The First European Description of Japan, 1585 (61 page)

27. We never give gifts of medicine; in Japan it is a common thing to give medicine in clam shells
.

Japanese and Korean clams (young ones less than four inches in diameter) are among the most beautifully marked shells in the world. One might say they
completely live up to their scientific name:
Meretrix meretrix
, or painted woman. However, in sixteenth-century Japan most of the clams that were used as gift containers for herbal medicines were actually painted and essentially standardized. Today the Japanese no longer make presents of medicine, except occasionally a medicinal wine similar to our Campari; they also no longer use shells for packaging gifts.

It is surprising that Frois did not highlight how the Japanese give what might be called honoraria for almost all services rendered, whereas Europeans “paid” for things like getting a tooth pulled. As Ms. Bacon pointed out, contracts and exact charges for professional services were considered disgustingly crass by both sides.

In Japan a present of money is more honorable than pay, whereas in America pay is more honorable than a present.
⁶⁷

Today, the Japanese still pay more o-rei than “we” do. But they also seem to have a thing for cash. A truly modern contrast would be:

We give clothing and toys and other carefully chosen things to people;

They give gifts of cash for everything, from children's New Year's presents to weddings and funerals.

But note that the cash must be enclosed in a traditionally-decorated, formal money-giving envelope (sold in any convenience store). Finally, perhaps the most interesting contrast for gift-giving today does not involve seashells or money:

Among us, men give women flowers or chocolates on Valentine's Day;

In Japan, the women always give chocolates to the men.

The Japanese have
giri-choko
or “dutiful-chocolate” day, when female employees give chocolate to their male colleagues (just about everyone gets chocolate on his desk). This can then be repaid on
huaito-dei
, “white-day,” when men are supposed to dutifully give white chocolate to the women.

28. Among us, guests normally bring nothing when they visit; in Japan visitors usually are expected to bring something
.

This is still true today; the visitor to Japan should go fully loaded with little gifts. Audubon birdcalls, if you can find them, are a good recommendation. Or buy the usual pastry, fruit or alcohol on the way to someone's house.

29. Among us, a host never serves what a guest has presented as a gift on that visit; in Japan, as a sign of affection, both the giver and the receiver must sample the gift on the spot
.

In the previous distich Frois indicated that Europeans normally did not bring a gift. Now he says a European host never serves what his or her guest brings! Apparently guests
sometimes
brought a gift of something to drink or eat, as is the case today in Europe and the United States. In Japan the gift is usually food, and
because the gift can be consumed, it is wise to bring something you like so that you can enjoy giving your cake and eating it, too.

30. We embrace when we take our leave or come back from somewhere; the Japanese do not embrace at all, and they laugh when they see it done
.

The Japanese are one of the least touching people in the world. In the past, any embracing they did was done by adults in private. Even children were not generally hugged. Passing someone in a crowd, the Japanese avoided touching anyone. If someone was in the way, they always said something or, if the other person was looking, they might have used a slight karate-chop-like gesture. Men and women did not generally go about with their arms over each other's shoulders or holding hands, as is found in many cultures. Hygienic types have suggested that even a handshake is too much contact and that we should copy the Japanese. Psychologists, on the other hand, may find this pathological. Still, today Japanese train passengers tolerate being packed together far tighter than Western people can bear. It is an interesting paradox.

31. We play ball using our hands; the Japanese play with their feet
.

Ballgames, including various types of handball, were played throughout Europe during the late Middle Ages and early modern period.
⁶⁸
Frois is presumably focusing in this distich on Basque or Valencian
pelota
, which involved hitting a ball with bare hands against a wall or back and forth in “courtfields” (similar to a tennis court). At the time Frois wrote, the city of Valencia had close to a dozen or more handball courtfields.
⁶⁹

The Japanese game
kemari
, literally kickball, may have come to Japan from China during the Heian Period (794–1192), when everyone, including the Emperor, supposedly played the game. As Rodrigues explains, the game is a lot like today's “hacky sack,” only it involves a ball rather than a bean bag:

The balls are inflated and are the size of a man's head. This is played a great deal by the nobles and
kuge
[peers: imperial line, as opposed to shogunate or fief-related nobility], and many of them gather in a circle wearing on the right foot a certain shoe with a blunt point; it is a fine sight to see them kick forward the point of the foot and hit the ball upwards, and then do various tricks and clever feats with it without letting it touch the ground.
⁷⁰

32. When we hit the ball, we hit it up high against the wall; in Japan when they hit the ball, they keep it closer to the ground and always strike it from the underside
.

Apparently church walls were a favorite place for handball. The balls must not have been soft or resilient, as priests during the seventeenth century condemned
the sport of handball because it was responsible for large numbers of broken stained-glass windows.
⁷¹

According to Cooper, during the tenth century a group of Japanese courtiers set a record of 260 consecutive kicks without letting the ball touch the ground.
⁷²
In recent years the Japanese game of
kemari
has been revived (it apparently was eclipsed by Sumo wrestling not long after Frois wrote).

33. We have windmills, watermills, and beast-driven mills; in Japan all grinding is done with a hand-mill, using manual force
.

By 1585 Europeans were harnessing the wind, water, and animals such as mules, oxen, and dogs to power all sorts of mills as well as butter churns, saws, looms, etc.
⁷³
A comprehensive census in one small valley in the Austrian Alps in 1550 revealed 135 mills—most of which were grist mills powered by water.
⁷⁴
Many Europeans and Americans are familiar with the expression “every dog has his day.” Many may not know that in Frois' day there was a breed of small dogs (turnspits) in England that were harnessed to a rotating spit on which large pieces of meat were cooked over a fire. A royal or noble household had several such dogs that took turns providing “rotisserie power,” hence the saying.
⁷⁵

As noted, the Japanese of the sixteenth century did not rely heavily on beasts of burden and probably would have been appalled at the idea of a turnspit. Somewhat surprisingly (given their metallurgy and other “industrial” arts), they made relatively little use of wind or water mills. This all changed during the ensuing Tokugawa era (1603–1868), when the Japanese developed many types of mechanical devices and complex
automata
.

34. In Europe people socialize and recreate with others in plazas and streets; in Japan they do so only in their houses and use the streets solely for walking
.

Cities and towns of Mediterranean Europe are relatively compact and generally consist of contiguous neighborhoods, each with an important or central plaza (
rossios
in Portuguese) and a parish church. Particularly in the evening, the plazas and streets that connect neighborhoods are full of life.
⁷⁶

Frois was right: Japan had no such public “squares” where people socialized, except for temples and shrines (as per
Chapter 3
,
#15
). This does not mean that the Japanese did little socializing; rather, their socializing was less spontaneous. In Japan, socializing was more a matter of colleagues agreeing to meet at a temple or someone's house. The Japanese are still like this. They tend to socialize with
their own cliques, and aside from the
mama-sans
at bars, who often are witty and easy conversationalists, most Japanese are not comfortable striking up a conversation with a new acquaintance or stranger. Note, however, that the Japanese today (and since at least the mid-nineteenth century) have what has been described as an aversion to bringing guests home. The reason given by Japanese and foreign language newspapers in Japan is usually the lack of room, pride (“our home is so inadequate”), and a desire not to mix family and business (most socialization away from the home is with others who work for the same company).

35. Among us, a fake smile is considered frivolous; in Japan it is thought to be dignified and a sign of elevated status
.

The Sinosphere (China, Japan, Korea) generally appreciates self-control and equanimity, which is to say, not looking troubled. It bears noting that the Japanese are no more aware of their “fake” or slight smile than Westerners are of their tendency to stare into the eyes of other people (something Asians find curious or annoying).

36. In Europe clarity is sought in words, and ambiguity is avoided; in Japan ambiguous words are considered the best language and are the most highly esteemed
.

In the timeless classic by Salvador de Madariaga,
Englishman, Frenchmen, Spaniards
,
⁷⁷
the ambiguity of the English language was held to be the mainstay of British diplomacy and well suited for the national temperament. Nevertheless, even in England one does not find such an explicit defense of ambiguity as found in modern Japan.

Okada opines that Frois is talking about “the honorifics that reached their most complex state of development at the time,” which “took a form that avoided clear ways of saying things and favored expressions that were indirect and inconclusive.” Ambiguity also was couched in the double and triple negatives that might accompany, but are not the same as, honorifics.

37. Among us, a respected man would be thought insane to hang the pelt of a fox or a jackal from the back of his belt; in Japan, whenever noblemen are performing works, they, as well as their pages, always carry such pelts in this fashion, to be used for sitting upon
.

It was fashionable in sixteenth century Europe for women—not men—to go about holding or wearing a sable or marten pelt, which were sometimes bedecked with jeweled eyes or gold paws.
⁷⁸

As noted, the Japanese did not sit on couches or chairs, but rather
tatami
; having a fur pelt at the ready made it possible to sit comfortably wherever one went.

38. In Europe, the open crown for mass is only worn by priests; in the region of Gokinai [
central Japan, around Kyoto
], it is worn by servants
⁷⁹
who carry the shoes of their masters
.

Frois appears to be referring here to the
biretta
—a square hat with three or four peaks on the top, worn by Catholic clergy, excepting the pope. The barnacle-shaped
eboshi
cap worn by petty servants was not as highly decorated, but perhaps too similar for Frois to resist this seemingly innocuous contrast. (Or was he advising European Jesuits not to mistake a Japanese servant for an elite?)

39. In board games in Europe the pieces are moved forward; in Japan their movement is always in a backward direction across the board
.

Frois would seem to be comparing “our” chess or checkers to a parcheesi-like game called
sugoroku
. He must have known little about board games or he would have offered more interesting contrasts, such as:

Our chess pieces are discriminated by shape;
shôgi
pieces are identified by Chinese characters meaning “castle, elephant,” etc.

In chess we try to checkmate the king; in
shôgi
they try to capture territory.

40. In Europe, hawks and falcons almost always have hoods over their eyes; in Japan their eyes are always uncovered
.

Raising raptors to hunt rabbits, quail, and other small game goes back at least 1000 years in many parts of the world, including Europe and Japan. Falconry and hawking were time-consuming and expensive and were mostly embraced by the nobility. In Japan, in particular, hawking came to be surrounded with pageantry, beautiful costumes and elaborate equipment, all of which still characterize the sport today.
⁸⁰

The “hooding” of falcons and hawks supposedly keeps them quiet and composed. Although perhaps more difficult, one could imagine raising hawks and falcons such that they were relatively comfortable around people and thus required no “hooding.” Okada gives a citation for a hood on a Japanese hawk, but it is almost three decades after Frois wrote; the citation could well reflect Japanese borrowing from the West. The most touching animal-related poem in the overwhelmingly human-centered
Manyoshu
(Japan's oldest anthology of poetry) is a eulogy for a hunting hawk that the poet raised. Parts of it are reminiscent of one of the West's most touching animal eulogies, John Skelton's (1460–1529) “Phillip Sparrowe.”
⁸¹

41. We wash turnips by hand; Japanese women wash them with their feet
.

This distich is reminiscent of the implicit contrast Herodotus (a Greek) drew in the fifth century BC comparing Greeks and Egyptians: the Egyptians “… knead dough with their feet but lift up mud and even dung with their hands.”
⁸²
As
previously noted (
Chapter 11
,
#25
), in Japan and other parts of Asia both men and women often make far more use of their feet than Westerners.