While waiting for Adams, who presently arrived, after being seventeen days on his way, a house on shore for a factory was hired, furnished with mats, according to the custom of the country, for a rent of about ninety-five dollars for six months. Not long after, leaving Mr. Richard Cocks in charge of the factory and the trade, Captain Saris set out on a visit to the emperor, attended by Adams and seventeen persons of his own company, including several mercantile gentlemen, a tailor, a cook, the surgeon’s mate, the Japanese interpreter, the coxswain, and one sailor. He was liberally furnished by old King Hōin with a conductor for the journey, a large galley, of twenty-five oars a side, manned with sixty men, and also with a hundred taels in Japanese money (equal to one hundred and twenty-five dollars), to pay his expenses, which, however, Captain Saris directed Cocks to place to King Hōin’s credit as so much money lent.
The galley being handsomely fitted up with waist-cloths and ensigns, they coasted along the western and northern shores of the great island of Shimo (or Kiūshiū), off the northwest coast of which the small island of Hirado lay. As they coasted along, they passed a number of handsome towns. Hakata, distant two days’ rowing from Hirado, had a very strong castle of freestone, with a wide and deep ditch and drawbridge, kept in good repair, but without cannon or garrison. Here, finding the current too strong, they stopped to dine. The town seemed as large as London within the walls, very well built, with straight streets. As they landed, they had experience, repeated almost wherever they went, of that antipathy to foreigners, so characteristic a trait of the country; for the boys, children, and worser sort of idle people, would gather about them, crying out Coré, Coré, Cocoré, Waré[87], taunting them by these words as Coreans with false hearts, whooping, hallowing, and making such a noise, that the English could hardly hear each other speak, and even in some places throwing stones at them—all which went on without any interference on the part of the public officers. In general, however, the police was very strict, and punishments very prompt and bloody. Saris saw several executions in the streets, after which, every passer-by was allowed to try his sword on the dead bodies, which thus are chopped into small pieces, and left for the birds of prey to devour. All along the coast they noticed many families living in boats upon the water, as in Holland, the women being very expert fishers, not only with lines and nets, but by diving, which gave them, however, blood-shot eyes.
Coasting through the Strait of Shimonoseki, and the channel which separates Nippon from the two more southern islands, on the twentieth day after leaving Hirado they reached the entrance of a river, a short distance up which lay the town of Ōsaka, which, however, they could only reach in a small boat. This town, which seemed as large as Hakata, had many handsome timber bridges across a river as wide as the Thames at London. It had, also, a great and very strong castle of freestone, in which, as they were told, the son of the late emperor, left an infant at his father’s decease, was kept a close prisoner. Some nine miles from Ōsaka, on the other side of the river, lay the town of Sakai, not so large, but accessible to ships, and a place of great trade.
Leaving their galley at Ōsaka, Captain Saris and his company passed in boats up a river or canal, one day’s journey, to Fushimi, where they found a garrison of three thousand soldiers, maintained by the emperor to keep in subjection Ōsaka and the still larger neighboring city of Miyako [Kyōto]. The garrison being changed at that time, the old troops marching out, and new ones marching in, a good opportunity was afforded to see their array. They were armed with a species of fire-arms, pikes, swords, and targets, bows and arrows, and wakizashi, described as like a Welsh hook. They marched five abreast, with an officer to every ten files, without colors or musical instruments, in regiments of from a hundred and fifty to five hundred men, of which one followed the other at the distance of a league or two, and were met for two or three days on the road. Captain Saris was very favorably impressed with the discipline and martial bearing of these troops. The captain-general, whom they met in the rear, marched in very great state, hunting and hawking all the way, the hawks being managed exactly after the European fashion. The horses were of middle size, small-headed, and very full of mettle.
At Fushimi, Captain Saris and his company quitted their bark, and were furnished each man with a horse to travel overland to Suruga, where the emperor held his court. For Captain Saris a palanquin was also provided, with bearers to carry it, two at a time, six in number where the way was level, but increased to ten when it became hilly. A spare horse was led beside the palanquin for him to ride when he pleased, and, according to the custom of the country with persons of importance, a slave was appointed to run before him, bearing a pike.
Thus they travelled, at the rate of some forty-five miles a day, over a highway for the most part very level, but in some places cut through mountains; the distances being marked, in divisions of about three miles, by two little hillocks on each side of the way, planted at the top with a fair pine-tree, “trimmed round in fashion of an arbor.” This road, which was full of travellers, led by a succession of farms, country-houses, villages, and great towns. It passed many fresh rivers by ferries, and near many hotoke[88], or temples, situated in groves, “the most pleasantest places for delight in the whole country.”
Every town and village was well furnished with taverns, where meals could be had at a moment’s warning. Here, too, lodgings were obtained, and horses and men for the palanquin were taken up by the director of the journey, like post-horses in England. The general food was observed to be rice. The people ate also fish, wild fowl of various kinds, fresh and salted, and various picked herbs and roots. They ploughed with horses and oxen, as in Europe, and raised good red wheat. Besides sake, made from rice, they drank with their food warm water[89].
The entrance of the travellers into Suruga, where the emperor held his court, and which they reached on the seventh day, was not very savory, as they were obliged to pass several crosses, with the dead and decaying bodies of the malefactors still nailed to them. This city they judged to be as large as London with all the suburbs[90]. The handicraftsmen dwelt in the outskirts of the town, so as not to disturb with their pounding and hammering the richer and more leisurely sort.
After a day or two spent in preparations, Saris, accompanied by the merchants and others, went in his palanquin to the palace, bearing his presents, according to the custom of the country, on little tables, or rather salvers, of a sweet-smelling wood. Having entered the castle, he passed three drawbridges, each with its guard, and, ascending a handsome stone staircase, he was met by two grave, comely men, Kōzuke-no-Suke, the emperor’s secretary, and Hyōgo-no-Kami, the admiral, who led him into a matted antechamber. Here they all sat down on the mats, but the two officers soon rose again, and took him into the presence-chamber, to bestow due reverence on the emperor’s empty chair of state. It was about five feet high, the sides and back richly ornamented with cloth of gold, but without any canopy. The presents given in the name of the king, and others by Captain Saris in his own name (as the custom of the country required), were arranged about this room.
After waiting a little while longer in the antechamber, it was announced that the emperor had come, when the officers motioned Saris into the room, but without entering themselves. Approaching the emperor, he presented, with English compliments (on his knee, it may be presumed), the king’s letter, which the emperor took and raised toward his forehead, telling the interpreter to bid them welcome after their wearisome journey, and that in a day or two his answer would be ready. He invited them in the mean time to visit his son, who resided at Yedo.