The Dutch now had an interpreter; but, what with religious and what with national antipathies, little was to be hoped from a Jesuit and a Portuguese. In fact, the Portuguese accused them of being pirates, and two of their own company, in hopes to get control of the cargo, turned traitors, and plotted with the Portuguese. After nine days the emperor [Iyeyasu] sent five galleys, in which Adams, attended by one of the sailors, was conveyed to Ōsaka, distant about eighty leagues. Here he found the emperor, “in a wonderful costly house, gilded with gold in abundance,” who, in several interviews, treated him with great kindness, and was very inquisitive as to his country and the cause of his coming. Adams replied that the English were a people who had long sought out the East Indies, desiring friendship, in the way of trade, with all kings and potentates, and having in their country divers commodities which might be exchanged to mutual advantage. The emperor then inquired if the people of Adams’ country had no wars. He answered that they had with the Spanish and Portuguese, but were at peace with all other nations. He also inquired as to Adams’ religious opinions, and the way in which he got to Japan; but when Adams, by way of answer, exhibited a chart of the world, and pointed out the passage through the Straits of Magellan, he showed plain signs of incredulity.
Notwithstanding this friendly reception, Adams was ordered back to prison, where he was kept for nine-and-thirty days, expecting, though well treated, to be crucified, which he learned was the customary mode of execution in that country.
In fact, as he afterwards discovered, the Portuguese were employing this interval in poisoning the minds of the natives against these new-comers, whom they represented as thieves and common sea-robbers, whom it was necessary to put to death to prevent any more of their freebooting countrymen from coming, to the ruin of the Japanese trade. But at length the emperor gave this answer: that, as these strangers had as yet done no damage to him nor to any of his people, it would be against reason and justice to put them to death; and, sending again for Adams, after another long conversation and numerous inquiries, he set him at liberty, and gave him leave to visit the ship and his companions, of whom, in the interval, he had heard nothing. He found them close by, the ship having in the interval been brought to Sakai, within seven or eight miles of Ōsaka. The men had suffered nothing, but the ship had been completely stripped, her whole company being thus left with only the clothes on their backs. The emperor, indeed, ordered restitution; but the plundered articles were so dispersed and concealed that nothing could be recovered, except fifty thousand rials in silver (five thousand dollars), which had formed a part of the cargo, and which was given up to the officers as a fund for their support and that of the men. Afterward the ship was taken still eastward to a port near Yedo. All means were used to get her clear, with leave to depart, in which suit a considerable part of the money was spent; till, at the end of two years, the men refusing any longer to obey Adams and the master, the remaining money was, “for quietness’ sake,” divided, and each was left to shift for himself. The emperor, however, added an allowance to each man of two pounds of rice a day, besides an annual pension in money amounting to about twenty-four dollars. In Adams’ case this pension was afterward raised to one hundred and forty dollars, as a reward for having built two ships for the emperor on the European model. Adams’ knowledge of mathematics also proved serviceable to him, and he was soon in such favor as to be able, according to his own account, to return good for evil to several of his former maligners. The emperor acknowledged his services, and endeavored to content him by giving him “a living like unto a lordship in England, with eighty or ninety husbandmen as his servants and slaves”; but he still pined for home, and importuned for leave to depart, desiring, as he says, “to see his poor wife and children, according to conscience and nature.” This suit he again renewed, upon hearing from some Japanese traders that Dutch merchants had established themselves at Acheen in Sumatra, and Patania on the east coast of Malacca. He promised to bring both the Dutch and English to trade in Japan; but all he could obtain was leave for the Dutch captain and another Dutchman to depart. This they presently did, for Patania, in a Japanese junk, furnished by the king or prince of Hirado, whence they proceeded to Jor, at the southern end of the peninsula of Malacca, where they found a Dutch fleet of nine sail. In this fleet the Dutch captain obtained an appointment as master, but was soon after killed in a sea-fight with the Portuguese, with whom the Dutch were, by this time, vigorously and successfully contending for the mastership of the eastern seas.[68]
CHAPTER XXI
Spanish Friars in Japan—Extension of Japanese Trade—Progress of the Dutch in the Eastern Seas—They open a Trade with Japan—Emperor’s Letter—Shipwreck of Don Rodrigo de Vivero on the Japanese Coast—His Reception, Observations, and Departure—Destruction of a Portuguese Carac by the Japanese—Another Dutch Ship arrives—Spex’s Charter—Embassies from Macao and New Spain—Father Louis Sotelo and his Projects—A. D. 1607-1618.
The Dutch and English, though they had not yet reached Japan, were already, especially the Dutch, making great progress in the Indian seas; but it was not by them alone that the Portuguese monopoly of Japanese commerce and Japanese conversion was threatened.
Taking advantage of the bull of Clement VII, already referred to, a multitude of Spanish friars from Manila poured into Japan, whose first and chief business it was, according to the Jesuit letter-writers and historians, to declaim with vehemence against the conduct of the fathers of the company, whom they represented as altogether too circumspect, reserved, and timid in the publication of the gospel. The fanaticism of these Spanish friars was excessive, in illustration of which the Jesuit historians relate, with malicious satisfaction, the following story: One of them, in a dispute with one of the shipwrecked Hollanders of Adams’ company (perhaps with Adams himself), to sustain the authority of the Catholic church, appealed to its miraculous power, and when this obstinate Dutch heretic questioned the reality of any such power, and challenged an exhibition of it, the fanatical missionary undertook to convince him by walking himself on the sea. A day was appointed for the miracle. The Spaniard prepared himself by confession, prayer, and fasting. A crowd of Japanese assembled to see it, and the friar, after a confident exhortation to the multitude, stepped, crucifix in hand, into the water, certain of being buoyed up by faith and providence. But he was soon floundering over his head, and was only saved from drowning by some boats sent to his assistance; nor did this experiment add much either to the faith of the Dutchman or to the docility of the Japanese. About this same time, also, the institution of parish priests was introduced; but this, like the admission of friars, led only to new disputes and collisions.
The merchants of Manila, no less than the monks, still looked with longing eyes in the direction of Japan, anxious to share in its commerce; and Don Rodrigo de Vivero, upon his accession to that government, by way of conciliation discharged from confinement and sent home some two hundred Japanese, whom he found imprisoned there, either by way of retaliation for the confiscation of the “San Philip” and the execution of the Spanish missionaries, or for some other cause.
Besides these European rivals, a dangerous competition in the way of trade seems to have been threatened on the part of the Japanese themselves, who appear to have been much more adventurous at this time, whether in point of navigation or the visiting of foreign countries, than the present jealous policy of their government permits. Japanese vessels frequented Manila for the purchase of rich China silks, which formed the chief article of export from Macao to Japan, the policy of China and the relations of Japan towards her not allowing a direct trade. Japanese vessels appeared even in the Pacific Spanish-American ports. It is to this period that the Japanese ascribe the conquest by the king of Satsuma of the Lew Chew Islands; and Macao, Siam, and Annam are enumerated, on Japanese authority, as additional places to which Japanese vessels traded.[69]
The Portuguese seem, on the other hand, to have had little left of that courage and spirit by which their forefathers of the preceding century had been so distinguished. The Dutch cruisers in the East Indies proved a great annoyance to them. In 1603 they blockaded Goa, and the same year Hemkirk took the carac of Macao, a prize of fourteen hundred tons, and valued, with her cargo, at several millions of florins. When the Dutch, under Matelief, attacked Malacca, in 1606, the Portuguese were greatly indebted to a small body of Japanese, who formed a part of the garrison, for their success in repelling the assault. On the other hand, in 1608 a large number of Japanese, obliged to winter at Macao, got into collision with the Portuguese authorities of that city, who suspected them of a design to seize the place, and who, in consequence, put a number of them to death. During this and the two preceding years the annual Portuguese carac had been prevented from sailing from Macao by fear of Dutch cruisers; and, with the effect of this interruption of intercourse and of the bad feeling produced by the collision at Macao, still other circumstances coöperated to endanger the Portuguese ascendency.