A new emperor, a minor, having succeeded in 1651, the Dutch Company sent Waganaar to congratulate him. Among other presents he brought a Casuar, a strange bird of the ostrich kind, from Banda, but the officers at Nagasaki would not suffer it to be forwarded. During this visit there happened a terrible fire at Yedo, by which two-thirds of that city were laid in ruins. Some violent disputes having arisen, and the Japanese having gone so far as to take away the rudders of the Dutch ships, Waganaar went on a second embassy to Yedo, in 1659[124].
The establishment of the French East India Company by Colbert led to some projects for a French trade with Japan, especially as Caron in some disgust had quitted the Dutch service, and enlisted into that of France. A letter from Louis XIV to the emperor of Japan, dated in 1666, was prepared, and instructions for Caron, who was to be the bearer of it; but the project does not appear to have been prosecuted[125]. [See Appendix, Note 1.]
In 1673, the English East India Company made an attempt at the renewal of the trade with Japan, by despatching a ship thither. The Japanese, through the medium of the Dutch, kept themselves informed, as they still do, of the affairs of Europe; and the first question put to the new-comers was, how long since the English king (Charles II) had married a daughter of the king of Portugal. Though otherwise courteously enough received and entertained, the vessel was not allowed to sell her cargo. This refusal of intercourse the English ascribed to Dutch jealousy; but it probably was a step, as will be seen in the next chapter, to which the Japanese did not need any urging.[126]
Though the Catholics of Japan were effectually cut off from all intercourse with Europe, the Catholic faith still lingered for a good while in those parts of Shimo in which it had taken the deepest root. So late as 1690, there were, according to Kämpfer, fifty persons, men, women, and children (of whom three had been arrested in 1683), imprisoned at Nagasaki for life, or until they should renounce the Catholic faith and conform to the religious usages of the country. These were peasants who knew little more of the faith which they professed except the name of the Saviour and the Virgin Mary, which, indeed, according to the Dutch accounts, was all that the greater part of the Japanese converts had ever known.
To land in Japan, to strengthen and comfort the faithful there, or at least to secure the crown of martyrdom in the attempt, long continued an attractive enterprise to the more romantic spirits among the religious orders of the Catholic church. Most of those who undertook this adventure were known to have been seized and executed soon after landing. The last effort of this sort appears to have been made in 1707. From that time, and notwithstanding the great revival, within fifty or sixty years past, of the missionary spirit, Japan has remained even less attempted by missionary than by mercantile enterprise.
CHAPTER XXVI
Portuguese Trade to Japan—Dutch Trade—Silver, Gold, and Copper the Chief Articles of Export—Export of Silver prohibited—Chinese Trade—Its Increase after the Accession of the Manchu Dynasty—Chinese Temples at Nagasaki—A Buddhist Doctor from China—Edict on the Subject of Household Worship—Restrictions on the Dutch Trade—Increase in the Number of Chinese Visitors to Nagasaki—Their Objects—Restrictions on the Chinese Trade—The Chinese shut up in a Factory—Trade with Lew Chew [Riūkiū]—A. D. 1542-1690.
Of the real value and extent of the trade which for some ninety years the Portuguese carried on with Japan, and which was brought to a final close in the year 1638, we have no means of forming any very exact estimate. When we read in writers of two or three centuries ago glowing accounts of immense commercial profits, we must also recollect that, compared with the commerce of the present day, the trade upon which these great profits were made was exceedingly limited in amount.
For more than half of the above period of ninety years the intercourse of the Portuguese with Japan seems to have been reduced, or nearly so, to a single annual ship, known as the great carac of Macao, sent annually from that city, and laden chiefly with China silks, every Portuguese citizen of Macao having the right, if he chose to exercise it, of putting on board a certain number of packages, as did also the Society of Jesus, which had a college and a commercial agency in that city. Of this traffic the following account is given by Ralph Fitch, an intelligent Englishman, who was in Malacca in the year 1588[127]: “When the Portuguese go from Macao in China to Japan, they carry much white silk, gold, musk, and porcelains, and they bring from thence nothing but silver. They have a great carac, which goeth thither every year, and she bringeth from thence every year about six hundred thousand crusados (not far from as many dollars); and all this silver of Japan, and two hundred thousand crusados more in silver, which they bring yearly out of India, they employ to their advantage in China; and they bring from thence gold, musk, silk, porcelains, and many other things very costly and gilded.”[128]
If we allow to the Portuguese an annual average export of half a million of dollars, that will make in ninety years forty-five millions of dollars of silver carried away by the Portuguese; for, according to all accounts, they brought away nothing else.