center of painting on wood.
¹¹
Still, Catholic churches in sixteenth-century Portugal and elsewhere were well known for their three-dimensional images created in stone or on polychrome wood, depicting various saints and, of course, the crucified Christ.
¹²
Indeed, Protestant reformers pointed to an abundance of these lifelike images as proof that the Church had promulgated idolatry.

Buddhist images (and to Frois' credit he did not use the pejorative term idol) were generally cast or carved in wood. Note that this contrast makes sense so long as one is focusing on the altar; paintings and images appear elsewhere in Buddhist temples. These paintings range from the black and white Zen
daruma
(i.e. a depiction of Bodhidharma, the Indian monk who purportedly brought Ch'an/Zen to China) and portraits, which are usually in a side room or office rather than the main temple, to luridly colored paintings of hell, which Frois himself comments on elsewhere (
Chapter 4
,
#25
). Curiously, neither Frois nor any other Jesuit (as far as we know) mentioned the most important painted image of esoteric Buddhism, the
mandala
. Whereas Christians come close to God through scripture
¹³
, Buddhist monks meditate upon true nature or cosmic principles using this complex abstract painting, which can be mesmerizing.

6. We paint our images with a variety of colors; theirs are gilded from top to bottom
.

Oil-based paint became popular among Flemish painters in the early fifteenth century and subsequently was embraced by artists elsewhere in Europe, in part because oil paints were much easier to mix than tempera and yielded the rich variety of colors emphasized by Frois. Portuguese painters such as Grão Vasco, who developed the Manueline art style, were noted for their use of gem-like colors.

Generally, the manifestation of the Buddha best reflecting the philosophy of a particular sect (and/or the founder, who was himself such a manifestation) was covered in gold. Images of the founder often took up as much space in a Buddhist temple as images of Christ or the Virgin Mary in Catholic churches of the sixteenth century. These figures were indeed gilded, as were decorative lotus leaves and flowers. But, as Frois knew, not all Buddhist statues were covered with gold. For instance, Buddhist temples generally feature guardian demons that are usually
painted red. Many temples also have images carved of plain stone depicting “the 500 followers of Buddha” who realized enlightenment, as well as the bodhisattva Jizo
¹⁴
(a “patron saint” of children, women, and travelers who was/is particularly popular in Japan as well as Korea). Sometimes the lifelike sculptures of Buddhist saints had simulated pores and implanted hair.

Frois clearly exaggerates to suggest that Buddhists really worship either gold or deities whose spiritual worth has been conflated with material preoccupations. This is like the pot calling the kettle black, given the enormous amounts of gold and silver looted from places such as Mexico that was applied to images and the interiors of Catholic churches during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But maybe Frois knew little of this extravagance, as he left Portugal in 1548, just about the time the Baroque period was getting under way.

7. Our images are all created in proportion to the physical stature of men; some of theirs are so large that they appear to be giants
.

Many Europeans were impressed, some of them favorably (e.g. Kipling) and others less so (e.g. Vivero y Velasco) by the immense statues of Buddha (
daibutsu
, literally ‘large Buddha') that were cast or carved in various parts of Japan beginning as early as the seventh century (i.e. the Asuka
daibutsu
in Nara). The great size of the statues conveyed in part the salvific power of the Buddha, and perhaps more so, the power and authority of the Japanese rulers who commissioned them.
¹⁵
Perhaps because Christianity is about God becoming man and saints who remain human despite infusions of grace, it has favored religious images that approximate human proportions. (Michelangelo's Pieta follows human proportions, whereas his David, unveiled in Florence in 1504, is some seventeen feet tall). Interestingly, in Frois' own Lisbon, the people seemingly broke with this tradition in 1950 when they erected an enormous statue of Christ the King (itself inspired by the enormous statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro completed in 1931).
¹⁶

Considering the fact that there were also countless small
rakan
and
Jizo
sculptures, which Frois never mentions, one might ask Frois: Why give only one side of the story? Clearly it was to suggest that Buddhism was about worshipping fantastic figures in gold more akin to the devil than the one true God.

8. Ours are beautiful and inspire devotion; theirs are horrendous and frightening, with images of demons engulfed in flames
.

Tengu
, or minor guardian demons, are regularly found standing guard in Buddhist temples (they drive away evil spirits or guard this or that Buddhist treasure).
However, not all these fearsome red statues were of such minor figures. Many if not most of Buddhism's “horrid and frightening demons” are converted or appropriated local deities, not unlike “our” cynocephalic Saint Christopher, who, according to legend, was from a race of dog-headed people.

Demons are a peripheral aspect of most Buddhist sects and temples, although in some places their significance can loom large. Many fishing villages in Japan, for instance, recognized and prayed to a powerful
tengu
, depicted as a long-nosed goblin with mountain, and hence, wind-influencing ability. Then there is the patron god of the blacksmith, the “Metal Mountain God.” His better-known manifestation,
Fudomyo-o
, literally “the unmoving-light=bright-king” (perhaps better known as a manifestation of Mahavairocana, the central Buddha in the Shingon esoteric worldview), was thought to sit fast upon a metal-filled mountain, his countenance glaring like molten ore, with an upraised sword in hand to sever the deep-seated appetites of the flesh.
¹⁷

Frois knew from first-hand experience that Buddhist images were not only diverse and complex but that some were actually beautiful. In one of his early letters he described a thousand gilded sculptures of “Kannon, the son of Amida”: “There is a shining halo behind each statue … The beautiful faces are so well carved that, but for the fact that it is a temple of Amida, this scene would make a good composition of place for a meditation on the ranks and hierarchies of the angels.”
¹⁸
Note that Kannon, rather than being the son of Amida, was understood by the Japanese to be a manifestation of Amida's compassion; often Kannon is depicted as an attendant to Amida together with the bodhisattva Seishi. In the Japanese Buddhist imaginary, local (and imported) deities were seen as manifestations of a particular Buddha who took on “local” forms to better affect human lives. Buddhism, rather than compete with Shinto kami and shrines, incorporated them into the Buddhist worldview. Thus, most Shinto shrines and deities were given a place within the Buddhist system, which was dominant up until the Meiji Revolution.

9. We keep our bells in very high towers; they keep them down low, very close to the ground, within arm's reach
.

The reason why Japanese bells are close to the ground is made apparent in the following contrast.

10. Our bells toll and have a clapper on the inside; the bells in Japan do not move and are struck on the outside with a pole that is drawn outward away from the bell and brought forward again to strike it
.

Frois does not exaggerate. The largest bells (and they are genuine concave bells) are struck by logs measuring one foot thick by ten feet long that are swung by a group of men. Kipling, at the end of the nineteenth century, wrote of being awoken by what he thought was an earthquake in Kyoto and discovering it was a twenty-foot bronze bell hanging five feet from the ground on a nearby hillside.
The bell at the Buddhist temple of Chion-in weighs more than seventy tons and is two meters in diameter and six meters tall.
¹⁹

Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples with Shinto connections have yet another, quieter type of bell that visitors gong by swinging a rope with a knot, which functions like a clapper. These bells, which are usually hung about ten feet off the ground, are rung after making an offering or a wish, or just for the fun of it.

11. We celebrate with a continuous tolling of bells; Japanese bells never toll, because they do not have clappers
.

Church bells were first used in Europe to summon worshippers and sound an alarm. Christians under Muslim rule in what was to become Portugal (in Gharb al-andalus) were not allowed to ring church bells.
²⁰
As Frois suggests, following the reconquest (circa. 1249), Christians rang their church bells with gusto.

Even if Japanese bells could toll, they probably would not have been used for celebration, since continual loud noise meant a state of emergency. (The Japanese were shocked at a related European practice, the use of cannon or gunfire to salute a visiting dignitary.) In Japan, watchmen in towers hit smaller bells rapidly with a stick in the event of robbery or fire.

12. In our monasteries we have clocks made of iron; the Japanese have only water clocks
.

In both cultures monks marked the passage of time, although Christian religious may have done so making finer temporal distinctions, using mechanical clocks.
²¹
During the fourteenth century gear-driven clocks with their own escarpment or power source (previously clocks were powered by the gravitational pull of water or sand) became widespread in Europe. Clocks and clock towers were coincident with the rise of towns and the beginnings of mercantilism, when men and women increasingly began working away from home in small factories and were paid an hourly rather than a day's wage. Clocks that marked each hour of the day also became common in monasteries, where religious life already centered on chanting prayers and psalms at appointed times of the day (i.e. the Divine Office).

In 1551 Francis Xavier introduced the mechanical clock to Japan, giving it as a gift to feudal lord Yoshitaka Ohuchi of Suo (the old name for the eastern part of what is now Yamaguchi Prefecture). It seems that in this contrast and the two that follow, Frois sought not only to emphasize the distinctive way the Japanese marked time, but to suggest (“the Japanese have only …”) that the Japanese system was somehow deficient or an impediment to the time-conscious life led by religious in Europe. And yet neither Frois nor other Europeans complained about the Japanese being late (excepting perhaps nobles who stayed up all night talking and partying). The water clock mentioned by Frois (
rôkoku
in Japanese) had been in use in
China and Japan for over a thousand years before Frois arrived, and according to the
Nihon-shoki
(the “Chronicles of Japan”), Emperor Tenchi produced a water clock in 671. Sand clocks, similar to the European hourglass, also were becoming popular during Frois' time, and Rodrigues mentions
bonzes
using “very ingenious fire clocks” that burnt a dry scented powder that was laid out in furrows.
²²
Rodrigues went on to suggest that these fire clocks were used effectively to “know the hour of prayer and when to ring or sound the bells in their temples.”

13. Our day and night come to a total of twenty-four hours; the Japanese have but six hours of day and six of night
.

During the Nara and Heian eras (710–1185) the Japanese actually followed a twenty-four hour system called
teijiho
, which was similar to what Europe was using when Frois wrote. Several centuries before the arrival of Europeans, Japan's ruling elite switched to a varying-length system (
futeijiho
), which better accommodated the common folk, who marked time using the sun or a sundial.

The Japanese system referenced here by Frois could arguably be said to denote the same twenty-four hours recognized by Europeans, since each set of six hours was actually subdivided into a total of twelve units. Each hour marked the midpoint of a time unit denoted by an animal in the Chinese zodiac. This meant that when the hour struck, one-half of the zodiac animal's time was over and one-half still remained. If we think of the ‘before' and ‘after' portions as distinct halves of the same hour (e.g. the pre-rat and the post-rat portions of the hour), the total number of hours comes out to a dozen for the day, and a dozen for the night.