[45] See note on page 84.
[46] For a particular description of the dress of Japanese, see Chap. XLI.
[47] His reception of the Japanese and his reformation of the calendar are both recorded together in his epitaph.
[48] The Letters, Briefs, and the Discourse on Obedience, above quoted, may be found at length in Latin, in the very valuable and rich collection, De Rebus Japonicis Indicis and Peruvianis Epistolæ Recentiores, edited by John Hay, of Dalgetty, a Scotch Jesuit, and a sharp controversialist, published in 1605; in Spanish, in Father Luys de Gusman’s Historia de los Missiones, que han hecho los Religioses de la Compania de Jesus, etc., published in 1601, of which the larger part is devoted to the Japanese mission; in Italian, in Father Daniel Batoli’s “Historia de la Compagnia de Gesu”; and in French, in Charlevoix’s “Histoire du Japon.” An Italian history of the mission was printed at Rome, 1585,—the same, I suppose, of which a Latin translation is given in Hay’s collection; and still rarer and more valuable one at Macao, in 1590, of which a further account will be found in a note at the end of the next chapter.
[49] The princes and nobles of Japan, and indeed most private individuals, have certain devices embroidered on their gowns, etc., which the Portuguese and the missionaries compared to the armorial bearings of Europe. [See paper on “Japanese Heraldry” in vol. v of the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.—Edr.]
[50] During this residence at Macao the Japanese ambassadors were not idle. They were engaged upon a very remarkable work, printed at Macao in 1590 in Japanese and Latin, purporting to be composed by the ambassadors, and giving, by way of dialogue, an account not only of the embassy, but of Japan and of all the countries, European and Oriental, which they had visited. The Latin title is De Missione Legatorum Japonensium ad Romanam curiam, rebusque in Europa ac toto in itinere animadversis, Dialogus, etc.—“A Dialogue concerning the Japanese Embassy to the Court of Rome, and the things observed in Europe and on the whole journey, collected from the journal of the ambassadors, and rendered into Latin by Ed. de Laude, priest of the Society of Jesus.” It is from this work, though he does not give the title of it, that Hackluyt extracted the “Excellent Treatise of the Kingdom of China and of the Estate and Government thereof,” contained in his second volume, and of which he speaks in his epistle dedicatory to that volume, first published in 1599, as “the most exact account of those parts that is yet come to light.” “It was printed,” he tells us, “in Latin, in Makoa, a city of China, in China paper, in the year 1590, and was intercepted in the great carac Madre de Dios, two years after, enclosed in a case of sweet cedar wood, and lapped up almost a hundred fold in fine Calicut cloth, as though it had been some incomparable jewel.”
[51] This letter, with the reply in the next chapter, is given by Froez, from whom Gusman has copied them.
[52] Letters from the ambassadors to Sixtus V, written at Nagasaki after their arrival there, and giving an account of their voyage home, may be found in Hay’s collection.
[53] Valignani was not the first European to obtain an imperial audience. The same favor had been granted, as already mentioned, by Yoshiteru to Father Vilela in 1559. Louis Froez had also been admitted, in 1565, to an audience of the same emperor, of which he has given a short but interesting account.
[54] See Satow’s paper on “The Origin of Spanish and Portuguese Rivalry in Japan,” in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.—Edr.