The First European Description of Japan, 1585 (53 page)

23. Among us, each ship has a designated carpenter; the officers aboard Japanese funes are nearly all carpenters
.

The
naus
that sailed to and from Lisbon and India had crews of over 100 (mostly sailors and cabin boys) that included various officers charged with maintaining the ship: a carpenter and his assistant; a caulker and his assistant, and a cooper, who was expected to make or repair just about everything aboard ship.
³²
As Okada has pointed out, Rodrigues' Japanese-Portuguese dictionary, which appeared less than twenty years after Frois wrote the
Tratado
, includes
funa-daiku
(ship's carpenter), suggesting that there were in fact Japanese specialists in shipbuilding. As often is the case, perhaps Frois exaggerated to make a larger point, namely that an officer aboard a Japanese ship was expected to know how to keep it afloat, whereas officers on a European ship were more specialized.

24. Among us, the person who receives cargo onto a boat provides a bill of lading to the owner, who remains on land; in Japan, the man handing over the cargo also provides a bill of lading to the carrier
.

At the time Frois wrote Hideyoshi was using his military forces as well as control of trade to successfully reign in many of Japan's regional elites. A Japanese ship's captain had to be careful about what he carried and where he carried it. Having a bill of lading on board made sense.

25. Our ships' flags are squared; theirs are a long strip of cloth strung on a bamboo pole
.

Square nautical flags with different designs and symbols were flown by European ships to identify themselves as well as communicate between ships. Japanese ship “flags” served the same purposes and came in two basic types. The one Frois mentions might better be called a banner and is identical to what one often sees in American cities and towns on light poles on main thoroughfares, announcing local events of interest. This type of Japanese ship flag may have fluttered but it did not move in the breeze, so they served well for purposes of identification. The other major variety of Japanese nautical flag was shaped like a pennant, but tended to have longer tails. Fastened at one end, they dangled in the doldrums or moved about dragon-like when the wind blew.

26. Nothing taken aboard our boats is considered to be an omen;
³³
the Japanese have a great fear of transporting bells from Buddhist temples
.
³⁴

Frois wrote at the height of the counter-Reformation when Protestants were damning Catholics as superstitious idolaters. He may therefore have found it difficult to acknowledge that Iberians ships sailed with one or more devotional images as well as rosaries, belonging to the crew. Europeans in general embraced superstitions such as the idea that having women on board was bad luck.

According to Okada, large bells were considered dangerous cargo in the Far East because they were popular with the Dragon King living at the bottom of the sea, who would capsize boats to get the bells.

27. We consider all stories regarding mermaids and mermen to be nonsense; the Japanese believe there is an undersea kingdom of lizards that are rational and defend themselves
.

Frois again casts Europeans as entirely rational, yet a decade or so before he was born, in 1520, the Bishop of Nidros in Norway wrote a letter to Pope Leo X in which he recounted how he said mass on the back of a sea monster, in apparent imitation of Saint Brendan. The late Middle Ages and early modern period are replete with reports of “bishop-fish,” “monk-fish,” the “sea-knight,” and a host of other anthropomorphic sea creatures, which many Europeans took seriously.
³⁵

At the time Frois wrote many Japanese fishermen continued to supplicate their age-old sea gods, which were a Dragon King and a Dragon Princess who were indeed “rational” in the sense that they were benign unless angered, in which case they were a likely source of a typhoon.

28. On our boats we always carry a supply of water sufficient for an extended period of time; the Japanese funes re-supply their water stores almost every two days
.

This contrast is a variation on
#19
above. Again, the Japanese were more “day sailors” than “cruisers.”

29. If one of our sails is ripped, it is repaired immediately; in Japan they leave their sails ripped or unrepaired and this is not a matter for concern
.

Japanese straw sails were made in sections of the size mentioned in
#22
above, so a stitch in time would not make much difference. Moreover, it is probable that some of the “rips” or openings were (unknown to Frois) deliberate. After changing to cotton, it was common for the sails on Japanese ships to be made of long, narrow strips of thin cloth laced together, leaving a space of three or four inches in between. According to Morse, these openings in the sail worked like “reefing” to help keep Japanese sailboats from capsizing in a strong wind.
³⁶

30. On our fustas and catures, you embark and disembark at the bow; on Japanese vessels, the stern is quickly swung around toward land and one embarks and disembarks from there
.

Fustas
and
caturs
were smaller vessels with no deck, more like a boat than a ship (see
#1
above). Chamberlain offers a similar observation of this contrast: In Japan, “Boats are hauled up on the beach stern first.”
³⁷
This also is what “proper people” do with their shoes when they remove them at the portico in Japan: They leave them facing outwards so as to be ready for the next trip.

1
  Frois presumably used the Japanese word
dogu
(meaning tool, equipment, implement, apparatus, etc.) to refer here to a ship's outfitting because he was struck by the distinctiveness of Japanese anchors, ropes, sails, etc.

2
  Francis Dutra, “The Social and Economic World of Portugal's Elite Seafarers, 1481–1600,”
Mediterranean Studies
XIV (2005): 95–105; K.M Mathew,
The History of Portuguese Navigation in India, 1497–1600
(Delhi, India: Mittal Publications, 1988), 275–278; John Francis Guilmartin,
Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the 16th Century
. Rev ed. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2003); Roger C. Smith,
Vanguard of Empire, Ships of Exploration in the Age of Columbus
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Filipe Vieira de Castro,
The Pepper Wreck: A Portuguese Indiaman at The Mouth of the Tagus River
(College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2005).

3
  T. Bentley Duncan,“Navigation Between Portugal and Asia in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” In
Asia and the West: Encounters and Exchanges from the Age of Explorations, Essays in Honor of Donald F. Lach
, ed. C.K. Pullapilly and E.J. Van Kley, pp. 3–26 (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 1986), 22.

4
  Mathew,
History of Portuguese Navigation
, 276–277.

5
  Vieira de Castro,
The Pepper Wreck
. See also T.R. de Souza, “Goa-based Portuguese Seaborne Trade in the Early Seventeenth Century.” In
The Indian Economic and Social History Review
12(1975): 433–443.

6
  William E. Deal,
Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 333–338.

7
  George D. Winius,
Studies On Portuguese Asia, 1495–1689
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001), XVII, 8.

8
  Mathew,
History of Portuguese Navigation
, 283.

9
  A.R. Disney,
A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 142.

10
  Angus Kostam,
Lepanto 1571: The Greatest Naval Battle of the Renaissance
(Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2003), 18–20; Guilmartin,
Gunpowder and Galleys
, 209–268.

11
  See Vieira de Castro,
The Pepper Wreck
, 34–35.

12
  Louise Levathes,
When China Ruled the Seas, The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405–1433
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

13
  During the fifteenth-century Chinese rulers did an “about-face” and decided their ocean-going fleet was not only unnecessary, but a potential source of trouble. See Jared Diamond for a more essentialist argument:
Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997).

14
  H. Warington Smyth,
Mast and Sail in Europe and Asia
(London: John Murray, 1906), 396–425.

15
  Englebert Kaempfer,
The History of Japan, Together with a Description of the Kingdom of Siam, 1690–92
. 3 Vols. (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1906[1690–92]), II, 300.

16
  This is the first time the term
fune
is used in this chapter; it is the generic Japanese term for ship, similar to the Frois' Portuguese term
navio
.

17
  Guilmartin,
Gunpowder and Galleys
.

18
  Ibid., 75–101. Note that Guilmartin,
Gunpowder & Galleys
, 73–100, persuasively has argued that Mediterranean warfare “at sea” was in reality “amphibious warfare.”

19
  Konstam,
Lepanto 1571
, 19; Guilmartin,
Gunpowder & Galleys
, 78.

20
  Quoted in Douglas Sladen and Norma Lorimer,
More Queer Things About Japan
(London: Anthony Treherne & Company, 1905), 287.

21
  
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1897), 10.

22
  Kaempfer,
The History of Japan
, II, 302.

23
  
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
, 4.

24
  Basil Hall Chamberlain,
Things Japanese, Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected With Japan
. Fourth edition (London: John Murray, 1902), 408.

25
  The “Western way” of rowing, which emphasizes great bursts of speed, may have a lot to do with the realities of Mediterranean warfare using galleys. See Guilmartin, Gunpowder & Galleys, 209–215.

26
  Edward Sylvester Morse,
Japan Day By Day, 1877, 1878–1879, 1882–1883
. 2 Vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917), I, 113.

27
  Charles Gibowicz,
Mess Night Traditions
(Bloomington: AuthorHouse, 2007), 174–175.

28
  Deal,
Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan
, 338.

29
  Kwan-wai So,
Japanese Piracy in Ming China during the Sixteenth Century
(East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1975); Jurgis Elisonas, “The inseparable trinity: Japan's relations with China and Korea.” In
The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 4, Early Modern Japan
, ed. John W. Hall, pp. 235–301 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 250. See also Nancy Yaw Davis,
The Zuni Enigma
(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000), 97.

30
  Kaempfer,
The History of Japan
, II, 300–301.

31
  Ibid., 298.

32
  Vieira De Castro,
The Pepper Wreck
, 62–63. See also Pablo E. Pérez-Mallaína,
Spain's Men of the Sea
, trans. Carla Rahn Phillips (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 80.

33
  
Augúrio
, a terms that does not necessarily mean bad luck. In fact, in his Spanish edition of Frois, De la Fuente Ballesteros translates this term as good luck. The more general sense, however, is that of an omen.

34
  
Das varelas
. In Indochina, China and Japan, a Buddhist pagoda and monastery.

35
  Fletcher S. Bassett,
Legends and Superstitions of the Sea and of Sailors in All Lands
(Chicago: Belford, Clarke and Company, 1885), 209.

36
  
Japan Day By Day
, I, 113.

37
  
Things Japanese
, 476.

13   Japanese plays, farces, dances, singing and musical instruments

1. Our autos ordinarily are performed at night; the Japanese almost always perform theirs during the day
.

During Frois' lifetime the term
auto
came to refer to any relatively brief, oneact play, including a large number of secular dramas written for the Portuguese court by the goldsmith-turned-dramatist Gil Vicente (1465–1537), considered the father of Portuguese theater.
¹
The secular variety of the
auto
developed out of the
auto sacramental
, a one-act drama that generally was performed on holy days, particularly the Feast of Corpus Christi. Commissioned by Church or public officials,
autos sacramentales
reiterated religious “truths” or stories from the Bible, lives of the saints, or Christian oral tradition. By the mid-sixteenth century
autos sacramentales
often were accompanied by skits, dialogues, and singing and dancing that often were laced with satire and romance, all of which, according to critics, undermined the religious message of the
auto
itself.
²

As Frois suggests, secular autos were performed at night, more often than not in the palaces of the nobility and royalty. (
Autos sacremantales
ordinarily were held during the day and frequently outdoors, as per
#6
below.)

The Japanese analogue to the
auto
alluded to by Frois almost certainly is
Noh
, which was superficially similar to European drama (e.g. both involved almost exclusively male actors wearing masks, an audience, and a stage).
Noh
is distinctive, however, in that it consists of dialogue or prose as well as singing (by the actors individually and by a chorus off to the side of the stage), dancing (principally by the
shite
or protagonist) and instrumental music provided by three drums and a fife in the “orchestra section” at the rear of the stage. Moreover, whereas European drama sought mostly to mimic reality (e.g. realistic-looking sets, costumes and masks; moving dialogue and the linear unfolding of plot),
Noh
is seemingly more abstract. Many
Noh
are of the
mugen
variety and feature a masked principal actor who portrays a supernatural protagonist (
shite
). The
shite
comes and goes, taking various forms and interacting with supporting, non-masked characters (waki), often an antagonist in the form of a travelling monk, a warrior, or a farmer. A successful
Noh
performance is one in which the actors and audience find
themselves lost in almost ineffable emotions and spiritual states.
³
In this regard,
Noh
is not unlike
chanoyu
, which also captured the interest of warlords during the sixteenth century.
⁴