[55] We regret that the original of this letter has been lost, and we cannot, therefore, compare the translation with the original. But, at any rate, the date here given is erroneous. Valignani’s departure from Japan being in 1592, as is mentioned at the end of the next chapter, this letter must have been written in 1592 (first year of Bunroku).—K. M.
[56] The number of troops here set down is too small.—K. M.
[57] According to the letters of Louis Froez, the prince of Ōmura joined the army against Corea with one thousand men, the king of Arima with two thousand, and the king of Bungo with ten thousand, besides mariners and mean people to carry the baggage. The entire number of men-at-arms in the empire, at this time, is stated to have been, by a written catalogue, three hundred thousand. The victories mentioned in the text were gained by an advanced body of fifteen thousand men. The Coreans are described by Froez as different from the Chinese in race and language, and superior to them in personal prowess, yet as in a manner tributary to China, whose laws, customs, and arts they had borrowed. They are represented as good bowmen, but scantily provided with other weapons, and therefore not able to encounter the cannon, lances, and swords of the Japanese, who had been, beside, practised by continual wars among themselves. But in nautical affairs Froez reckons the Chinese and Coreans as decidedly superior to the Japanese. Translations from several Jesuit letters relating to the Corean war will be found in Hackluyt, vol. iv, near the end. Siebold, relying upon Japanese authorities, insists that it was through Corea that the arts, knowledge, language, and written characters of China were introduced into Japan.
[58] See Aston’s papers on “Hideyoshi’s Invasion of Korea,” in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.—Edr.
[59] Yet Taikō-Sama was not in general cruel. A curious letter of Father Organtino Brixiano, written in 1594, enumerates, among the reasons of Taikō’s great success, his clemency to the conquered princes, whom he never put to death after having once promised them their lives, and to whom he granted a revenue, small, but sufficient to maintain them, and which served to keep them quiet. Another reason was his having established for his soldiers during war a commissariat, of which he paid the expense, by which they were rendered much more efficient. He also kept them employed, for, besides the army maintained in Corea, he set them to work in building or repairing palaces and fortresses, or in other public works. At this time he had thirty thousand men at work upon one castle near Miyako, one hundred thousand at Fushimi. He also broke the power of the princes by transferring them to distant parts, while he inspired general respect by his strict justice, from which he was swerved by no considerations of relationship, family, or influence, secular or religious. Another reason mentioned by the missionary does not correspond so well with Taikō’s letter to the viceroy of Goa. He is said not only to have disarmed the country people, by whose strength and wealth the petty kingdoms had been sustained, but also to have reduced them to extreme poverty; but this, perhaps, applies rather to the petty lords than to the actual cultivators. This letter is in Hay’s collection, and a part of it, in English, may be found in Hackluyt’s fourth volume.
[Dening’s “New Life of Toyotomi Hideyoshi” is the best work dealing with the career of “the Napoleon of Japan.”—Edr.]
[60] Some curious information respecting the Philippines is contained in a letter dated Mexico, 1590, intercepted on its way to Spain by some English cruiser, and translated and published by Hackluyt in his fourth volume. This letter represents the country as very unhealthy “for us Spaniards,” of whom not more than one thousand were left alive out of fourteen thousand who had gone there in the twenty years preceding. It seems, too, that the Spaniards at Manila, not less than the Portuguese at Macao, had succeeded in opening a trade with China. “There is a place in China, which is an harbor called Macaran, which the king has given to the Spaniards freely; which shall be the place where the ships shall come to traffic. For in this harbor there is a great river, which goeth up into the main land, unto divers towns and cities, which are near to this river.” Where was this Spanish Chinese port?
The annual galleons to New Spain were to Manila what the annual carac to Japan was to Macao,—a main support of the place. The privilege of putting a certain amount of goods on board was distributed among all the resident merchants, offices, and public institutions.
[61] That any Japanese had been in America earlier than 1610 A. D. is not to be found in any Japanese sources.—K. M.
[62] The fathers resident at this college had been by no means idle. They had printed there, in 1593, a Japanese grammar, prepared by Father Alvarez, and, in 1595, in a thick quarto of upwards of nine hundred pages, a Portuguese, Latin, and Japanese Lexicon. A vocabulary entirely Japanese was printed at Nagasaki, 1598.