Samurai William

Chapter 1
AT THE COURT OF BUNGO
NO ONE HAD EVER seen such strange-looking men. They had big noses, giant mustaches, and wore puffed and padded pantaloons. They also seemed to have little understanding of Japanese etiquette and manners. To the little crowd of onlookers gathered on Funai's quayside, these three seafarers appeared to have come from another world.
Their ship had been blown to Japan by the "great and impetuous tempest" that was playing out its last dance on the waters offshore. It was rare for junks to cross the East China Sea, and the arrival of this sea-battered vessel quickly attracted the attention of Funai's governor. He made his way to the port where the strangers--speaking through Chinese interpreters--explained that they "came from another land, named Portugal, which was at the further end of the world."
The governor was unsure how to react, and sent a message to the local ruler, the lord of Bungo, with news of their arrival. Hislordship ordered that the men should be summarily executed, and he sent instructions for their possessions to be stolen and their vessel confiscated, fearing that they would cause no end of trouble if he kept them alive. This news caused something of a stir in the palace chambers, especially when it reached the ears of the lord's eldest son. He told his father that such an action would blacken the name of Bungo throughout Japan and added that he refused to tolerate such a murder.
The lord of Bungo reluctantly changed his mind, but congratulated himself later when he learned more about these men from "another land." He was told that they were well dressed and that they spoke with considerable delicacy. In the ordered and strictly hierarchical society of Japan, this was of the greatest importance, and his lordship was particularly pleased to learn that they were "clothed in silk, and usually wear swords by their sides, not like merchants." He composed a missive to the governor of the port, ordering that one or all of the men be brought to him immediately. "I have heard for a truth," he wrote, "that these same men have entertained you at large with all matters of the whole universe, and have assured unto you, on their faith, that there is another world greater than ours."
The lord of Bungo's sudden interest in the men was, it transpired, little more than idle curiosity. He was a lethargic individual who suffered from a variety of real and imagined illnesses and had long been taxed by ennui. "You know my long indisposition," he wrote in his letter, "accompanied with so much pain and grief, hath great need of some diversion." He promised that whoever visited his little court would be treated with the greatest honor and respect.
There was never any doubt as to which of the three Portuguese men would go to meet the lord of Bungo. Fernão Mendes Pinto, a garrulous adventurer, was immediately selected by the port's governor, who chose him because Pinto was "of a more lively humour, wherewith those of Japan are infinitelydelighted, and may thereby cheer up the sick man." His lively humor would, he explained,"entertain his melancholy, instead of diverging it."
Indeed it would. Pinto was an adventurer extraordinaire--an outlandish fidalgo. or nobleman--whose flamboyant costumeshinted at the colorful persona beneath. He was a perennial romantic, a collector of yarns, who had left Portugal more than six years earlier in search of the bizarre and the absurd. When, many years later, he came to write up his travels, he gave his book an irresistible puff on the title page: "[I] five times suffered shipwrack, was sixteen times sold, and thirteen times made a slave."
His book, Peregrinaçam, or Peregrination, is packed with incident and high adventure, mostly involving the intrepid author. He wrote it for his family and friends, but it was soon printed and became a best-seller. It should have come with a cautionary note: Pinto was a plagiarist who thought nothing of passing off other men's exploits as his own. He claimed to have been the first European to reach Japan, yet it is now known--as he himself knew--that a few shipwrecked mariners had been washed up there in the previous year. Pinto altered dates, borrowed stories, and exaggerated his own bravado in order to make his tales more entertaining. Yet there is much that is true in his account of Japan. He certainly did sail to Bungo with his countryman Jorge de Faria, and his information on the Japanese coastline is largely correct. So, too, are the incidents that occurred during his time in the fiefdom, for they can be verified from other sources. The feudal lord's son, Otomo Yoshishige, later recounted a strikingly similar tale to a Japanese chronicler, who recorded it. The English translator of Pinto's book was not altogether wrong when he wrote that "no man before him ... hath spoken so much and so truly of those oriental parts of the world."
Pinto was escorted to meet the lord of Bungo by a stately retinue of courtly retainers and ushers, who wore rich gowns and carried maces, their insignia of office. He was immediately struck by their sumptuous costumes, which were decorated with delicately embroidered petals and chased with golden filigree. Later visitors were rather more taken by the peculiar faces of the Japanese. They had "tiny eyes and noses," wrote the Jesuit padre Luis Frois, and they eschewed the fabulous mustaches so favored by thePortuguese. Instead, they "plucked out [their] facial hair" with tweezers, leaving their skin smooth and shiny. Their hairstyles, too, were a cause of mirth. They shaved most of their heads, but left a ponytail "on the back part ... long and bound together." Even the way in which the Japanese picked their noses was a cause for comment. "We pick our noses with our thumb or index fingers," wrote one, " ... [while] the Japanese use their little finger because their nostrils are small."
Pinto was whisked into the great palace of Funai and taken straight to the private chambers where his lordship was languishing in bed. But as soon as the lord of Bungo set eyes on Pinto, he pulled himself up and gave a rare smile. "Thy arrival in this my country," he said, "is no less pleasing to me than the rain which falls from heaven is profitable to our fields that are sowed with rice." Pinto was quite taken aback by such an extraordinary greeting and recorded in his book that he was "somewhat perplexed with the novelty of these terms and this manner of salutation." But he soon recovered his composure and apologized for his momentary silence, explaining that it "proceeded from the consideration that I was now before the feet of so great a king, which was sufficient to make me mute an hundred thousand years." He added that he was "but a silly ant in comparison of his greatness."
Pinto may well have believed that the lord of Bungo was indeed the king of Japan, for it was some years before the Portuguese learned that Otomo Yoshiaki--for that was his name--was actually a feudal lord, one of sixty-six. His little fiefdom covered a small area of land on Kyushu, one of the four principal islands that made up the Japanese realm.
His lordship did nothing to correct Pinto's mistaken impression, nor did he show any interest in learning about the land from which Pinto had come. Instead, he spoke about his favorite subject--himself--using Pinto's Chinese intermediaries to inform his Portuguese guest of his illness. "Thou shalt oblige me to let me know whether in thy country, which is at the further end of theworld, thou hast not learn'd any remedy for this disease wherewith I am tormented." Gout was not his lordship's only problem. His stomach went into revolt every time he was presented with seafood and shellfish, and he told Pinto that his "lack of appetite ... hath continued with me now almost these two moneths."
Pinto was alarmed to find himself being asked to administer medicine and he stalled for time, informing Yoshiaki that he "made no profession of physick." But, fearing that he would disappoint his lordship, he suddenly changed his tune and said that he had on board "a certain wood" that, when infused in water, "healed far greater sickness than that whereof he complained." This wood was brought to the palace, Pinto made a brew, and Yoshiaki, "having used of it thirty days together ... perfectly recovered of his disease."
Although the lord of Bungo quickly struck up a friendship with Pinto and seemed genuinely grateful for his medicinal potion, his fellow countrymen found little to praise in the early Europeans in Japan. "These men are traders of south-west Barbary," sniffed the author of the Japanese chronicle Yaita-hi. "They understand to a certain degree the distinction between Superior and Inferior, but I do not know whether they have a proper system of ceremonial etiquette." Others were horrified to discover that these foreigners thought nothing of shouting at and cursing each other. "[They] show their feelings without any self-control," wrote one contemptuous scribe, "[and] cannot understand the meaning of written characters." Worse still, their clothing was filthy and stank of stale sweat, while their unshaven appearance was a cause for concern.
The Japanese probably would have dismissed the Portuguese without further ado, were it not for one important item that was stowed in the holds of their ships. This was a supply of weapons--muskets and arquebuses--and the destruction that they wrought was a cause of wonder to the Japanese. "They had never seen any gun in that country," wrote Pinto, "[and] they could not comprehendwhat it might be, so that for want of understanding the secret of the powder, they concluded that of necessity it must be some sorcery."
The lord of Bungo quizzed Pinto about the number of gunmen serving under the king of Portugal, thereby inviting his guest to tell his tallest story so far. Pinto claimed that the Portuguese king had approximately two million gunners at his disposal. "The king was much abashed," wrote Pinto, adding with considerable self-satisfaction that it was "a marvelous answer."
The lord of Bungo's son, Yoshishige, was quick to grasp the value of such a powerful weapon in a land where wars were still fought with swords and crossbows. Wishing to test the arquebus for himself and fearful that Pinto would refuse his request, he crept into his guest's chamber at night and stole it. It was a foolish act. Young Yoshishige had little idea of how to load the gun, nor was he sure how to fire it. He packed the barrel with a huge quantity of powder, rammed in the shot, and applied the match. There was a blinding flash and a huge explosion. "It was his ill-hap that the arquebus broke in three pieces and gave two hurts, by one of the which his right-hand thumb was, in a manner, lost." The young prince looked at his shattered thumb, fainted, and "fell down as one dead."
This was the worst possible news for Pinto. The prince's accident instantly caused turmoil and fury in the palace, and the object of this wrath was their uninvited guest. "They all concluded that I had killed him," wrote Pinto, "so that two of the company drawing out their scimitars, would have slain me." But the lord of Bungo stopped them, for first he wished to question Pinto more closely. He ordered his guest to squat on his knees and his arms were bound. Pinto was then quizzed by an interpreter while a judge stood over him, clutching a dagger "dipped in the bloud of the young prince." He was also given a swift lesson in the manner of Japanese justice. In normal circumstances, convicted criminals were mutilated in public, then flogged to death or beheaded. The corpses were then left to rot as a grim warning to others. Pinto's punishment was to be no less gruesome. "If thou doest not answer to the questions I ask thee," said his inquisitor, " ... thou shalt be dismembred into air, like the feathers of dead fowl, which the wind carries from one place to another, separated from the body with which they were joined whilst they lived."
The justices were itching to start chopping him to pieces, but the lord of Bungo had an altogether more sensible proposal. He suggested that since his guest had been the cause of young Otomo's accident, he should now be charged with bringing him back to life. He had provided a cure for the gout; it was possible, perhaps, that he could administer a different potion that would resurrect his son. For the second time since his arrival, Pinto found himself playing doctor--only this time his very own life was at stake.
Yoshishige looked as if he was beyond repair. He had collapsed on the floor, "weltering in his own blood, without stirring either hand or foot." But a cursory examination convinced Pinto that the wounds were not as serious as the assembled courtiers believed. The gash on his forehead looked terrible, but was actually "of no great matter," while the thumb, which was hanging from its tendons, could probably be saved. "Now, because the hurt of the right hand thumb was most dangerous," wrote Pinto, "I began with that, and gave it seven stitches." His handiwork was clumsy and the wound continued to ooze blood, so he applied a more traditional salve--"the whites of eggs ... as I had seen others done in the Indies." The cure worked. The blood clotted, and the prince regained consciousness and began to recover. Within twenty days, he was completely better, "without any other inconvenience remaining in him than a little weakness in his thumb." The new technology--Pinto's muskets and arquebuses--had proved their deadly effect, and their future in Japanese warfare was guaranteed. Within a few months of the accident, local armorers were busy making copies of the weapons.
Pinto was astonished by the refined manners of the Japanese, while Yoshiaki's retinue were appalled by the rough and uncouth table manners of the Portuguese. On Pinto's second visit to Japan, in 1556, he was invited to a stately banquet at which he quickly found himself the object of derision. "We fell to eating after our own manner," wrote Pinto, "of all that was set before us." He said that watching him eat "gave more delight to the king and queen[than] all the comedies that could have been presented before them." The Japanese, it transpired, were "accustomed to feed with two little sticks ... [and] hold it for a great incivilitie to touch the meat with one's hands." By the end of the meal, the good humor of the Japanese had turned to disdain, and the assembled courtiers "drove away the time at our cost, by jeering and gibing at us." The banquet ended abruptly when a Japanese merchant entered the room carrying a small stash of fake wooden arms. To the uproarious mirth of the courtiers, he explained to Pinto and his men that since their hands "must of necessity smell always of flesh or fish ... this merchandise would greatly accommodate us."
Pinto's first visit to Japan came to an end after a couple of months at Otomo's court. He had been fascinated by the richness and splendor of Japan and, although his account often reads like a medieval fable, it gave the world its first eyewitness description of the country. It also provided a graphic illustration of the amazement that would soon be shared by those who followed in Pinto's 's footsteps. One newcomer would write home with the shocking news that the Japanese were a superior race in almost every respect: "You should not think that they are barbarians," he said, "for apart from our religion, we are greatly inferior to them."




Pinto survived his time in Japan by a mixture of bluff, bravado, and cheery good humor. Confined to the fiefdom of Bungo and never straying far from the coastline, he seemed unaware that sixteenth-century Japan was one of the most dangerous countries in the world. The Land of the Rising Sun was in the grip of the terrible sengoku jidai--the era of civil wars--in which power was determined by military prowess. "Men chastised and killed each other," wrote one early European visitor, "banished people and confiscated their property as they saw fit, in such a fashion that treachery was rampant and nobody trusted his neighbour."
The land was nominally ruled by an emperor, the self-styledLord of Heaven, who lived in splendid isolation in the city of Kyoto. In the golden age of medieval Japan, he had presided over a vast hierarchy of courtly ladies and chamberlains who spent their waking hours indulging in aesthetic pursuits. Now, with the imperial coffers empty, many nobles had abandoned such ceremonial amusements and had withdrawn to the provinces, leaving the emperor to fend for himself. His palace was described by one Japanese chronicler as being indistinguishable from a peasant hovel; his remaining courtiers scratched a living by selling autographed verses and peddling antiques in Kyoto's back streets. Abdication was impossible, for the court could not afford the expense of the necessary rites and rituals. When the emperor Go-Tsuchimikado died in 1500, his rotting corpse remained unburied for six weeks due to the parlous state of the royal finances. The emperor currently on the throne, Go-Nara-tenno, fared only slightly better. His coronation had to be delayed for nine years because of insufficient funds. Even when he was enthroned, he was a puppet without any power. "The true king," wrote one, "but obeyed by no one.
The emperor's protector was the shogun, or "barbarian-quelling generalissimo," who was also the strongman of the feudal lords. But by the 1540s he, too, lacked any real authority, for the country had imploded into anarchy and was fought over by the hundreds of rival warlords, brigands, and mercenaries. The great daimyo, or feudal lords, like Otomo Yoshiaki, lord of Bungo, were engaged in constant internecine warfare, usurping each other's domains and slaughtering their families and kinsmen.
Effective power belonged to the most ruthless robber barons, banditti, and armed monks, who regularly laid waste the countryside. The success of these warlords depended to a great extent upon the strength of the samurai, or two-sworded warrior class, on their land. These warriors had, in the misty past, been utterly loyal to their overlord. "We will not die peacefully," was their mantra, "but we will die by the side of our king." But many could nolonger be trusted, and those living in borderland regions were only too ready to switch allegiance to a more prosperous, or more successful, feudal potentate.
Armed monks presented another threat to the feudal lords and the shogun. Japanese chronicles recount numerous instances of monks laughing in scorn at threats to reduce their hilltop fortress-monasteries. Safely behind stout walls, these monks were in an impregnable position, and many had abandoned prayer in favor of a more raucous cycle of carousing, sodomy, and adultery. Yet not all was gloom in these turbulent times. A few of the greatest Zen Buddhist monasteries produced exquisite calligraphic scrolls. So, too, did the more educated feudal lords. Poetry, the Noh lyric dramas, and the courtly rituals of the tea ceremony also flourished in this troublesome period.
Despite the unrest and the power-jostling, the impoverished court continued to function with aloof grandeur and was held in enormous respect. "Though he [the emperor] lost his position and his services and his incomes four hundred years ago," wrote the Jesuit Luis Frois, "and is nothing more than an idol, he is still held in great respect." His shaven-headed kuge, or courtly nobles, were destitute of power, yet were accorded every possible dignity. In this strictly hierarchical society, their honorific titles were more than empty symbols; the most impoverished retainer, once ennobled by the imperial patent, would look down upon the mightiest robber baron with the utmost contempt. It was a peculiarly Japanese phenomenon; foreign arrivals could never quite understand how a powerful feudal lord, controlling two or three provinces, could be accorded so little respect simply because the emperor had not honored him with a position at court.
Pinto was soon followed by several other Portuguese adventurers. In the winter of 1547, Captain Jorge Alvarez visited the land and declared it to be far more impressive than coastal China or the islands of the East Indies. He wrote at length of the mountains and orchards, and concluded his report with a brief analysis of theJapanese people. There was much to be celebrated. Captain Alvarez was pleased to note that "they are a white race" and "of good appearance," and he expressed his admiration for their diet, which consisted largely of boiled, glutinous wheat. "They eat it cooked as a gruel," he wrote, "and each time they eat very little."
They were pious, too, and would spend the greater part of each morning "with their rosary in their hand to pray." In old age, many retired to Buddhist monasteries to live the rest of their days in prayer and contemplation. It was a tantalizing vision to the churchmen of Portugal, and the only blemish came at the end of their prayer sessions when the monks would hitch up their kimonos "[and] engage in sodomy with boys whom they instruct."
Alvarez's report fascinated his countryman Francis Xavier, a young Jesuit who had spent more than eight years in India and the Malay archipelago. He saw a whole new world of missionary activity opening up and was even more excited when Captain Alvarez introduced him to an open-minded Japanese refugee called Anjiro. After converting to Christianity in 1548, Anjiro--along with his servant and a friend--accompanied Xavier to Japan.
The voyage was not without its difficulties. The junk carrying Xavier and his companions suffered a treacherous passage, dodging hurricanes and hidden reefs, pirates and shallows. When the captain's daughter fell overboard and drowned, the "pagan" Chinese crew engaged in diabolical rituals, sacrificing seabirds and smearing blood over the images of their goddesses. Finally, after three wearisome weeks at sea, Xavier and his companions sighted the forested coast of Kagoshima in southern Japan. It was August 15, 1549: the twenty-second day of the seventh month of the eighteenth year of the period known as Tembun.
Kagoshima lay some 130 miles to the southwest of Funai and was much more impressive. It was the capital of the Satsuma fiefdom, and its wooded hills were bedecked with many-storied pagodas with their distinctive concave roofs. Xavier arrived when it was looking its most picturesque. Just a week earlier, the inhabitantshad celebrated the great Bon festival--the Buddhist All Souls' Day--and the city's graveyards had been sprinkled with fresh blossoms.
Xavier was delighted to discover that this island nation more than lived up to expectations. The Japanese, he wrote, were "of astonishing great sense of honour, who prize honour more than any other." He was disappointed, however, to discover that the Buddhist monks were "inclined to sins abhorrent to nature," but he felt convinced that Japan would prove fertile territory. "If we knew how to speak the language," he wrote, "I have no doubt that many would become Christians."
Kagoshima was situated in one of the most conservative provinces of Japan--a bastion of the ancient Shinto cult--and the city's alleys were decked with ancient wooden shrines with their characteristic double-beamed gateways. There were Buddhist temples as well: dimly lit altars whose gilded statues glittered in the candlelight. The city was home to all the principal sects, including the exotically dressed followers of the fanatical Hokke and the gray-robed monks of the Ji-shu. These lived together with female nuns and were rumored to spend their nocturnal hours in a frenzy of copulation.
Xavier headed for the great Fukosho-ji monastery, which lay just a short walk from the harbor. It was an exquisite spot, shaded with camphor trees and scented with plum blossom. The place was adorned with stone lanterns and a lotus pool, a dragon-gate bridge, and giant stone figures with hideous grimaces. Xavier made contact with the venerable superior, an eighty-year-old Zen Buddhist abbot called Ninshitsu, and found him to be an amiable man. Ninshitsu had long been troubled by the issue of the immortality of the soul and was fascinated by Xavier's preaching and simple piety. After a lengthy conversation, with Anjiro acting as interpreter, he led his guest into the meditation hall to watch the monks at prayer. When Xavier asked what they were doing, Ninshitsu gave a despondent shrug. "Some are counting up howmuch they received during the past months from their faithful,"he said,"others are thinking about where they can obtain better clothes ... In short, none of them is thinking about anything that has any meaning at all."
The weather began to turn soon after Xavier's arrival in Kagoshima. The autumnal breezes brought squally showers and the days grew cooler. The chrysanthemums bloomed and died; the harvested rice fields turned into mud-gray swamps; and the oaks shed their leaves after a brief but spectacular burst of color. Only the camphor trees in the grounds of the Fukosho-ji monastery held their foliage in the chill north wind.
Xavier and his companions shivered in their cotton tunics. Their lodgings were freezing, for the paper window panels did little to cut the icy blast that whipped off the sea. Winter broughtthe first snows, which Xavier had not seen since leaving Portugal. He stayed indoors and spent his time doggedly studying Japanese, with which he was having great difficulties. His attempt to produce a phonetic Japanese catechism, written in Latin characters, was a disaster. Twice a day, he would clamber up the steep stone steps of the Fukosho-ji monastery and, seated at the far side of the dragon-gate bridge, overlooking the tranquil lotus pool, he would try to read aloud from his book. But the translation was poor and the Christian doctrine was unintelligible to the monks. Worse still, its clumsy style offended the ears of these highly educated men, and they laughed and said he was crazy.
His more private preaching--done with the help of his interpreter--had reaped a handful of converts. An impoverished samurai had been the first to be baptized; he took the name of Bernardo and devoted himself to studying the Bible. Anjiro's mother, wife, and daughter had also converted--along with the owner of Xavier's lodgings. But these were rare successes, and Xavier found that even sympathetic audiences were generally skeptical. He had tried to adopt and adapt Japanese words when he came to teach the local people about Christianity, but quickly mired himself in confusion. Japanese religious words were too laden with symbolism to convey the theology of the gospel.
So far, Xavier had not penetrated into inland Japan and his knowledge of the country was limited--like Pinto's--to the coastline. From the moment he had first set foot in Japan, he had intended to travel to the fabled imperial city of Kyoto--then known as Miyako--to seek permission to preach from the emperor himself. He also hoped to be granted an entrance into the famous university of Heizan in order to debate with, and convert, the erudite monks.
Toward the end of August 1550, he and his companions finally set off on a journey of great hardship. The first leg involved a dangerous sea voyage, braving storms and pirates, while the second stage entailed a treacherous trek over snow-capped mountains.The mortification of the voyage left Xavier unfazed; indeed, he made it even more arduous by shunning the offer of a pack animal and subsisting on tiny quantities of roasted rice. "He was so absorbed in God," wrote one of his fellow travelers, "that he wandered off the way without noticing it, and tore his trousers and injured his feet without observing it." He made few converts en route, for he struck most observers as an eccentric figure whose impoverished demeanor won little respect in Japan. By the time he approached Kyoto, his sleeveless black surplice was torn to shreds, while his tiny Siamese cap--tied to his head with string--gave him the appearance of a jester.
Xavier had high expectations of the fabled imperial city. "We are told great things," he wrote, " ... [and] are assured that it has more than ninety thousand homes, and that it has a great university." He had been told of monumental temples and monasteries, of golden shrines and pleasure houses where the emperor and his court engaged in intellectual tussles. The truth was very different. Kyoto lay in ruins--an expanse of crumbling dwellings and temples--for warfare, pestilence, and floods had left the city in a parlous state. The once-magnificent Sunflower and Moonflower Gates had been wrecked by a typhoon, and the clipped fringe of bamboo that surrounded the palace apartments had been swept away by floodwater. Princesses and courtly mistresses no longer spent their waking hours composing poetry. Now, they lurked by the perimeter fence in order to beg food from passing merchants. The emperor himself had withdrawn into the sanctum of his palace.
Had Xavier been allowed a peek inside those forbidden corridors, he would have seen an extraordinary sight. The puppet emperor actually looked and behaved like a puppet. He wore an extraordinary cap with giant earflaps, tassels dangled from each hand, and his straw sandals had nine-inch heels. "This gentleman never toucheth the ground with his foote," wrote one later visitor, "[and] his forehead is painted white and red."
Xavier was dispirited by his stay in Kyoto and realized that he would have to seek permission to preach from the great feudal lords if he was to have any success in Japan. It also dawned on him that his tattered gown and unkempt hair--the visible signs of his poverty--did not impress the Japanese. When he reached the city of Yamaguchi and requested an audience with the lord, Ouchi Yoshitaka, he dressed in newly purchased silks and presented himself as ambassador of the governor of India. He also offered Ouchi the presents that had been intended for the emperor--a clock, some Portuguese wine, and two telescopes--and proceeded to dazzle the feudal court with his learning, giving lectures on astronomy and the geography of the world. Here, at last, was something that left an impression. "They do not know that the earth is round," he wrote, "nor do they know the course of the sun, and they ask about these things and others, such as comets, lightening, rain and snow" Xavier could see that Ouchi and his men delighted in his lesson "and regarded us as learned men, which was no little help in their giving credence to our words." By the time he left the city--on hearing that a ship was awaiting him at the port of Funai--he had converted some 500 souls. Ironically, many had been won over by his knowledge of astronomy, not of Christianity.
Xavier set sail from Japan in November 1551 after more than two years in the country. In that time, he had aged visibly and his hair had turned white. He put a brave face on the troubles he had experienced and wrote an upbeat letter to his fellow missionaries about his stay in the country. The Japanese, he said, "are the best who have as yet been discovered, and it seems to me that we shall never find among heathens another race to equal the Japanese." Although his contact with them had been limited, he had seen enough to conclude that "they are a people of very good manners, good in general, and not malicious."
While Xavier had been busy preaching, Portugal's merchants had been reaping their own, more profitable, harvest. They had discovered that the Japanese had a voracious appetite for Chinese silks and were prepared to pay enormous sums of money to acquire them. They could not buy silk themselves, for the Ming emperors in China, tired of piratical raids on their coastline, had forbidden any Japanese from landing on their shores on pain of death. An imperial decree described them as "thieves, birds of prey and rebels against the sovereign emperor of China." Such sentiments were music to the ears of the Portuguese. "The discord between China and Japan is a great help to the Portuguese," wroteone Jesuit monk, "[for] the Portuguese have a great means of negotiating their worldly business."
In or around 1555, the Portuguese secured a toehold on the tiny island of Macao, on the south coast of China, which gave them access to the great silk markets of Canton. With characteristic energy, they began buying vast quantities of silks in preparation for their first great trading mission to Japan, along with other "Chinish wares"--porcelain, musk, rouge, and rhubarb.
In 1555, a huge carrack laden with silks sailed to Japan under the command of Captain Duarte da Gama. She did brisk business on arrival and returned to Macao with such a vast quantity of silver that even the monks were left wide-eyed. "Ten or twelve days ago, a great ship from Japan arrived here," wrote the Jesuit padre Belchior. "She came so richly laden that now all other Portuguese and ships which are in China intend to go to Japan." The success of the voyage sparked a frenetic trade as Portugal's merchants entered this lucrative business. The profits were indeed staggering and commentators wrote excitedly about the enormous quantities of silver being exported from Japan. One quoted twenty million grams a year; another--Diogo de Couto--bragged that "the cargo ... is all exchanged for silver bullion, which is worth more than a million of gold [cruzados]." A third said that the Portuguese were managing to cart off almost half of Japan's annual production of silver bullion.
The merchants in Macao built huge vessels to bring back their silver--unwieldy monsters of almost 2,000 tons. These nao do trato, or "great ships," were broad in the beam and had as many as four flush decks, with space for a staggering 120,000 cubic feet of silver bullion. They were veritable leviathans by the standards of the day, and they towered over the native junks. The way in which the trade was regulated was decidedly eccentric: the exclusive rights to the annual voyage to Japan were--quite literally--sold to the highest bidder in Macao. For the successful captains,the wealth and authority this brought them often went to their heads and they would swagger around the Japanese ports accompanied by armed retinues, fife bands, and Negro slaves. The Japanese had never seen anything like it.
Although they continued to label the Portuguese barbarians, the Japanese had the foresight to realize that these merchants had the wherewithal to bring them the silks they so fiercely craved. They also discovered that their best hope of attracting merchants to their fiefdoms was by currying favor with the Jesuit priests who arrived along with the bales of silk. The astute Otomo Yoshishige of Bungo was one of the first to grasp that trade and religion went hand in hand. He wrote to the Jesuit authorities in the most ingratiating terms, begging them to persuade merchants to harbor in his port. He assured them: "One of the reasons is that I will be able to install the fathers again ... with greater favour than they obtained at first." But it was not the only reason. The lord of Bungo was desperate to lay his hands on Portuguese weaponry and requested "espera" guns, which fired twelve-pound shot. He argued that "if I have my kingdom prosperous and defended, [then] the church of god will likewise be so." In a decidedly saccharine afternote, he said that he had always enjoyed the company of the Portuguese and that his most treasured possession was a letter written by the queen of Portugal, "which I esteem so highly that I carry it in my breast as a relic."
Poor Yoshishige's request fell on deaf ears. Portugal's merchants and priests had discovered a far more suitable harbor on the northwestern shores of Kyushu: Nagasaki. From 1571, they began to direct their great ships into its deep, safe waters. "This place is a natural stronghold," wrote one, "and one which no Japanese lord could take by force." It was soon to prove as beneficial to the merchants as it was providential to the priests. The feudal lord of Nagasaki, Omura Sumitada, had converted to Christianity in 1562 and had taken the name Dom Bartolemeu. When he saw the quantities of silks, damasks, and porcelains arriving at his shores,he went one step further and declared his intention of making his fiefdom a purely Christian one, expelling all who would not conform to the new religion. This was swiftly achieved and a band of Jesuit monks, "accompanied by a strong guard ... went around causing the churches of the gentiles"--the Buddhist and Shinto temples--" ... to be thrown to the ground." Within seven months, 20,000 people had been baptized, along with the monks of some sixty monasteries. The Jesuits were overjoyed and rejoiced at seeing these monks, "the very men who formerly regarded us as viler than slaves, ... now [come to us] with hands and forehead on the ground in token of submission."
The Jesuits were aware that Dom Bartolemeu's actions were less inspired by Christian charity than business acumen. He did it, they recorded, "because he would thus ensure always having the Great Ship in that port, which would bring him great renown and make him a great lord through the duties and profits he would derive therefrom." He soon offered them an even more important concession. On June 9, 1580, he ceded them the port of Nagasaki, ostensibly so that they would have the necessary money to finance their mission. But Dom Bartolemeu himself was also a beneficiary. He would continue to receive all taxes and dues, and would be allowed to use Nagasaki as a place of refuge in time of danger.
So long as the Portuguese could keep their monopoly over Japan, they would reap rich rewards. What they did not know was that in the docks of Limehouse in London, preparations were under way for a voyage to the Land of the Rising Sun.
Copyright © 2002 by Giles Milton