The First European Description of Japan, 1585 (39 page)

3
  Capwell,
The Noble Art of the Sword
; Keith Thomas,
The Ends of Life
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 44–78; Lisa J. Robinson, “Warriors and Warfare.”

4
  A
palmo
, or span, equaled 8.23 inches. The average Japanese sword had a hilt at least a span, about nine inches long.

5
  Michael Cooper,
They Came to Japan, An Anthology of European Reports on Japan, 1543–1640
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999[1965]), 142.

6
  
The Noble Art of the Sword
, 47.

7
  Bruce A. Coats, “Arms & Armor.” In
Japan's Golden Age, Momoyama
, ed. Money L. Hickman, pp. 261–274. New Haven: Yale University Press.

8
  Ibid., 142.

9
  
Katana
.

10
  As per Camillo Agrippa's
Treatise on the Science of Arms
, published in Rome in 1553. See also Capwell,
The Noble Art of the Sword
, 44–46, 100–108.

11
  Robertson, “
Warriors and Warfare
,” 161.

12
  See for instance, Silvio Leydi, “The Swordsmiths of Milan, c. 1525–1630.” In
The Noble Art of the Sword
by Tobias Capwell, 176–188 (London: The Wallace Collection, 2012).

13
  Alfred Dobrée,
Japanese Sword Blades
(London: Arms and Armour Press, 1974[1905]), 3, 11.

14
  Catharina Blomberg,
The Heart of the Warrior
(Sandgate, UK: Japan Library, 1994), 57–59.

15
  Noel Perrin,
Giving Up the Gun, Japan's Reversion to the Sword, 1543–1879
(Boston: D.R. Godine, 1979), 96, f.20.

16
  Robertson, “Warriors and Warfare,” 162–163.

17
  Akio Okada, trans. and ed.,
Yoroppa-Bunka to Nihon-Bunka
[European Culture and Japanese Culture] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1965), 110.

18
  A.R. Disney,
A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire, Volume I
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 140–141; John Francis Guilmartin, Jr.,
Gunpowder & Galleys
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2003), 167–170.

19
  Luís de Moura Sobral, “The Expansion of the Arts.” In
Portuguese Oceanic Expansion, 1400–1800
, eds. Francisco Bethencourt and Diogo Ramada Curto, pp. 390–460 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 392.

20
  In 1543, a year after witnessing a Portuguese demonstration of a harquebus, the feudal master of Tamegashima, Lord Tokita, had his chief swordsmith produce ten guns. Within a decade, smiths all over Japan were making guns in large quantities, and within a generation many Japanese principalities had more firepower than some European powers. Moreover, the Japanese “improved” on the actual use of the gun by developing a serial firing technique that intensified the discharge of bullets during a battle. Noel Perrin,
Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword, 1543–1879
(Boston: D.R. Godine, 1979).

21
  Howe, citing Ljungsted (1836), states that Asian rulers relied on the Portuguese foundry in Macau for large armaments. Christopher Howe,
The Origins of Japanese Trade Supremacy
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 10.

22
  Robinson, “Warriors and Warfare, 173.

23
  Carolyn Wheelwright, “A Visualization of Eitoku's Lost Paintings at Azuchi Castle.” In
Warlords, Artists, and Commoners, Japan in the Sixteenth Century
, eds. George Elison and Bardwell L. Smith, pp. 87–112 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1981), 87.

24
  Money L. Hickman, “Introduction.” In
Japan's Golden Age: Momoyama
, ed. Money L. Hickman, pp. 19–57 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 28–55.

25
  Disney,
History of Portugal
, 140–141; Guilmartin,
Gunpowder & Galleys
, 154.

26
  David Miller,
Samurai Warriors
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), 70.

27
  Ibid., 70.

28
  Ibid., 72.

29
  In Tadanobu Tsunoda's best-selling book,
The Japanese Brain
(Tokyo: Taikushan Publishing Company, 1985), it was even alleged that the Japanese heard such a yell on the verbal (left) side of their brain, unlike other peoples, who heard it on the right (as noise); thus, yelling had more effect on the Japanese.

30
  A small round shield.

31
  Capwell,
The Noble Art of the Sword
, 35.

32
  Okada,
Yoroppa-Bunka to Nihon-Bunka
, 112–113.

33
  Miller,
Samurai Warriors
, 62.

34
  
Branqas ou pardas. Pardas
is brown or dark grey.

35
  Miller,
Samurai Warriors
, 66.

36
  Frois uses the same
laminas
here as in #28 above.

37
  Presumably had Frois known about this custom he would have “jumped on it,” contrasting the “dirty pictures” with a purported Christian norm of taking relics, rosaries, and prayers into battle.

38
  
Yoroppa-Bunka to Nihon-Bunka
, 115.

39
  See, for example, “The Battle of Nagashino” and “The Summer Siege at Osaka Castle” in Money L. Hickman, ed.,
Japan's Golden Age, Momoyama
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 102–103.

40
  Miller,
Samurai Warriors
, 51–52.

41
  Ibid., 102–103.

42
  John Whitney Hall, “Introduction.” In
The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 4, Early Modern Japan
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 14.

43
  Ann Hyland,
The Medieval Warhorse from Byzantium to the Crusades
(Dover, N.H: Alan Sutton Publishing Inc., 1994).

44
  During the invasion of the Americas, Native Americans often were shocked by European armies that burned or destroyed fields and foodstuffs.

45
  
Hyakusho
.

46
  Margaret Visser,
Rituals of Dinner, The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners
(New York: Grove Press, 1991), 139–141.

47
  Alessandro Valignano,
De Missione Legatorum Iaponen
, Trans. Duarte de Sande (Macao [Lima Library Collection], 1590), Dialogue 12.

48
  In the 1980s, this corporate public relations image was challenged by one of Japan's most popular authors, Sakaya Taiichi, who used his considerable knowledge of the sixteenth century to argue in a series of books and articles that loyalty has never been something particularly Japanese.

49
  Ideally, to insure that the condemned man can show his mettle, the beheading comes after actual disembowelment.

50
  Although the Spanish edition of the
Tratado
produced by Ricardo de la Fuente Ballesteros (2003) notes that
kambala
is a Sanskrit word that means a cloth or sheet made of wool, we follow Okada (
Yoroppa-Bunka to Nihon-Bunka
, 117) in believing that Frois used the term as a referent for yak hair.

51
  Dobreé,
Japanese Sword Blades
, 19.

52
  Blomberg,
Heart of the Warrior
, 58.

53
  Guilmartin,
Gunpowder & Galleys
, 159; Mick Bennett,
The Story of the Rifle
(London: Cobbett Publishing, 1944), 11–12.

54
  Ibid., 12.

55
  
Os nossos soldados na Suisea
.

56
  Bennett,
The Story of the Rifle
, 13, tells of an harquebus in a museum in England that was nearly nine feet long and weighed eighty-seven pounds. Guilmartin,
Gunpowder & Galleys
, 160, states that the “typical” sixteenth-century arquebus weighed ten pounds or less, although Spanish muskets weighed at least eighteen pounds.

57
  Robertson, “Warriors and Warfare,” 164.

58
  See Guilmartin,
Gunpowder & Galleys
, 160.

59
  Jurgis Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” In
The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 4, Early Modern Japan
, ed. John Whitney Hall, pp. 301–369 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 302.

60
  James Murdoch,
A History of Japan
. 3 Vols. (New York: Ungar Publishing, 1964), II, P.I, 99.

61
  Blomberg,
The Heart of the Warrior
, 50.

8   Concerning horses

1. Our horses are very beautiful; Japanese horses are greatly inferior to ours
.

Frois presumably had in mind the Spanish Andalusian horse and its Portuguese relative, the Lusitano, when he referred to “our” beautiful horses (the world-famous Lipizzaner stallions are also derived from the Andalusian). Equines of all types, including warhorses that were bred from European, Barbary, Arabian, and oriental breeds, were a big part of European culture and identity. This was particularly true of Iberians, who embraced the equestrianism of the Moors (riding
a la jineta
) to drive the latter from Iberia during the two centuries before Frois was born.
¹
Note, however, that relatively few Europeans during the sixteenth century actually owned a horse and in many locales only the nobility had the right to own and ride a horse (Columbus, for instance, petitioned the Spanish crown for the right after returning from America in 1493). In Iberia in particular, commoners were more likely to own a donkey or a mule, which were generally used as beasts of burden (i.e. to plow, haul goods, or power small mills).

Contemporary and later Europeans shared Frois' negative opinion of Japanese horses. The Englishman John Saris, who wrote a few decades after Frois, is one of the few Western observers who admired Japanese horses, particularly for their mettle.
²
The Japanese horse apparently was descended from the Mongolian horse, whose ancestor was the Asiatic wild horse. Hyland describes it as a short (at 52 inches from ground to withers), stocky, heavy-boned animal, with a rather coarse, big-headed, straight-necked appearance.
³
This high-spirited horse apparently was introduced (or re-introduced) to Japan in the fourth and fifth centuries by mounted warriors from Korea who settled in the Kanto province of Japan. There they initiated what was to become a long tradition of elite warriors who fought from horseback with bow and arrow.
⁴

2. Ours can be brought from running to a halt in quick order; theirs are very hard to control
.

The Spanish Andalusian still has a reputation for a lightning-quick start and an equally quick halt. The unmanageability of Japanese horses was a common complaint of European visitors to Japan.
⁵
Dogs, too, were and still tend to be, relatively undisciplined. Arguably, neither horses nor dogs were as common or as
central to life in Japan as they were in Europe, where horses and dogs were used for many purposes, including hunting and warfare.
⁶
That said, the Japanese at the time Frois wrote had a long history of valuing the horse for its mysterious ability to attract or communicate with Shinto gods and to positively affect the weather. Larger shrines often kept two live horses for this purpose and many smaller Shinto shrines had horse sculptures or encouraged offerings of horse-shaped figurines and votive tablets called
ema
.
⁷

3. Ours allow riders on their backs; Japanese horses are not accustomed to this
.

Europeans were not averse to putting two people on a horse; the smaller Japanese horses were not built for more than one rider. Also, horses in Japan generally were led, not ridden; mostly elites or warriors had access to horses in Japan.

4. Ours are accustomed to going along side by side; those in Japan always follow one another
.

In classical Japanese poetry, horses (actually ponies) almost always race across the fields side by side (
koma narabete
), in a comic reversal of the norm, which, as Frois indicates, was for elites or dignitaries on horseback to proceed in single file, led by footmen. Roads in Europe were wider because they were frequented by greater numbers of equines, including many that pulled carts, wagons, and coaches. Thus, European horsemen, be they crusading knights or nobles on their way to Venice were apt to ride side by side.

5. We leave the tail of our horses loose for beauty's sake; theirs are bound in a knot
.

As noted in
Chapter one
, Europeans equated long, flowing hair with power and virility; what was true for men was true for horses. The Japanese often used a Chinese-style saddle and would stuff the tail into a sack that was then bound to the tail (referred to as “China-tail,” or
kara-o
).

6. The longer the mane on our horses, the prettier they are; in Japan they cut the mane and at intervals they attach pieces of wheat straw, to enhance the horse's magnificence
.
⁸

Okada cites literature suggesting that the Japanese had two major ways of presenting horses' manes:
nogami
, meaning “field” or “wild-hair,” which is basically the same as the unfettered mane preferred by Europeans, and the
karihoshi
or “shaved-priest” style, which Frois emphasizes here.
⁹
The “wheat straw” inclusions actually were rice straw, which does not have the same humble connotation it has in English, and was auspicious for its association with plenty.

7. Our horses are all shod with iron horseshoes and nails; in Japan no horses are thus shod, but instead are fitted with straw shoes that last for a couple of miles
.
¹⁰