He estimated Suruga to contain from five to six hundred thousand inhabitants. The climate was more agreeable than that of Yedo, but the city not so handsome. As at Yedo, a convenient residence was provided for him, which the crowd besieged as they had done there. The emperor sent a secretary to compliment him on his arrival, with a present of rich dresses, and in about a week he had his presentation. He was conveyed in an elegant litter to the palace, which was a fortress like that at Yedo. On the whole, there was less display than at the prince’s court, but more marks of power and fear. The interview with the emperor is thus described: “I followed the minister, who conducted me into the presence of the sovereign, whom I saluted. He was in a kind of square box, not very large, but astonishingly rich. It was placed two steps above the floor, and surrounded at four paces’ distance by a gold lattice-work, six feet high, in which were small doors, by which the emperor’s attendants went in and out, as they were called from the crowd, prostrate on their hands and knees around the lattice.[72] The monarch was encircled by nearly twenty grandees, ministers or principal courtiers, in long silk mantles, and trousers of the same material, so long that they entirely concealed the feet. The emperor was seated on a kind of stool, of blue satin, worked with stars and half-moons of silver. In his girdle he wore a sword, and had his hair tied up with ribbons of different colors, but had no other head-dress. His age appeared to be about sixty.[73] He was of the middle stature, and of a very full person. His countenance was venerable and gracious; his complexion not near so brown as that of the prince.”
As if to magnify the emperor, Don Rodrigo was detained during the introduction of a Tono of high rank, who brought presents in gold, silver, and silk, worth twenty thousand ducats. At a hundred paces from the throne he prostrated himself with his face to the floor, and remained in this posture for several minutes in perfect silence, neither the emperor nor either of the ministers vouchsafing a word. He then retired with his suite, consisting of three thousand persons. After other exhibitions of the same sort, Don Rodrigo, having been directed to make what requests he would, was conducted by two ministers to a third apartment, whence other great officers escorted him out of the palace with all ceremony.
Afterwards he was entertained by Kōzukedono, the prime minister, at a magnificent collation, the host pledging his health in exquisite Japanese wine [sake?] by placing the glass upon his head.[74] The Spaniard presented at this time a memorandum of his requests translated into Japanese. They were three: first, that the royal protection might be granted to Christian priests of different orders who then resided in the empire, and that they might not be molested in the free use and disposal of their houses and churches; secondly, that amity might continue between the emperor and the king of Spain; and, lastly, that, as an evidence of that friendship, the emperor would not permit the Dutch (whose arrival has already been mentioned) to reside in his territories, but would drive them out—since, besides being enemies of Spain, they were little better than pirates and sea-rovers.
The minister, the next day, after another collation, reported the emperor’s answer, who had remarked, with admiration, that Don Rodrigo, though destitute, had asked nothing for himself, but had regarded only the interests of his religion and his king. The two first requests were granted. As to the expulsion of the Hollanders, that, the emperor said, “will be difficult this year, as they have my royal word for permission to sojourn in Japan; but I am obliged to Don Rodrigo for letting me know what characters they are.” The emperor offered the shipwrecked Spaniard one of the ships of European model, which the pilot Adams had built for him, in which to proceed to New Spain; and he begged him to request King Philip to send to Japan fifty miners, as he understood those of New Spain to be very skilful, whereas those of Japan did not obtain from the ore half the silver it was capable of yielding.
Don Rodrigo soon after set out for Shimo, where he was to take ship. From Suruga to Miyako, estimated at one hundred leagues, the country was mostly level and very fertile. Several considerable rivers were crossed in large ferry-boats by means of a cable stretched from bank to bank. Provisions were very cheap. His idea of the population of the country grew more and more exaggerated. He insists that he did not pass a town of less population than one hundred and fifty thousand; and Miyako, which he considers the largest city in the world, he sets down at one million five hundred thousand.[75] Situated upon a highly cultivated plain, its walls were ten leagues in circuit, as Don Rodrigo ascertained by riding round them on horseback. It took him an entire day. He enters into a number of details about the Dairi and his court. He was powerless, and lived in splendid poverty. The court of the governor of Miyako, who had six vice-governors under him, was scarcely less splendid than that of the emperor. He told Don Rodrigo that this city contained five thousand temples and more than fifty thousand public women. He showed him a temple, the largest building he had seen in Japan, containing statues of all the gods, and another in which was an immense bronze statue, the size of which filled him with astonishment. “I ordered,” he says, “one of my people to measure the thumb of the right hand; but, although he was a person of the ordinary size, he could not quite encircle it with both arms. But the size of the statue is not its only merit; the feet, hands, mouth, eyes, forehead, and other features are as perfect and expressive as the most accomplished painter could make a portrait. When I first visited this temple it was unfinished; more than one hundred thousand men were daily employed upon it. The devil could not suggest to the emperor a surer expedient to get rid of this immense wealth.”[76]
The temple and tomb of Taikō-Sama, raised since his death to the rank of the gods, is thus described by Rodrigo, who deplores the dedication of such an edifice to one whose “soul is in hell for all eternity.” The entrance was by an avenue paved with jasper four hundred feet by three hundred. On each side, at equal distances, were posts of jasper, on which were placed lamps lighted at night. At the end of this passage was the peristyle of the temple, ascended by several steps, and having on the right a monastery of priests. The principal gate was encrusted with jasper and overlaid with gold and silver ornaments skilfully wrought. The nave of the temple was supported by lofty columns. There was a choir, as in European cathedrals, with seats and a grating all round. Male and female choristers chanted the prayers, much as in Catholic churches, and the surplices put Rodrigo in mind of the prebends of Toledo. The church was filled with silent devotees. Four of the priests accosted him, and seem to have put him to great uneasiness by conducting him to the altar of their “infamous relics,” surrounded with an infinite number of lamps. After raising five or six curtains, covering as many gratings, first of iron, then of silver, and the last one of gold, a kind of chest was exposed, in which were contained the ashes of Taikō-Sama. Within this enclosure none but the chief priests could enter. All the Japanese prostrated themselves.
Hastening to quit “this accursed spot,” Rodrigo was accompanied by the priests to their gardens, exceeding, he says, those of Aranjuez.
Of the religion of Japan he makes the following observation: “The Japanese, like us, use holy, or rather unholy, water, and chaplets consecrated to their false gods, Shaka [Buddha] and Nido [Amida], which are not the only ones that they worship, for there are no less than thirty-five different sects or religions in Japan. Some deny the immortality of the soul, others adore divers gods, and others yet the elements. All are tolerated. The bonzes of all the sects having concurred in a request to the emperor that he would expel our monks, the prince, troubled with their importunities, inquired how many different religions there were in Japan. ‘Thirty-five,’was the reply. ‘Well,’said he, ‘where thirty-five sects can be tolerated, we can easily bear with thirty-six;—leave the strangers in peace.’” He estimates the Christians at three hundred thousand,—a much more probable number than the eighteen hundred thousand at which they were reckoned by the missionaries,[77] whose reckoning was the same now that it had been ten years before.
From Miyako Don Rodrigo proceeded to Fushimi, adjoining, where he embarked for Ōsaka, ten leagues down a river, as large as the Guadalquivir at Seville, and full of vessels. Ōsaka, built close to the sea, he reckons to contain one million inhabitants. Here he embarked in a junk for Nagasaki. Not finding his vessel in proper repair, he accepted an invitation from the emperor to return to Suruga, where he renewed his endeavors to persuade that prince to expel the Dutch, but without effect. At last, with presents and despatches for the king of Spain, he set sail August 1, 1610, after a stay in Japan of nearly two years.[78]
Meanwhile an event occurred of which Rodrigo makes no mention, but for which the Portuguese were inclined to hold him responsible, no less than the Dutch. The annual carac from Macao had arrived, as we have seen, in the autumn of 1609, after an interval of three years, commanded, as it happened, by the very same person who had been chief magistrate there on occasion of the late seizure and execution of certain Japanese. The emperor, strengthened, as it was thought, by the expectation of Dutch and Spanish trade, encouraged the prince of Arima to revenge the death of his subjects who had perished at Macao; and when the carac was ready to sail on her return voyage she was attacked by a fleet of Japanese boats. They were two or three times repulsed, but, taking the carac at a disadvantage, becalmed and drifted into a narrow passage, they succeeded in setting her on fire, and in destroying her with all her crew.