Extending our survey to Japan we come among a people who interest us greatly in many ways. Their dress is neat and picturesque, their personal appearance pleasing, and closer acquaintance makes us feel well-disposed towards these children of the Rising Sun. For they are very polite and show great solicitude towards the Western stranger, and do all they can for his comfort. We observe with sympathy, and perhaps a touch of amusement, their primitive simplicity of manners and habits, which are all the more piquant because of their naturalness. Their native genius has in recent years revealed itself in a ready apprehension of immediate circumstances and in an intelligent adaptability to new conditions, as well as in wise forethought. Their devotion to duty and disregard of self when the honour and interests of their country are at stake shone out brilliantly during the great conflict now happily ended. But this brief observation would be incomplete without mention of the animating and sustaining principle of their religion, Shintoism. Their child-like belief in a spirit-world where their ancestors are looking down upon them cannot fail to influence them for good in every thought and deed.
We must go back six hundred years for the earliest European mention of Japan. In 1298, Marco Polo, at the end of his long wanderings in eastern countries, found himself a prisoner at Genoa. The enforced leisure brought him the happy thought that he would put in writing an account of his experiences. Of Japan he says, ‘Zipangu is an island towards the East,’ and adds, ‘The inhabitants are civilized and well-favoured.’ But Europe had not yet awakened to the glorious career of conquest and commerce which fate had in store for her. Two and a half centuries later the Portuguese explorer, Fernao Mendez Pinto, while cruising in Eastern waters bound for Macao, was driven by storm on to the Japanese coast near Nagasaki. The people with whom he came in contact were friendly and willing to barter for such things as he had for disposal. Tidings of the place and the people and of the favourable reception accorded him were not long in reaching the Portuguese at Goa and the Spaniards at Manila, and vessels laden with merchandise were speedily on their way to the new and promising mart of commerce.
With the Spanish expedition of 1549 came the good and pious Jesuit, Francis Xavier, full of zeal, bent upon the conversion of the natives to the true faith. On their arrival at the port of Bungo they were received with open arms by a people who seemed to know no guile. So favourably was the good missionary impressed that he exclaims in the narrative of his sojourn among them,[4] ‘I have never found a nation among the infidels which has pleased me so much. They are men endowed with the best of dispositions, of excellent conduct, free from malice and gall. I know not when to have done when I speak of them. They are truly the delight of my heart.’ And there is abundant evidence, speaking of the deep impression the saintly Xavier and his colleagues made upon the receptive minds of the gentle Japanese. For these good men had come to them well provided with medicines, and were not unskilled in the treatment of disease. Their untiring labours among the sick and needy, their sympathy with the poor and destitute won all hearts, and gratitude spread their praises throughout the land. The wise Shogun, Iyeyasu, was not unobservant or unmindful of his people’s interests. Fully alive to the good work the strangers were doing he granted them permission to go where they pleased throughout his dominions. To the merchants also he granted similar privileges, allowing them to carry on unrestricted trade with the inhabitants. From the first the merchants had done well. As they unfolded package after package of their wares for inspection wonder waxed into childish delight, and the shredded leaves of the tobacco-plant which the sailors smoked in pipes was to these primitive people a revelation. Fancy pictures the little people taking to the new indulgence with an amused twinkle in the eye like youngsters just come into possession of a new toy. And here we come upon evidence, full and convincing, that before the arrival of the Portuguese and Spaniards tobacco was unknown in Japan. Testimony to the foreign origin of the plant is borne by the people themselves, who knew no name for it and readily adopted the West Indian word ‘tabaco.’ It is remarkable that this Carib name, with slight variations in the spelling, should have spread to every country.
The story of Europe’s early intercourse with Japan in regard to the conduct of both the Spaniards and Portuguese contains much that is painful and humiliating. For a few years the priests in the propagation of the gospel, and the merchants in their trade, prospered equally well. By-and-by it became too glaringly apparent for even the simplest of the natives to mistake that they were being deceived and robbed by the strangers. The first serious mischief began in 1597. Xavier had left Japan for China, and his just and accomplished coadjutors had been succeeded by a host of Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustine and other friars who had flocked in from Goa, Malacca, Macao and other Portuguese settlements, all of whom commenced their career by setting the Japanese laws and usages at defiance. Speaking of the foreign traders, an old writer declares that they were by dishonest means rapidly draining away the golden marrow of Japan. And the progress made in proselytising is shown in the fact that within a few years of their arrival there were in Nagasaki alone no fewer than twelve parish churches and several monasteries, presided over by a bishop. Merited retribution, stern and swift, came in 1616 with the accession to the Shogunate of Hidetada, and eventually ended in 1637 in the total expulsion of the Portuguese and Spaniards from Japan. It is noteworthy that the Dutch residents sided with the Japanese and gave of their best and bravest during the prolonged sanguinary conflict.
A gleam of brighter vision breaks upon the scene when we touch upon the period which brought the first Englishman to Japan. The story of the Elizabethan mariner, William Adams, in relation to the place and the people, does something to redeem Europe’s ill fame in that faraway land. He was a Kentish man, who, in his youth, had been apprenticed to a shipbuilder at Limehouse. At the end of the term he entered the Royal Navy as navigating officer. We next find him in his thirty-second year (1598) seized with an overmastering passion for foreign adventure. In the capacity of pilot-major he joined a Dutch merchant fleet of five vessels bound for the East Indies. Their course lay by way of Cape Horn, in rounding which stormy seas scattered the ships. Two were lost, two found their way back to Holland, the remaining one called the Charity alone reached the far East. This latter was commanded by Adams. Tempest-tossed and worn-out, he, with his crew of twenty-four men were cast ashore on the Japanese island of Kiushiu, after a voyage which had lasted two years. He landed on Japanese soil on the 19th of April 1600, and in such a plight that out of a crew of twenty-four Adams, in one of his letters home, says, ‘There were no more than six besides myself that could stand upon their feet.’ They were taken to Osaka in order to give an account of themselves to the great Shogun, Iyeyasu. Adams speaks of the house in which the potentate dwelt as wonderful and costly, and gilded with gold in abundance. Called upon to declare his nationality and business he produced his charts and explained through an interpreter (doubtless a Portuguese), whence he had come, adding, ‘We are a people that seek friendship with all nations.’ The Portuguese, jealous of their interests in the island, represented the English and the Dutch as pirates living by plunder on the high seas, having no country of their own. At the close of the examination Adams was placed under arrest and detained thirty-nine days. He says that he was well treated. Something in his manner gained upon the Shogun; he gradually rose in favour, notwithstanding the efforts of his enemies to damage him and his country. Their motives were seen through; the sagacious Iyeyasu in a moment of exasperation declared that, ‘if devils from hell visited his country they should be treated like angels from heaven so long as they behaved like gentlemen.’ The Shogun was not slow in forming a just estimate of Adams. Indeed, his manly bearing and simple straightforwardness gained him friends among high and low. We next hear of him at Court teaching Iyeyasu the craft of shipbuilding, the outcome of which was the construction of two ships on the European model. Adams says, ‘Now being in such grace by reason, I learned him some points of geometry and the understanding of the art of mathematics, with other things. I pleased him so much that what I said he would not contrary.’ It is pleasant to read of this manly Elizabethan sailor coming into honours and wealth in this far-off country by sheer native honesty of purpose and scholastic attainments. His royal master raised him to the rank of Samurai, and bestowed upon him an estate at Phebe, near Yokosuka. Richard Cocks, a merchant adventurer and member of the East India Company, describes the place, and says that it consisted of ‘above one hundred farms or households, besides others under them, all of which are his vassals; and he hath power over them, they being his slaves; and he hath absolute power over them as any tono or King in Japan hath over his vassals.’ Needless to say that the feudal system was then in full force in Japan. To the end of his life Adams maintained the character which had earned him this responsible position. Let us hope that three centuries after Iyeyasu the Great the Japanese discern in our people something of the same steadfastness that in those early days won their good-will. William Adams stood thus in favour when in 1609 two armed Dutch ships put into the harbour of Denzin. The commander sought out Adams, and, reminding him of his former connection with the Dutch merchant service, claimed his good offices for the advancement of Holland’s commercial interests with Japan. No more was desired than a footing for trade such as had been granted to the Portuguese. So reasonable a request appealed to the fair-minded Englishman, and he readily gave his word to do what he could for them. Again the Portuguese interfered and denounced the Dutch as heretics and outlaws from Christendom, and altogether untrustworthy. This calumny, however, had no effect. Adams succeeded in obtaining the desired privilege. But the distrust of all Europeans, created by the artifice and unscrupulous dealings of the Portuguese, led the Shogun to restrict the Dutch to the port at which they had landed. They, however, established a factory at Firando. Mr. W. E. Griffis in his admirable history of Japan, commenting upon the influence of the Dutch in that country, says, ‘After a hundred years of Christianity and foreign intercourse the only apparent results of this contact with another religion and civilization were the adoption of gunpowder and firearms as weapons, and the use of tobacco and the habit of smoking.’
To round off the story of our countryman in Japan, it may be well to tell of the great yearning that came over him to return home to the wife and two children he had left at Limehouse. The Shogun, however, was loth to part with him, and his appeals for leave to do so, made, he says, ‘according to nature and conscience,’ were put off from time to time. When at last permission was granted, circumstances had arisen which prevented acceptance. Adams, however, was not unmindful of the interests of his native country. His desire to get into communication with England is shown in a letter which he addressed as follows:
‘To my unknown friends and countrymen, desiring this letter by your good means, or news, or copy of this, may come into the hands of one or more of my acquaintances in Limehouse, or elsewhere, or in Kent, in Gillingham by Rochester.’ His description of Japanese character might have been written to-day, so well does it accord with our present knowledge of the inhabitants of the Great Britain of the East. Adams says, ‘The people of this Island of Japan are of good nature, courteous above measure, and valiant in war; their justice is severely executed without any partiality upon transgressors of the law. They are governed in great civility: I mean not a land better governed in the world by civil policy.’ In October, 1611, he addressed a letter to ‘The Worshipful Company of London Merchants,’ urging them to send merchandise to the ports of Japan. In the simple words of a sailor he tells them that he is a ‘Kentish man, born in a town called Gillingham, two English miles from Rochester and one mile from Chatham, where the Queen’s ships do lie.’ Before the letter reached them they had heard through the Dutch of Adams and his position in Japan, and had sent him letters, advising him of their intention to despatch goods to Japan. In April, 1612, three English vessels laden with merchandise, and commanded by Captain John Saris, sailed from the London Docks for the far East. They arrived at Bantam (Java) in October of the same year. How little time was reckoned with in those days is shown in the circumstance that Saris thought well to remain at Bantam until the beginning of the following year, knowing all the while that he bore a letter from King James to the Emperor of Japan. He sailed in the Clove with a crew of seventy, and sighting the coast near Nagasaki, he, two days later, anchored in the haven of Firando. Here Adams met him and arranged for a visit to the Shogun, who was then at Sumpu. Thither they repaired, accompanied by a Japanese interpreter and two followers. They carried with them presents to the value of 720 dollars for Iyeyasu and the State officers. They started on their journey on the 7th of August, and arrived at their destination on the 6th of September. On the 8th they had an audience of the Shogun, to whom they delivered the English King’s letter for the Emperor. They were graciously received, and Iyeyasu in return sent to King James five screens and a letter for His Majesty, conveying a free licence to English subjects to enter any of the ports of Japan for trade purposes. Thus was established in the year 1613 the first treaty of commerce between England and Japan.
In the midst of all these things our hero had met with a fair damsel in Japan with whom he mated, and who bore him a son and a daughter—Joseph and Susanna. And, to complete the romance, we are told that there are to-day Japanese who pride themselves on being able to trace their descent from this Elizabethan mariner whom the greatest of their Shoguns loved to honour.[5]
In Japan, however, as in other countries into which the Indian weed had been introduced, it was not allowed to take root and flourish unopposed. Protests, strong and loud, were got up by the old-fashioned folk against the new-fangled indulgence from the ‘Nanban’—country of the southern barbarians. So strenuously did they proclaim it to be the ‘fool’s plant,’ the ‘poverty weed,’ the ‘barbarian’s herb,’ that at last they won over the Shogun to their side. In 1612 he issued an edict forbidding his subjects to either use tobacco or to plant seeds of it. It is curious to notice how, in this remote region, the witchery of the weed set good men and true warring over its virtues or vices on exactly the same lines as were being fought over at the same time in England, and in each case with a precisely similar result. Like the historic Counterblaste of our British Solomon and the fulminations of two popes, their efforts to put out the pipe were unavailing. Indeed, as usually happens in conflicts of the kind, opposition begat opposition, till at last the will of the many triumphed over the prejudice and power of the few. The people had tasted the forbidden leaf and liked it so well that each offered to share with his neighbour the pleasure and, if need be, the punishment attached to the indulgence. So in course of time the edict died a natural death, and was decently buried under a mild ceremonial wherein the Shogun enjoined his loving subjects to be careful and not let themselves be seen smoking outside their houses. Rein, in his Industries of Japan, says of this edict, ‘of all the laws of the Tokugawa rule probably none has proved so ineffectual as the edict of 1612 against the smoking and planting of tobacco.’
The earliest native record of tobacco is found in an old family chronicle of an eminent physician named Saka, of Nagasaki; it is dated 1605, and runs as follows: ‘In this year tobacco was brought in ships of the Nanban people, and was shown near Nagasaki; it was known in Bungo (the Portuguese settlement) from the beginning and in Sasuma’—a district noted to this day for the superior quality of its tobacco. A further note on the subject occurs two years later, 1607, and is to the effect that, ‘of late a thing has come into fashion called tabako; it is said to have originated out of the Nanban, and consists of large leaves which are cut up, and of which one drinks the smoke.’ In the same record incidental allusion is made to the supposed medicinal properties of the Indian weed, a notion derived from the natives of America and propagated in Europe with much insistence by Jean Nicot. The writer is never weary of chronicling the fact that, ‘a thing has been coming out of the Nanban called tabako, with which all classes of Japanese regale themselves. It is said to be a cure for all diseases; but, notwithstanding this, some people have got sick through drinking the smoke. Now, since no medical work contains directions for the treatment of such patients, no medicine for their relief could be offered them.’