The First European Description of Japan, 1585 (48 page)

It is a whimsical rule that the guests must leave the apartments as clean as when they entered them; so that no person ever quits an inn, until he has seen his apartment put into proper order, well swept, and washed if necessary. In short, it would be considered an act, not only of impoliteness, but even of ungratitude, if the smallest speck of dirt was to be left behind. So precise are the Japanese in this respect, that even the Dutch,
⁵²
when permitted to traffic there were deemed deficient in neatness.
⁵³

Note that Frois might also be referring to the annual Beat-out-the-Dust Day (
susu-barai
). Every year television news in Japan shows battalions of dust-masked priests and volunteers from the congregation doing what looks like a search-and-destroy mission against enormous temples using brooms and dusters with handles as long as those found on pool-cleaning implements. These annual offensives are led and dominated by men.

18. We cleanse our faces with thin towels; they purposefully
⁵⁴
use coarse cloths that are very thick
.
⁵⁵

Apparently “hand towels” in Japan were more likely to be thick and coarse rather than thin and soft.

19. Our latrines must always be hidden behind the house; theirs are out front, in plain view to all
.

The West always has had an “out of sight, out of mind” approach to human excrement. Accordingly, the outhouse typically was and is “out back,” far enough away from the house so that no one else has to see, hear, or smell anything, if possible. In the urban residences of European elites the latrine often amounted to a small “house-of-office” or “stool house,” or a niche with a curtain where individuals could relieve themselves.

The outhouse in Japan generally was in the front garden but hardly right by the door, as this contrast might lead one to believe. The gentry generally had inside toilets as well, in the far rear or on the far north side of the house. The nobility's toilets were located inside an interior garden, with one for the lord and very favored guests and another for the women of the house. With a number of lavatories and lavatory practices to choose from, there are many more contrasts Frois could have made:

We use water; they use sand.

We do not take particular measures to reduce noise; they spread leaves in the urinal.

We face out to defecate; they face in.

Why, then, was Frois struck by this particular contrast in the location of toilets? It may reflect his long stay in Miyako (Kyoto), the city that made the greatest efforts to recycle human waste, even boasting public toilets in front of shops on the main avenue and at many crossroads. The Kyoto area was and still is known for its many fine leafy vegetables (they even have a type of cabbage large enough to feed a small village), and this meant that urine, with its phosphate, was in particularly high demand, with people even directly bartering it for vegetables.

People from Edo (Tokyo) were as astounded as foreigners to see urinals out in front of the outhouses proper in Kyoto, in full view of passersby. What shocked them even more was the fact that women also used them, standing with their kimonos hiked up, buttocks bent out slightly over the troughs. And these were not only servants; the wives of wealthy merchants also joined in. Over a hundred years after Frois,
senryu
poets, largely from Edo, could not resist taking a dig at Kyoto and its women, who were otherwise considered the ideal of womanhood.

20. We sit; they squat
.

This refers to what the Japanese call doing the “big” one, or what Americans refer to as “number two.” Sixteenth-century Europeans went to the bathroom by sitting on “closed stools” or chairs with holes in the seat that allowed the urine and excrement to fall into a chamber pot, cesspool, running water, or the ground. At night, when it was often too cold to venture far, Europeans might forgo a trip to the privy and squat in their bedroom over a chamber pot that was dumped in the morning.

When somebody from Europe or the United States who is not used to squatting squats, they often need to grab on to something so as to not tip over. The Japanese,
for their part, can read a book while squatting in the toilet. The trick is getting the upper part of your foot to come closer to your shin so that you may squat flat on your heels.

21. We pay someone to carry our excrement away; in Japan they buy it and give rice and money in exchange for it
.

European cities in Frois' day generally lacked what we think of as sanitation systems; most people simply tossed their excrement into a nearby cesspool or river or dumped it into the street at night (with the next significant rainfall gravity might take it to a nearby stream or river). Portugal's João II, who reigned from 1481–1495, became so offended with the citizens of Lisbon and their cavalier “overturning of chamberpots” that he proposed the construction of a city-wide sewer system. Such a system was still a dream in 1585.
⁵⁶
More affluent Europeans paid people to remove their bodily wastes. As one might imagine, “scavengers” and “goungfermours” were poorly paid for collecting waste and cleaning streets, cesspools, and privies. Social approbation went hand-in-hand with low wages.

As previously suggested, the Japanese attitude toward human waste was much more practical. A straight exchange of rice or some other commodity was common for buckets of urine, while ordure was usually purchased, and food, if offered, was a bonus. In Osaka and Kyoto, according to Aramata,
⁵⁷
waste products comprised a not-to-be-laughed-about portion of the family income. Even store clerks were reimbursed for their contribution. In parts of Japan, four people renting a small room could pay their entire rent with their waste, which is to say, they could stay for free. Kaempfer gives the situation in the seventeenth-century countryside:

… care is taken, that the filth of travelers be not lost, and there are in several places, near country people's houses, or in the fields, houses of office for them to do their needs. Old shoes of horses and men, which are thrown away as useless, are gather'd in the same houses, and burnt to ashes, along with the filth, for common dung, which they manure all their fields withal. Provisions of this nasty composition are kept in large tubs, or
tuns
, which are buried even with the ground, in their villages and fields, and being not cover'd, afford full as ungrateful and putrid a smell of radishes (which is the common food of country people) to tender noses, as the neatness and beauty of the road is agreeable to the eyes.
⁵⁸

Most Japanese apparently were inured to the stench, and even toward the end of the twentieth century they put up with the incredibly pungent smell of raw human waste coming from their
kumitori
toilet. Ironically, this foul-smelling “scoop-take” toilet is a modern invention, which, according to Aramata, is based on the “septic toilet” system minus the septic tank. Instead of waste being
channeled away to a distant cistern, it collects in a concrete cistern directly below the toilet, from which it is collected once a year or so.
⁵⁹

Stench aside, the Japanese arrangement made far more sense than ours. Morse alone, in 1877, recognized it as more hygienic than our practices:

Somewhat astonished at learning that the death-rate of Tokyo was lower than that of Boston, I made some inquiries about health matters. I learned that dysentery and cholera infantum are never known here … But those diseases which at home are attributed to bad drainage, imperfect closets [toilet systems], and the like seem to be unknown or rare, and this freedom from such complaints is probably due to the fact that all excrementitious matter is carried out of the city by men who utilize it for their farms and rice fields. With us, this sewage is allowed to flow into our coves and harbors, polluting the water and killing all aquatic life; and the stenches arising from the decomposition and filth are swept over the community to the misery of all … It seems incredible that in a vast city like Tokyo this service should be performed by hundreds of men who have their regular routes. The buckets are suspended on carrying sticks and the weight of these full buckets would tax a giant.
⁶⁰

22. In Europe horse manure is spread on vegetable gardens and human excrement is thrown on dunghills; in Japan horse dung is thrown on dunghills and human excrement goes onto vegetable gardens
.

It is not likely that horse manure was thrown away. It may not have been sold in the city but it was surely used by someone for something. Moreover, it is debatable to what extent the Japanese actually had dunghills in the sense that we understand them. Haiku often mention sweep piles (
hakidome
) and specific piles of shellfish shells, disposable chopsticks or flower petals, but all of these were small and temporary. Honest-to-goodness dumps were hard to find, as noted by Morse in the late nineteenth century:

In country village and city alike the houses of the rich and poor are never rendered unsightly by garbage, ash piles, and rubbish; one never sees those large communal piles of ashes, clam shells and the like that are often encountered in the outskirts of our quiet country villages. In refined Cambridge … This land was so disfigured by a certain type of rubbish that for years it was facetiously called the “tin canyon”! The Japanese in some mysterious way manage to bury, burn, or utilize their waste and rubbish so that it is never in existence.
⁶¹

A century after Frois, Kaempfer noted that horse dung does not “lie long upon the ground but it is soon taken up by poor country children and serves to manure the
fields.” Obviously, horse dung, and also cow dung, was not as abundant as human offal, while cow urine apparently was not used at all, for an old Japanese proverb equates “the lectures of parents to a cow urinating: long and good for nothing.”

23.
We lock our trunks with iron locks; they close their baskets with cords, paper seals, or padlocks from China
.

Trunks during the Middle Ages often had sliding-bolt locks or padlocks. During the sixteenth century they were increasingly fitted with various new types of locks that were manufactured in southern Germany.

Here Frois would seem to be contrasting solid protection with something far less secure. The Chinese padlock in question would not be of more than nominal value on a weak basket. Locks are not a key part of Japanese culture to begin with. As noted previously, when Japanese doors were locked, it was generally by bolt from the inside only and not by lock and key.

24. We make our chests with compartments inside; they make boxes that fit one inside the other
⁶²
in their baskets
.

This contrast suggests a more general one that Frois missed, which Lee O-Young focused on in his book
Furoshiki Bunka no Posuto-Modan
:

We Europeans put things into solid containers or fill up soft ones of a predetermined size; they wrap up things in
furoshiki
[attractive square cloth] to fit the size of the thing.

In China, Korea and Japan a cloth rather than a container of fixed size is used to store or carry things. Objects are first set on the cloth or
furoshiki
and then the opposing corners are tied diagonally, two at a time. Professor Lee claims that this “primary opposition” of cultural codes, i.e. “putting in” (the box principle) versus “wrapping up” (the cloth principle), goes back to primeval times. Lee boasts that the greater versatility of the
furoshiki
, which bring to mind morphing robot toys (largely a Japanese invention), make the Far East more fit for the postmodern world. The box or Ark, suggests Lee, will no longer save us.

25. Our carpenters work standing up; theirs generally always remain seated
.

For “us” sitting supposedly impedes all physical work except pushing papers. However, for most cultures (not just Japan's) sitting allows more work to be done. Not only does it save energy wasted on standing; it also frees up the feet to join in the work. As Percival Lowell put it, “from the tips of his fingers to the tips of his toes, in whose use he is surprisingly proficient, he (the Far Oriental) is the artist all over.”
⁶³
People all over the globe used to use their feet in this way, but in Europe and the United States “we” only encourage people without functioning arms to use their feet. Today, most carpenters in Japan feed their table saws from a standing position, but people working on sheet metal and other materials not
requiring large tables can still be seen seated on their tatami, with their feet out, fast at work.

26. Our gimlets make holes using the strength of our arms; those of the Japanese are turned by striking them repeatedly with a mallet
.

A gimlet is a T-shaped twist drill that works much like a simple corkscrew, which was once called a gimlet. Because the spiral starts close to the tip, “our” drill or gimlet can start screwing from the outset by simply applying a bit of downward pressure and torque.

The Japanese drill was not a spiral. Indeed, the first screws had just arrived in Japan (in the harquebus) and would not find other uses for quite a while. The Japanese drill used a different method to bore, namely three or four very sharp edges (the
mitsume-giri
had three edges and the
yotsume-giri
, four). While both Japanese drills work well for boring and enlarging holes, getting them started (the first half-inch or so) is difficult and requires a hammer to gain “purchase.” This is apparently what Frois was struck by (no pun intended).

27. In Europe one does not feed carpenters or their helpers; in Japan they are fed wherever they work, as are their assistants, who do nothing
.

This is still true in Japan. Carpenters may bring some snacks of their own or go out for a soft drink, but the lady of the house usually brings out trays of food and tea. Alice Mabel Bacon was of the opinion that: