Doll and Toy Shops
Entrance to Inari Temple
Views at Fushimi
“Having stayed about two hours, we went to Tonosama’s house, where we were conducted into the innermost and chief apartment, and desired twice to come nearer the lattices on both sides of the room. There were more ladies behind the screens here than, I think, we had as yet met with in any other place. They desired us, very civilly, to show them our clothes, the captain’s arms, rings, tobacco-pipes, and the like, some of which were reached them between or under the lattices. The person that treated us in the absent governor’s name, and the other gentlemen who were then present in the room, entertained us likewise very civilly, and we could not but take notice that everything was so cordial that we made no manner of scruple of making ourselves merry, and diverting the company each with a song. The magnificence of this family appeared fully by the richness and exquisiteness of this entertainment, which was equal to that of the first commissioner’s, but far beyond it in courteous civility and a free, open carriage. After an hour and a half we took our leave. The house of Tonosama is the furthermost to the north or northwest we were to go to, a mile and a half from our inn, but seated in by much the pleasantest part of the town, where there is an agreeable variety of hills and shrubbery. The family of Tubosama (?), the third governor, lives in a small, sorry house near the ditch which encompasses the castle. We met here but a few women behind a screen, who took up with peeping at us through a few holes, which they made as they sat down. The strong liquors, which we had been this day obliged to drink in larger quantities than usual, being by this time got pretty much into our heads, we made haste to return home, and took our leave as soon as we had been treated, after the usual manner, with tea and tobacco.”
Two or three days after followed the audience of leave preparatory to the return to Nagasaki. Of this Kämpfer gives much the fullest account in his narrative of his second visit to Yedo, which we follow here.
Having proceeded to the palace as at the first audience, after half an hour’s stay in the waiting-room, the “Captain Hollanda” was called in before the councillors of state, who directed one of the commissioners to read the usual orders to him, five in number, chiefly to the effect that the Dutch should not molest any of the boats or ships of the Chinese or the Lew Chewans trading to Japan, nor bring in any Portuguese or priests.
These orders being read, the director was presented with thirty gowns, laid on three of the Japanese wooden stands or salvers, which he crept upon all fours to receive, and in token of respect held one of the gowns over his head.
This ceremony over, the Dutch were invited to stay to dinner, which was served up in another room. Before each was placed a small table or salver, on which lay five fresh, hot, white cakes, as tough as glue, and two hollow cakes of two spans in circumference, made of flour and sprinkled with sesamum seeds. A small porcelain cup contained some bits of pickled salmon in a brown sauce, by the side of which lay two wooden chopsticks. Tea also was served up, but in “poor and sorry” brown dishes, and the tea itself proved to be little better than hot water. Fortunately the Dutch, seldom caught napping upon that point, had provided themselves, before leaving home in the morning, with “a good substantial breakfast”; and, besides, they had been treated in the guard-room with fresh manjū, and with sweet brown cakes of sugar and bean flour.
While they were eating this dinner, “so far from answering to the majesty and magnificence of so powerful a monarch, that a worse one could not have been had at any private man’s house,” several young noblemen busied themselves in examining their hats, coats, dress, etc. Dinner over, after half an hour in the waiting-room, they were conducted, through passages and galleries which they did not remember to have seen before, to the hall of audience, which, by a change in the position of some of the screens, presented quite a new appearance. They were put in the very same uncarpeted spot as at their first audience, and were again called upon, as then, to answer questions, dance, sing songs, and exhibit themselves. Among the persons called in were two physicians, with whom Kämpfer had some professional conversation; also several shaven priests, one of whom had an ulcer on his shin, as to which Kämpfer’s opinion was asked. As it was a fresh sore, and the inflammation about it slight, he judged it to be of no great consequence. At the same time he advised the patient not to be too familiar with sake, pretending to guess by his wound, what was obvious enough from his red face and nose, that he was given to drinking,—a shrewd piece of professional stratagem, which occasioned much laughter at the patient’s expense.