“Although the day was already far advanced, and we had had sufficient time to digest our early breakfast, we were nevertheless obliged to pay visits to all the privy councillors, as well to the six ordinary as to the six extraordinary, at each of their respective houses. And as these gentlemen were not yet returned from court, we were received in the most polite manner by their deputies, and exhibited to the view of their ladies and children. Each visit lasted half an hour; and we were for the most part so placed in a large room that we could be viewed on all sides through thin curtains, without having the good fortune to get a sight of these court beauties, excepting at one place, where they made so free as not only to take away the curtain, but also desired us to advance nearer. In general we were received by two gentlemen in office, and at every place treated with green tea, the apparatus for smoking, and pastry, which was set before each of us, separately, on small tables. We drank sometimes a cup of the boiled tea, but did not touch the tobacco, and the pastry was taken home through the prudent care of our interpreters.
“I shall never forget the delightful prospect we had during these visits, from an eminence that commanded a view of the whole of this large and extensive town, which the Japanese affirm to be twenty-one leagues, or as many hours’ walk, in circumference. The evening drew nigh by the time that we returned, weary and worn out, to our inn.
“On the following day (May 19) we paid our respects to the temple lords, as they are called, the two governors of the town, and the two commissaries of strangers. A few days elapsed after this before we received our audience of leave. This was given, in a very summary manner, on the 23d following, and only before the lords in council appointed for this purpose. The intervening days were employed in receiving presents and preparing for our departure. At the audience of leave the gowns or Japanese dresses, intended as presents for the Dutch East India Company, were delivered. The presents destined for us were carried to our inns. Every ordinary privy councillor gives, the day after the audience of leave, ten gowns; every extraordinary privy councillor, six; every temple lord, five; and every commissary, and the governor of Nagasaki, two. Of these our banjoshu (the officers called by Kämpfer bugiō and deputy-bugiō,—the conductors of the journey) received two; the secretary and myself, two apiece; and the ambassador, four. The rest are packed up for the company’s account.”[61]
Of these gowns, the universal and almost only article of Japanese dress[62], Thunberg, in another place, gives the following account: “They are long and wide, and worn, one or more of them, by people of every age and condition in life. The rich have them of the finest silk, and the poor of cotton. The women wear them reaching down to their feet, and the women of quality frequently with a train. Those of the men come down to their heels; but travellers, together with soldiers and laboring people, either tuck them up or wear them so short that they only reach to their knees. The men generally have them made of plain silk of one color; but the silken stuffs worn by the women are flowered, sometimes in gold. In the summer they are either without any lining at all, or else with a thin lining only. In winter, by way of defence against the cold weather, they are quilted with cotton or silk wad. The men seldom wear many of them, but the women often from thirty to fifty or more, and all so thin that together they hardly weigh more than four or five pounds. The undermost serves for a shirt, and is therefore either white or bluish, and for the most part thin and transparent. All these gowns are fastened about the waist by a belt, which for the men is about the breadth of a hand, and for the women of twelve inches, and of such length as to go twice round the body, with a large knot and rose. The knot worn by the fair sex, which is larger than that worn by the men, shows immediately whether the woman is married or not; as the married women wear the knot before, and the single behind. The men fasten to this belt their sabres,[63] fan, tobacco pipe and pouch. The gowns are rounded off about the neck, without a cape, open before, and show the bare bosom, which is never covered, either with a handkerchief or anything else. The sleeves are ill-shaped, wide and long, the openings partly sewed up, so as to form a bag, into which they put their hands in cold weather, or use it as a pocket to hold their papers and other things.[64] Young girls, in particular, have the sleeves of their gowns so long as frequently to reach quite down to the ground. On account of the width of their garments, they are soon dressed and undressed, as they have nothing more to do than to untie their girdle and draw in their arms when the whole of their dress instantly falls off of itself. The gowns serve also for bedclothes. The common people, when at work, are frequently seen naked, with only a girdle about them, or with their gowns taken off the upper part of their bodies, and hanging down loose from their girdles. Men of a higher rank wear over the long gowns a shorter one, made of some thin stuff, such as gauze. As to the neck and sleeves of it, they are like those of the other, but it reaches only to the waist, and is not fastened with a girdle, but tied before and at the top with a string. This half-gown is sometimes of a yellow, but most frequently of a black color, and is laid aside at home, or in any place where no superior is present.”
As the Japanese ordinarily wear no covering for the legs, feet, or head, the above-described gowns constitute their entire dress, except upon occasions of ceremony, when a complimentary dress, or honor-gown, kamishimo as they call it, is added to it. This complimentary dress consists of a frock, generally of a blue stuff, with white flowers about half the length of the gown, and made much in the same way, but carried on each side back over the shoulders, so as to give a very broad-shouldered appearance to the wearer. To this, with persons of a certain rank, is added, as part of the dress of ceremony, a garment half breeches, half petticoat, as if it were a petticoat sewed up between the legs, but left open at the sides for two thirds their length, fastened about the waist by a band, and reaching to the ankles.
Before leaving Yedo, Thunberg purchased a number of botanical books, containing very indifferent figures of plants, as did another botanical work, in twenty thin octavo volumes, presented to him by one of his medical pupils. But a large printed[65] quarto, which he purchased, contained figures of Japanese fishes, engraved and colored in such superior style as to be able to compete with similar European works. He also procured, though the selling such things to strangers was strictly prohibited, a map of Japan, with plans of Yedo, Miyako, and Nagasaki, exactly like those brought away by Kämpfer, and engraved in his work. Just before his departure, at the request of his two pupils in medicine, he gave them a certificate in Dutch, of their proficiency, with which they were as highly delighted as ever a young doctor was with his diploma. A warm friendship had sprang up between him and them, and, even after Thunberg’s return to Europe, a correspondence was kept up and presents exchanged for some years, down at least to the publication of his travels.
According to Thunberg, the personages composing the imperial court were in his time so little known that very few people in the whole empire were acquainted with their names. M. Feith, the director whom he accompanied to Yedo, and who had been on the same embassy four times before, and had lived in Japan fourteen years, was obliged to confess at table, after their return to Batavia, being inquired of as to the name of the reigning emperor, that he did not know it, and never had heard it.[66] It was only through the friendship of his medical pupils at Yedo, and of the chief interpreter, that he obtained a knowledge of it, and also a list of the emperors since Kämpfer’s time, which he gives as follows:
1681, Tsunayoshi (reigning when Kämpfer left Japan, and for twelve or thirteen years previously).
1709, Iyenobu.
1713, Iyetsugu.