The First European Description of Japan, 1585 (49 page)

So rigid are the requirements of Japanese hospitality that no guest is ever allowed to leave a house without having been pressed to partake of food, if it be only tea and cake. Even tradesmen or messengers who come to the house must be offered tea, and if carpenters, gardeners or workmen of any kind are employed about the house, tea must be served in the middle of the afternoon with a light lunch, and tea sent out to them often during their day's work.
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Another factor may be considered together with this hospitality, and Bacon herself gave much of her chapter on “domestic service” to it. To wit, the Japanese were fundamentally more egalitarian than Westerners when it came to their attitude toward servants and other people doing menial work.

… in Europe and America a servant is expected never to show any interest in, or knowledge of, the conversation of his betters, never to speak unless addressed, and never to smile under any circumstances.
⁶⁵

28. Our adze is large and wide and can perform many tasks; Japanese adzes look like a toy
.

Today houses in the United States and Europe often are built with a frame of 2×4 or 2×6 lumber, which carpenters simply order from a lumberyard. In the sixteenth century carpenters had to essentially fashion their own framing timber, and the adze, which had a short handle and a relatively long and wide blade, was the tool of choice for transforming rough-sawn lumber (supplied by a sawyer) into squared beams. (Adzes with smaller blades were used to carve joints or mortises in the beams, which “snapped” together, so to speak.)

The Japanese adze was made from a single piece of iron and had a long, thin handle and a short and narrow blade (relative to the adze used in Europe). Presumably the blade on the Japanese adze was incredibly sharp (as with their other cutting blades), in which case it may not have required the larger mass or size of the Western adze(s). Japanese use of bamboo and soft woods such as cedar may also help explain the smaller size of their adze.

29. In Europe a house is built at the pace the lumber is prepared; in Japan they first prepare all the lumber for the house and then erect it in very short order
.

The Japanese actually took just three or four days to erect a house, and this is still true today. A carpenter spends most of his days at home planing, marking, cutting and otherwise preparing parts for assembly. If you are a friend of the carpenter and visit him, you can see he is very busy. Otherwise, you get a very different impression of construction in Japan. Because the foundation is usually laid long before the home itself is ready, an observer might wonder “when are they going to get started.” However, a few days later the house is finished. This approach to construction may make sense in a country with earthquakes, typhoons, and monsoon rainfall, which do not respect half-built buildings.

30. Among us, the more figures in a painting, the better; in Japan, the fewer the better
.

Renaissance art such as Quentin Massys' “Adoration of the Magi,” Tintoretto's “Last Supper,” or the Manueline artist Nuno Golçalves' polypytch of São Vicente de Fora,
⁶⁶
are known for their detail and crowded spacing.
⁶⁷
Perhaps this is what Frois meant by “the more figures in a painting the better.” Although Okada has pointed out that genre pictures (
fûzoku-e
) full of people were painted on screens (
byôbu
) in sixteenth-century Japan, perhaps the most highly respected genre of painting was
sumi-e
, or black-ink painting, which was decidedly minimalist. (Frois and Valignano both were amazed that the Japanese ruler, Hydeoshi, spent a fortune on a black ink painting “of a withered tree with a bird in it.”) As Rodrigues explained:

… although they copy nature in their paintings, they do not like a multitude and crowd of things in their pictures, but prefer to portray, even in a
sumptuous and lovely palace, just a few solitary things with due proportion between them …
⁶⁸

There is one caveat to this “less is more” esthetic: Kano Eitoku (1543–1590) transformed Japanese painting in 1576 when he was commissioned by Nobunaga to execute huge, wall paintings (
shôhekiga
) for Azuchi castle; the paintings purportedly featured clouds of gold dust and flowers and birds in brilliant colors, and rather than a few solitary things, left little to the imagination.
⁶⁹

31. We purposefully plant trees in our gardens that will bear fruit; the Japanese place greater esteem on planting trees in their gardens
⁷⁰
that bear only flowers
.

The Moorish occupation of Iberia during the latter part of the Middle Ages turned the southern third of the peninsula into a veritable garden. The Japanese ambassadors to Europe reported that a single orchard in Lisbon had no less than seventy-six varieties of pears.
⁷¹
(No wonder Columbus described the shape of the earth as a pear.)

Japan was practically fruitless. What surprised the Jesuits, however, was not so much the absence of fruit and the abundance of flowers in Japanese gardens, but the fact that the very trees Europeans cultivated for fruit were, in Japan, feted for their bloom. If we do not specify that we are talking about a tree, the words “cherry” and “plum” are assumed to refer to the fruit. In Japan, on the other hand, these trees became synonymous with their blooms, so much so that people use the generic term
hana
(flowers/bloom) all by itself to refer to what we call a tree.
⁷²

The premier garden tree was and is the plum (some say it is actually a variety of apricot). It blooms right on the broken back of winter, at what was the New Year in Japan, attracting the bush warbler (rightly translated as a nightingale to preserve its trope), whose first call was eagerly awaited. Moreover, a big deal is made of the plum's scent, which is said to slip inside the house and permeate all the cold corners of the room. Because the plum tree's Chinese rendering combines a tree radical with a mother, the very name has a warm, motherly character, further enhanced by a homophonic affinity with birth.

32. We use fireplaces; the Japanese use a covered cotaccus
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in the center of the house
.

The main source of heat in a sixteenth-century home in Portugal and other parts of Europe was the kitchen hearth. European elites might have homes with fireplaces in halls or bedrooms. In Frois' day, and still today, Iberians also made
use of “space heaters” in the form of braziers.
⁷⁴
(The brazier typically amounted to a metal box with heated coals, which is placed under a bed or under a table draped with a heavy cloth that reaches to the floor.)

As noted in
Chapter 6
, Japanese homes during the sixteenth century generally had an
irori
, a centrally located, square sunken hearth that functioned much like the kitchen hearth in European homes (i.e. a place to cook and source of heat). The
kotatsu
essentially is an
irori
with a wooden frame raised up over it, which in turn is covered with a large quilt. The great traveler, Isabela Bird, who had been around the British Isles and the American West before visiting Japan, put the
kotatsu
into international perspective. With “the whole” of a Japanese house “being merely a porous screen from the inclemency of the weather,” … “the invitation to creep under the
kotatsu
is as welcome as the “sit-in” of the Scotch Highlands or the “put your feet in the stove” of Colorado.”
⁷⁵

Okada points out that the
kotatsu
is a Chinese invention. Still, it is the Japanese who have championed it (haiku is full of
kotatsu
) and developed it into a splendid heater. Along these lines, there is a
hori-kotatsu
(which is what Frois seems to be referring to here), consisting of a recessed pit in the floor that contains coals. There is also a modern version, the
denki-kotatsu
, which amounts to a small electrical heater attached to the bottom of a table.

33. In Europe one pays for the sawyer but not the saw; in Japan you pay the same per day for the saw as you do for the sawyer
.

Sawyers in Europe and other skilled laborers in the building trades had modest financial resources and often preferred “simple” as opposed to “ambitious” contracts, that is, many preferred to hire out their labor for a set period at a set wage rather than contract for a job that required them to invest in equipment or assistants who might not be needed once a particular project was finished.
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Perhaps because Japan was home to feudal lords with “deep pockets” who could employ workers on huge construction projects,
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many sawyers and other craftsmen favored ambitious contracts that entailed both their labor and equipment.

34. The lawns in our courtyards
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are valued as a place for sitting; in Japan they purposefully
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remove all grass from the grounds
.

All grass is considered a weed by the Japanese, except for bamboo, mungo grass (called
ryu-no-hige
or dragon-whisker) and grass for walking on. The word for grass is the same as the word for weed, and what we call “weed-pulling” the Japanese call
kusa-tori
or “grass-taking.” This lack of sympathy toward all
things not growing in pots, gardens, or farm fields is said to derive from a farmer's control-oriented mentality. As Tetsuro Watsuji pointed out in his 1935 classic
Fudo: ningengakuteki k
ō
satsu
(wind-earth = natural feature = theory), Japanese crops, unlike those in Europe, were in perpetual danger of being overtaken by the weeds that grow in Japan's warm, humid summers. Today if you ask, most Japanese are likely to say that their grass taking is to prevent mosquitoes and other harmful bugs (
gaichu
) from “boiling up” (
waki-deru
) during the humid season and to allow more air to circulate, preventing houses from rotting. Some Japanese, however, add, “We Japanese like mud, it makes us nostalgic for our paddy fields.”

35. In Europe the streets run to the center, thus allowing the water to drain; in Japan, the streets are high in the center and low next to the houses so that the water can run alongside them
.

Here is a clear case of where “we” have changed our ways, as streets that are slightly higher in the center (i.e. crowned) are the norm in the United States and Europe. Today the only streets with a gulley going down the center is likely to be of cobblestone in the “old town” or late medieval section of European cities. Okada cites a Japanese source indicating that Kyoto streets were especially high in the middle. Frois explains immediately below how the Japanese handled water that ran down the sides of the road and in front of their doors.

36. In Europe, the entrance to a house is flush with the ground; in Japan, they build bridges using some wood or stones to enter the house
.

European practice makes sense, inasmuch as water was forced to the center rather than the sides of the street (recall
#21
above and the dumping of chamber pots late at night or at dawn). The small bridges used by the Japanese likewise allowed the water to flow down the street unobstructed while keeping the entrance high and dry. Needless to say, they also provided an aesthetic opportunity.

37. In Europe, the front door of a home opens directly onto the street; in Japan, they open into their yard or garden
,
⁸⁰
and they make an effort to have them not open directly onto the street
.

Frois is obviously talking about townhouses in European cities such as his own Lisbon. In Japan, the gate and the door are still generally separate, even for small houses with miniscule yards. One can think of the space between as a buffer because the doors themselves are not very strong, the house itself has few walls, and the front door, like the rest of the house, is left wide open all day in the summer.

But Frois' contrast only concerns the houses of the gentry. Many if not most of the homes of townsmen and almost all boarding houses in most parts of Japan had no front garden. A note by Golownin's editor describes the Japan of the “common folk:”

In their houses, the street door always stands open; but there is a jealousy or blind put up at the entrance, formed of small network, which prevents the inmates from being seen, without impeding their sight.
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The biggest difference with Europe would seem to be that the door in Japan remains open. In addition to the blind, which is usually completely open for the bottom three feet, the Japanese take additional measures to prevent dust and heat from blowing in from the street, such as regularly dashing or sprinkling water in front of their homes.

38. In Europe, we build fountains coming out of a wall that are squared and clean; in Japan, they dig small ponds or basins in the ground, with nooks and small inlets and with rocks and little islands in the middle
.

There is a world of difference in aesthetic taste expressed here: geometrical perfection (Europe) versus natural scenic beauty (Japan). Arguably, it is the Japanese and not Europeans who long for the Garden of Eden. Today in the West, the Far-Eastern-looking pond (for the credit hardly belongs to Japan alone) may well be more common than rectangular ones. Still, one might only wish that Eliza Scidmore's prediction came true, namely, “a Japanese gardener will doubtless come to be considered as necessary a part of a great American establishment as a French maid or an English coachman.”
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In all fairness to the West, quite a few homes and estates of wealthy Europeans in the sixteenth century featured gardens and fountains that anticipated Disney World in their hydraulic engineering and “playfulness.” The Japanese teenagers who acted as ambassadors to Europe at the time Frois wrote the
Tratado
went on for pages (Dialogue 21) about the fabulous gardens they visited, particularly in Italy, which had fountains that squirted “spears of water” such that there was not a single place in the garden where you were safe from a water attack.
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