1 Concerning men, their persons, and their clothing
1. Europeans for the most part are tall and well built; the Japanese for the most part are not as tall or robust as we are.
In both Japan and Europe men generally enjoyed more rights and privileges than women.3 Japanese men of the samurai class, in particular, wielded enormous power, so it is not surprising that Frois devoted this first chapter to men, particularly elites.
During the sixteenth century Europeans entertained ancient theories that physical attributes were somehow significant correlates or actual determinants of one’s character and identity. Frois, to his credit, did not apparently put much stock in physiognomy, as he begins this chapter with a handful of distichs that focus on physical attributes (e.g. stature, eyes, nose, skin, hair). More to his credit, he makes no essentialist claims about the Japanese based on the shape of the eye, the size of the nose, hair color, or other physical traits.4 However, this very first distich is revealing in that it shows how bias figures in nearly any comparative project, if only because language is inescapably value-laden. Frois clearly sought to be accurate; note his use not once, but twice, of the qualifier “for the most part.” However, to say that Europeans are “well built” is as much a value judgment as an apparent reference to the robust European body-type. In 1585, life expectancy at birth in Japan was higher than in Europe;5 this continues to be true today. Clearly from the perspective of longevity, the Japanese were and are “well built.”
2. Europeans consider large eyes beautiful; the Japanese think they are horrendous and consider beautiful eyes those that are narrow in the inner corner of the eye [i.e., eyes that are almond-shaped rather than round].
The Japanese until fairly recently considered round eyes beastly; Europeans were said to have eyes like dogs. Japanese consumption of Western popular culture–everything from Mickey Mouse and John Wayne to the Beatles and Bono–has contributed to a Japanese desire for large, round eyes. Indeed, some Japanese have had surgery to double their eyelids, making their eyes appear larger. A glance at Japanese comic books or Pokémon characters (eyes filling half the face to the exclusion of other features) is further suggestive of recent Japanese acceptance of “big is beautiful.”
3. We don’t think it strange to have white eyes; the Japanese consider it monstrous and it is rare among them.
A Japanese boy who has done something wrong will get a scolding or omedama chodai, literally “a gift of eyeballs.” Westerners, by contrast, register displeasure with a frown, compressing the eyes. Okada6 notes that eyes with light irises have larger sclera and these large white surfaces shine coldly and sharply. Apparently this feeling is shared by other Japanese, for “to look coldly upon” or frown upon someone in Japanese is to “stare with white eyes” (shirome-de niramu).
4. Europeans have long and occasionally aquiline noses; the Japanese have short noses with small nostrils.
This contrast should have had the same qualification (for the most part) as distich 1. Historically, some upper class Japanese had high-bridged noses, apparently reflecting their centuries-old ties to Mongolian immigrants, whose noses were every bit as “aristocratic” as those found on ancient Roman sculpture. Although nostrils are less value-laden than bridges, they also are linked to class difference in Japan. A typical drawing of a beastly peasant or a busu (an “ugly” as opposed to a “beauty”) shows big black nostrils where there should be a nose. Japanese from Frois’ time to ours have depicted Caucasians with enormous bird-like beaks (or mountain goblin beaks, from the Japanese perspective), which more often than not have been equated with rapacity.
5. Europeans generally have full beards; the Japanese usually have sparse, scraggly beards.
Full beards were indeed the rage in sixteenth-century Europe.7 Frois’ Jesuit contemporary, Rodrigues, suggested that the Japanese beard was so sparse that one might more appropriately say they don’t have them. Rodrigues at the same time implied that the Japanese were much freer than Europeans with respect to how they wore their beards, “… and in this they are imitated out here in the East by the Portuguese, Spaniards and Moors, who have abandoned the traditional Portuguese style.”8 By the early seventeenth century, coincident with the expulsion and persecution of Europeans, few Japanese had beards and the samurai in particular were entirely smooth-shaven.
6. Europeans take pride and honor in their beards; the Japanese take pride in a little tuft of hair that is bound at the back of their heads.
European men invested considerable time in their beards, which were not only shaped in various ways, but waxed, curled, perfumed, starched, stiffened, dyed, and powdered.9 Men even swore by their beards and criminals such as “fornicators” were punished by having their beards publicly removed with a sharp axe.10
At the time Frois wrote Japanese hair fashion was about to change, with more and more samurai switching from a Chinese-inspired, half-loop ponytail (queue), bound at the back of a shaved forehead (as per Frois), to a topknot folded forward, which stood up freely like a brush and usually was cut short and controlled with wax.11 This chonmage or “bobbed-bent” style became common during the Tokugawa era (1603–1867). On TV “Easterns” or chambara,12 which remain popular in Japan, there is often a dramatic moment when the sword wielding villain’s chonmage is cut off by the “good guy” or victor. Despite an obvious psycho-cultural investment in the top knot, in less than a generation after Perry opened Japan to the West (1854), Japanese men abandoned the top knot in favor of western hair fashion.
7. Among us, men always keep their hair groomed and consider it an affront to have it removed; the Japanese remove their hair with tweezers, enduring pain and tears in the process.
Although European men wore their hair relatively short (i.e. off the shoulders) during much of the sixteenth century, they still made sure it was carefully arranged. Elites often had the heads of their vassals and slaves shorn to symbolize their subordination.13 The Japanese queue and top knot were accentuated by shaving the front of the head, which apparently also entailed removing hair with a tweezers.
8. Among us there are many men and women who have freckles; the Japanese, while fair[-skinned], rarely have freckles.
Europeans initially considered the Japanese “white” or, as Frois here phrased it, fair. Perhaps because the Japanese were, and are, especially anxious about marks on the skin (folklore attributes it to vengeful female ghosts), Japanese women and noblemen traditionally have taken great care to keep their skin soft and white. Even today it is common to see Japanese farmers wearing not only a hat, but underneath it a towel that drapes down both sides of the face. The idea that the Japanese have yellow skin dates to the late nineteenth century. This notion was popularized in the United States during World War II, when American films and propaganda went to extremes to dehumanize the Japanese, who often were pictured and spoken of as “little yellow-bellies.”14
9. Among us it is rare for a man or woman to be pock-marked; among the Japanese it is very common and many lose their sight from the pox.
By 1585, smallpox largely was a disease of childhood in both Europe and Japan.15 It is not clear why the Japanese would have suffered more than Europeans from blindness and pock-marks, common complications of Variola major (the more serious form of the disease). Because the smallpox virus is variable, it is possible that Japan experienced a particularly virulent outbreak of the disease in the 1530s or 1540s, a generation or so before Frois arrived in Japan.
10. Among us it is considered unclean and uncivilized to have long fingernails; Japanese men, as well as noblewomen, wear some [of their] nails like talons.
European elites may not have cultivated long, shovel-like pinky-nails, as among the Mandarin Chinese and Japanese, but they were well manicured nevertheless. To otherwise have the hands of a laborer was incompatible with gentility.16 Long fingernails were not nearly as common among the Japanese as Frois implies. Most Japanese depicted in ukiyo-e prints,17 for instance, have nails cut so short that the meat of the finger-tip is clearly visible. It was mostly priests, nobles and merchants (the last were despised by the samurai, but wealthy enough to do no manual labor) who boasted long fingernails, particularly on one or both pinkies.
11. Among us, facial scars are considered a deformity; the Japanese are proud of their scars, and because the wounds are poorly treated, the scars look even more deformed.
Fencing was part of the curriculum in many secondary schools in Europe and students often stoically received and then proudly displayed facial “smites.” Nevertheless, it would be hard to find a nation more macho than sixteenth-century Japan. This “toughest dudes around” attitude continued throughout the Tokugawa period (1603–1868) and is one reason why Japan never was colonized by the West. Today, one still finds scars at work in popular culture; Japanese sitcoms and comic books frequently show a scarred yakuza or chinpira (a yakuza underling) intimidating people (usually in the subway).
Men’s clothing
1a. We dress the same throughout the four seasons of the year; the Japanese change their dress three times a year: natsu katabira, aki-awase, fuyu kimono.
This is the first and only time in the Tratado that Frois sub-sectioned a chapter, numbering his distichs anew. To avoid confusion, we have given the distichs in this subsection, which continues to the end of the chapter, a letter designation (e.g. 1a, 2a, … 63a). Although Frois implies that the entire subsection concerns clothing, at least a third of the distichs focus on accessories that were a significant part of elite male identity, such as swords and fans (the latter in the Japanese case). Another third pertain to behavior: distichs about spitting, for instance, or sitting or standing in the presence of servants, or removing one’s hat or shoes as a matter of courtesy. Frois in this regard seemingly understood that identity was mostly learned and performed and yet in mysterious ways still tied to one’s God-given body and soul.18
Today we still acknowledge that “clothes make the man [or woman].” During Frois’ day clothing was held to have even greater power; what you wore not only conveyed your identity (e.g. noble, servant, prostitute, executioner), but seemingly had the power to transform an individual.19 Sumptuary laws, which attempted to restrict elite access to particular fabrics, jewels, furs, and other luxury items, still were in effect in many parts of Europe during Frois’ lifetime.
In this first distich, Frois is reflecting on seasonal changes, correctly noting that Europeans generally shed or donned additional layers of clothing (i.e. a coat or mantle),20 whereas the Japanese changed the dress itself. Although today many non-Japanese use “kimono” to refer to all robe-like clothing, Frois understood that the Japanese used specific terms. The natsu or “summer” katabira is an unlined, gauze-thin robe or gown, ideally suited for sultry weather. As noted in the following chapter (#2, #7), the natsu-katabira also could serve as a head covering. Today the closest thing is the yukata, which is worn at home, at certain festivals, or at hot-springs resorts.
The aki-awase or “autumn combo” is a more substantial two-layered robe that can properly be called a kimono. It was “officially” worn for about nine days in mid-October (the Japanese observed certain formal dates for changing dress), perhaps partly to air it out before it was stuffed with cotton (or flock silk in the case of nobles), thereby converting it into a fuyu-kimono or winter kimono. At the start of “summer,” on what was called “clothes-change” day (koromogae), this stuffing was removed, converting the winter kimono into a hatsu-awase, or “first combo.” Frois simplifies by jumping straight to the inner layer, the katabira.
2a. Among us, to wear clothing made from printed fabrics would be considered foolishness and nonsense; among the Japanese everyone except the bonzes and old men with shaven pates wear clothing made from printed fabrics.
Europeans with money certainly wore brocades and silks with printed designs. However, wool was the principal material for clothing in Europe and was typically rendered attractive and expensive by dying.21 (Cochineal from the Americas made it possible to produce cloth dyed in breath-taking shades of red.) When Frois speaks of “us,” however, perhaps he was thinking mostly of Jesuits, who consciously wore cassocks made of simple black cloth.22
Frois’ Jesuit contemporary, Rodrigues, noted that some Japanese kimonos were handsomely decorated with floral and striped patterns, solid colors, and often featured gold designs intermingled among crimson and violet flowers.23 Men’s attire in fifteenth-century Europe could also be colorful, as evident from Botticelli’s painting “Adoration of the Magi,” which features the artist and members of the Medici family in brilliant togas and other colorful attire.24 Perhaps by 1585, as Frois suggests, Europe had embarked on what J.C. Flugel25 has called “the great masculine renunciation” or graying of male fashion. During the Tokugawa era in Japan (1603–1868), strict sartorial laws were enacted that paralleled trends in Europe.
In the 1960s and 1970s, most Japanese were appalled at the revival of color in Western menswear. Such fashion was dismissed as a product of excessive individualism. Through all of this, only the young Japanese construction worker and the truck driver remained true to their pre-modern Japanese roots. Today you can still find them wearing purple and orange trousers and “wild” hairdos. (University students in Japan also tend to dress informally or colorfully; once out of school, however, they very rapidly make the transition to colorless adulthood.)
3a. Among us a new look in clothing is created nearly every year; in Japan styles are always the same, without ever changing.
European elites were indeed fashion conscious and apparently quick to embrace new styles, even if it meant securing a new sword to match the latest fashions.26 Actually, Japanese dress was constantly changing, but in different ways from European fashion. There was less variety in the overall forms but as much or more change in the color and designs inside and out. What were subtle yet significant changes in clothing went unobserved by Frois and other Europeans.
Today the Japanese consider themselves–for better or worse–particularly prone to fads or “booms,” as they call them. In the hey-day of Japan-as-Number-One, when newspapers referred to Europe as a museum, Japanese intellectuals went so far as to call the West a tradition-bound “stock culture” incapable of coping with the new. The Japanese not only reversed the hoary stereotype of the sleepy changeless East and the active protean West, but, as befits a stereotype, they made it intrinsic to civilization.
4a. Among us it is customary to wear a coat over our doublets and shirts; the Japanese wear a very lightweight, open-fronted sambenito made of a printed fabric over their thin robe or kimono.
A doublet was a snug fitting and often padded jacket (to enhance the chest) worn over a shirt, and under an overcoat or mantle when outdoors. Doublets could be made of rich textiles and decorated with embroidery or fur.27 Frois labored in this contrast to describe what is apparently the Japanese haori (literally “wing weave”). The haori might be said to resemble an open-fronted sambenito, which is a smock worn by penitents in Europe. The haori is lightweight, and while it ties in front, it remains slightly open.
5a. Our sleeves are narrow and extend to the palm of the hand; those of the Japanese are wide, and in the case of men, women, and the bonzes, they reach only halfway down the arm.
As Frois notes below (9a), European clothing was generally tight-fitting, a pattern that Marques attributes to the new armor that was worn in the late Middle Ages (the armor necessitated tight-fitting undergarments).28 Wide sleeves were a long-established tradition in Japan; short sleeves apparently only became fashionable during Japan’s century-long warring period that preceded the arrival of Europeans in the 1540s. For most of Japanese history, sleeves extended to near or even past the wrist, although men may never have worn their sleeves quite so long as women.
6a. Our breeches or underwear have an opening in the front; those of the Japanese have an opening on either side and a small loin cloth or front knot [missing text].29
Breeches that fastened around the leg just below or above the knee were popular in Europe during Frois’ lifetime. The Japanese had something similar called momohiki (literally, “thigh-pullers”), which apparently were worn for formal occasions. High-level administrators wore another type of formal trousers (hakama). Whether momohiki or hakama, Japanese bifurcated clothing did not fasten in the front, but rather on the sides, where the flaps or panels are tied together. Unfastened, the part above the crotch opens up completely.
For the most part, commoner or noble, the Japanese man was comfortable in his loincloth, which, to quote Rodgriques,30 was “merely a sash, silk for the nobles and linen for ordinary people.” The loincloth often was the only thing worn in summer, and this was true even as late as the early Meiji period (1868–1912). Nevertheless, the Japanese felt a need to prove themselves to be a “civilized” people to a West that ignorantly (especially considering its own Greco-Roman tradition) equated clothing with culture, and this resulted in a crackdown by Japanese authorities on the loincloth as an outdoor garment. By the time Japan proved itself “civilized” by defeating Russia in 1905, the Japanese themselves did not care to see loincloths in public. Today loincloths are only worn by men performing ablutions on Shinto religious retreats or on pilgrimages.
7a. Our pants and imperial breeches are made of silk with gold worked in; while other clothing may be of silk, Japanese underpants are always made of coarse or ordinary cotton.31
Decorated Japanese screens or byôbus from the sixteenth century depict Portuguese merchants wearing ankle-length, billowing pants or pantaloons in various colors and rich fabrics.32 Although the Jesuits admired the Japanese embrace of simplicity, they more frequently celebrated the material wealth and presumed progress of Christian Europe, as evidenced by significant investments of gold in baroque architecture and, in this instance, pantaloons. The Japanese did not wear trousers much, but when they did, they wore trousers of hemp and cotton because they were stronger and cooler than silk (again, summers are very hot and humid in much of Japan). Nuno, which is the Japanese term for ordinary cotton, is relatively cheap and was/is used for sundry purposes, including head-bands and house-cleaning.
8a. Among us, no item of men’s clothing is suited for use by women; the Japanese kimono and thin robe are suited for men and women alike.
Up until the ninth century, when the Germans introduced breeches, European clothing tended to be unisex and followed Roman precedents (i.e. togas and tunics).33 Although both Japanese men and women may wear kimono or katabira, they do not wear them in quite the same way. Belts, for instance, are tied in different places (high for women and low for men) and some colors are gender specific.
9a. Our clothing is fitted, narrow, and tight on the body; Japanese clothing is so loose-fitting that people rapidly and without embarrassment disrobe from the waist up.
Most restrictive Western attire is poorly suited to muggy weather. During the summer most Japanese (excepting nobles, who often wore fine white cotton under gowns) wore a lightweight robe or kimono, which both men and women often would remove above the waist while indoors, or conversely, tuck up under their belt when on the road. Prior to the opening of Japan to Western influence in the mid-nineteenth century, such innocent nudity was quite common, even in cities. Writing in 1562, the Jesuit de Almeida noted that the relative ease with which the Japanese could disrobe made it easy to scourge oneself!34
As an aside, not all Japanese fashion is loose and comfortable; far from it. When one of us (Gill) appeared on Japanese late-night television, he was cinched up in a kimono as stiff as a straightjacket. Formality, in the East or West, can be excruciating.
10a. Because of our buttons and lacings, we cannot easily keep our hands close to our bodies; since Japanese men and women are not thus restricted, they always leave their sleeves hanging empty and pull their hands in close to their bodies, especially in winter.
With minimal heating (see Chapter 5 on houses) and no wool to speak of, the Japanese understandably conserved body heat by withdrawing into their kimonos. Frois’ Jesuit contemporary, Rodrigues, noted that this withdrawal also was useful in hot weather, as “… people can insert their hands inside with the greatest of ease and wipe away body sweat with a handkerchief.”35 However, to do so in the presence of nobles, one’s master, or on formal occasions was a grave discourtesy and impertinence. Today on television “Easterns,” loose-dangling sleeves are a mark of the gambler and other social misfits.
11a. We wear our best clothing on the outside and our lesser clothing underneath; the Japanese wear their best underneath and their lesser clothing on top.
It is not known if this inside-outside reversal began in Japan because the best dress was preserved for one’s intimates, because of sartorial regulations, or simply out of fear of envy (or maybe being noticed by the tax collector). Today it is usually explained in terms of a subtle Japanese aesthetic preference.
12a. With us, the outside of a garment must be better than the lining; among the Japanese gentry, their dobukus whenever possible have linings that are better than the exterior of the garment.
Dobuku is a Japanese term that transliterates as “torso-wear.” Frois apparently had in mind dobuku with linings of silk. Like Japanese trousers, dobuku originated in China and usually were sleeveless. This torso-wear evolved during the Tokugawa era into the silk haori, which usually had sleeves and was always lined. For two and a half centuries, wealthy merchants and townsmen vied with one another for the most ornate lining for their plain black haori. There is aesthetic pleasure in this inside-outism: the plain black outside of the hoari makes the inside seem magical, like the once hidden contents of a geode.
13a. We wear vests made from animal hides with their fur on the inside; Japanese vests have the fur on the outside.
Europeans, including the Portuguese, were wild about fur linings and clothing accents, despite sumptuary laws that tried, unsuccessfully, to curb public affection for furs.36 In light of 12a above, as well as Japan’s Buddhist heritage, which frowned on killing animals, it is doubly surprising that the Japanese wore fur vests with the fur showing. Today fur vests are rare and are seen primarily on elderly women out for their New Year’s shrine visit or young ladies celebrating adulthood and their twentieth birthday.
14a. Among us a man cuts his hair or shaves his head to alleviate suffering37; the Japanese shave their heads out of grief or sorrow or because they have fallen from their master’s grace.
Both Europeans and the Japanese shaved their heads to alleviate suffering from lice. Frois is nevertheless correct in emphasizing how the Japanese shaved their heads as an act of grieving. Correspondingly, those in mourning largely ignored their personal grooming for months and did not clean their houses either. Even today, men of means let themselves go for a year after their father dies. However, perhaps the most common reason for shaving one’s head (as opposed to having one’s topknot cut) signified a do-or-die determination. Better to shave off one’s hair–literally “round one’s head” (atama-o marumeru)–to show contrition and determination to make a fresh start, than cut off a finger in the style of the courtesan or yakuza. The Japanese also shaved their heads to signal retirement from the world.
15a. Among us one shaves his beard when he wants to enter a religious order; the Japanese cut off the tuft of hair on the back of their head as a sign that they have left behind the concerns of the material world.
As noted, Europeans equated beards and hair in general with power and virility. Accordingly, individuals who surrendered themselves to God shaved their beards, signaling “contempt for the world.” Shaving one’s beard made less sense in the Far East, where many men have little beard to speak of. Shaving off one’s topknot to signal a profound life change made more sense for the Japanese, who, like other Asians, ordinarily have a full head of hair. Like head-shaving, cutting off one’s topknot could symbolize “burning the bridge” and setting off on an endeavor that was likely to get one killed. Even the Japanese language seems to reflect this behavior, for to make up one’s mind once and for all is most commonly expressed by the double-verb omoi-kitte, or “think-cut.” Today, such haircuts are commonly the final and most dramatic part of an always tearful ceremony undertaken by retiring sumo wrestlers. Frois here failed to mention that Japanese samurai, when taken prisoner, also have their topknot removed (see 6a).
As an aside, the Japanese relationship to hair is fascinating for its ambiguity. One word for hair, kami, is homophonic with “god(s)” while another, ke, is homophonic with “filth/pollution.” Being on top of the body (kami also means “upper”), hair is pure. However, an abundance of hair was associated with Japan’s own “primitives,” the Ainu, and later the “barbarian” West. Moreover, hair was associated with desire, although not as clearly as in Korean (Japanese’s only cognate language).
16a. We fold our robes right over left; the Japanese do it left over right.
Wrapping the edge of one’s garment right-over-left is called “left gusset” (sajin) and was used by the Chinese as a derogatory term for “barbarians,” including their early medieval kin, the Japanese. In 719 C.E. the Japanese officially switched to left-over-right (ujin). Eight-hundred years later they called Western visitors like Frois and Rodrigues “left-gussets.” Then as now, the left has sinister connotations in Japanese as in Western languages. In the West today, men’s shirts, jackets and coats button left over right, and the cover over the fly on men’s trousers also is open on the right. Likewise, the ‘proper’ way for a man to wear a belt on his pants is so that it crosses left to right across the midriff and through the buckle. Women’s wear, in contrast, is assembled so that it crosses right to left.
17a. Our shirts38 have ruffs and are closed in the front; Japanese katabiras have no collars and are open in the front.
Ruffled or pleated collars were all the rage in sixteenth century Europe. The ruff actually was separate from the shirt and was easily removed and washed, thus protecting the neck of the more expensive doublet from getting soiled.
This is yet another open and closed contrast deriving largely from the different climate of Europe and Japan. Today Western clothing is the norm in Japan. Shirts worn by white-collar workers are called wai-shyatsu, from “white shirt,” although they need not be white any more than our “blankets” (from the French ‘blanc’ or white).
18a. We store our clothing by folding it with the outside in and the inside out; the Japanese fold theirs with the inside out and the outside in.
Today it would seem that most people in the West (at least those who fold clothes) do so in the “Japanese” style. As is true for many things, the Japanese, for their part, still maintain two styles. They put away wafuku (“gentle-dress” or Japanese clothing) in the Japanese style and yofuku (“ocean-dress” or Western clothing) in the Medieval/Renaissance/Western style.
19a. Our handkerchiefs are made of very fine cloth, embroidered or with fringes, etc.; some Japanese handkerchiefs are made of something similar to heavy tow cloth39 and others are made of paper.
According to Marques,40 Europeans rediscovered the handkerchief (the Romans were fond of them) during the Renaissance and only during the sixteenth century was it used outside Italy to dry perspiration or blow one’s nose. Japanese rags or paper used for wiping brows, drying hands, and such were probably as beautiful in their way as the ornate European handkerchiefs mentioned by Frois. Today many visitors to Japan quickly come to appreciate their naturally colored handmade paper and the simple prints on Japanese tenugui (a handkerchief used to wipe sweat, rolled up as a sweat-band, or tied as a wrapped cap). As noted in the critical introduction, in Frois’ time the Japanese used disposable tissues for blowing noses, and these were collected and recycled. (Even today one can find plentiful boxes of tissues and even bare rolls of toilet paper on desks in offices).
20a. We show courtesy by removing our hats; the Japanese show it by removing their shoes.
Note the parallel with servants mentioned in 29a, below. There is a slight incommensurability in Frois’ contrast, as Europeans usually tipped and sometimes removed their hats to acknowledge equals. In the Japanese case, this courtesy is shown by a slight bow. The removal of shoes was more a matter of signaling respect and class status. Thus, the pariah class (eta) in Japan was not permitted to wear footwear in anyone’s presence, ostensibly because it would be inappropriate for their “animal” (yotsu or four-footed) identity, and logically because they were the inferiors of all and had to remain physically lower. Today, no one in Japan removes footwear to show respect.
21a. We use a double-edged sword; the Japanese use a cutlass41 that has only a single cutting edge.
As the sixteenth century unfolded, Europe’s elite increasing came from among the ranks of the well-educated, particularly in rhetoric and law. Still, Europe remained a sufficiently violent place (see Chapter 14) and the society as a whole clung to the medieval idea that elites enjoyed their power and privilege because they were protectors and defenders of the less fortunate. Thus in Europe, and perhaps more so Japan, swords were a big part of elite identity. While European swords were quite variable, many elites wore a straight, narrow-bladed, double-edged rapier such as the Spanish espada ropera. European swords were designed mostly for stabbing or thrusting. The Japanese samurai did little of the latter; his razor-sharp cutlass was designed for slashing and removing body parts, especially heads!42 (see 28a and Chapter 7).
22a. Our scabbards are made of leather or velvet43 ; the Japanese use lacquered wood, except their nobles, whose scabbards are covered with gold or silver.
The lacquered wood usually was magnolia hypoleuca (black rather than the vermillion that often was used for plates), which protected the blade equally as well as, or better than leather or felt. Elsewhere Frois noted that the thickness of the gilt on Japanese scabbards depended on an individual’s wealth.
23a. Our swords have chapes, hilts and pommels; Japanese swords have none of these things.
The chape is a metal fitting at the bottom of the scabbard, which further protects the tip of the blade as well as the sword bearer. European swords usually had a well-shaped handle (hilt) with an often decorative butt end (pommel). Because Japanese scabbards were usually of wood they had no need for a chape, and while Japanese swords obviously had a handle, it was a rather simple affair. Frois might also have mentioned that European swords had a hand guard, which, in its simplest form–a cross-bar–stopped an opponent’s sword blade from sliding down into the hand. Japanese swords often had a simple washer-like device for a “hand guard.”
24a. Our swords are tested on lumber or animals; the Japanese insist upon testing their swords on human corpses.
Like Damascus steel, the best Japanese swords were tempered44 and then tested on human flesh; “a first class blade sometimes cut through three corpses with one blow, although seven is on record.”45 This testing continued long after the Jesuits expressed dismay at the custom. Executed criminals, whose bodies were sometimes sewn together and re-used, were the principal source material for blade testing. Using corpses is one thing, but criminals and evil people in authority, including one Shogun, took to testing swords on any poor-looking passerby. Suji-kire, or “crossroads-cutting,” is still a favorite theme of Japanese television “Easterns.”
Lest the Japanese seem particularly inhumane, criminals who were convicted of especially heinous crimes were quartered in modern Europe and tens of thousands of witches and other “evil-doers” were burned or otherwise dispatched with spectacle. Paradoxically, while Europeans showed few qualms about ritual killing, they did pause–more than the Japanese, it seems–when it came to injuring a lifeless body. Perhaps Europeans feared offending God by complicating His work at the time of resurrection. Grave-robbing was a serious crime in Europe.
25a. Our cutlasses or scimitars are worn with the convex side downward; the Japanese wear theirs with the convex side up and the concave side down.
As Frois himself points out, Europeans favored straight, double-edged swords. The cutlass or scimitar, which was made famous (and frightening) by the Ottoman Turks who laid siege to Vienna in 1529, were sometimes reproduced by European swordsmiths as a “costume accessory.”46 The Japanese wore their cutlasses in scabbards fastened more or less horizontally or thrust through the belt diagonally, but still far closer to horizontal than vertical. For this contrast to make sense, we must assume European swords likewise hung somewhat off the vertical. As Frois later discusses in Chapter 7 on weapons and warfare (#4, #7–#11), the Japanese wore two swords (and a dagger); the larger was worn in the traditional bow up way (like a smile) and the smaller sword was worn with the bow down (like a frown). Because ends tend to hang down, scabbards holding a smile-like position had to have proper fasteners. In retrospect, Frois’ exaggeration turns out to be a prediction, as Tokugawa period artwork shows that within a hundred years, both Japanese swords were worn like a frown. This method better holds a scabbard casually stuck through a belt.
26a. We wear felt caps, capes,47 and hats in the rain; the Japanese, both rich and poor, wear hats and very long capes all made of straw.
The Japanese do not have nor need a rain hat per se. Their traveling or working “hat” and “umbrella” are homophones (kasa). Because the kasa is umbrella-shaped, it provides excellent protection from both rain and sunlight. Moreover, because it does not cling to the head, but is instead supported by a harness, it provides ventilation and is perfectly suited to a muggy climate. In 1585, the Japanese apparently were in the process of “inventing” a raincoat, creating capes of straw that were layered like a thatched roof.48 A century after Frois, Kaempfer speculated that the Japanese had learned the use of it, together with the name, from the Portuguese.49 He further described a “large cloak … made of double varnish’d oil’d paper, and withal so very large and wide, that it covers and shelters at once man, horse and baggage.” At first, kappa meant any kind of cape, but during the Meiji era (1868–1912) manto (mantle) came to mean a cape or shawl and kappa came to mean only a raincoat.
27a. We regard strolling as great recreation, as well as very healthful and calming; the Japanese do not go strolling at all, and they are amazed and view our strolling as a hardship and penance.
During the nineteenth century America’s first Ambassador to Japan, Townsend Harris, was told that prisons were not punishment for the Japanese because they did not feel a need to walk about in the first place (see also Chapter 14, #11). Both the Japanese and Chinese purportedly found the idea of “a constitutional” ludicrous. To relax and think, they sat still. The Portuguese evidently did not succeed in spreading the practice of walking in the Western sense, since the term for “a walk,” which is sanpou or “scattered-steps,” rarely was used until the Meiji era.
There are several caveats to Frois’ contrast of “we who walk” and “they who do not.” First, the Japanese may well have led the civilized world in two types of walking: pilgrimages and stylized pageantry. Japanese of all classes took advantage of their excellent roads and would walk from shrine to shrine, from temple to temple, covering distances of hundreds and even thousands of miles. As is apparent from the later Haiku of poets such as Basho, these pilgrimages were the occasion for all manner of reflection on life.50 The Japanese may not have walked much, but when they did, they walked like it was nobody’s business. Mention should also be made of neri-aruki or “polished walking.” There were many varieties of this walk-as-dance, ranging from the rapid and tiny up-and-down toe movements used by most Shinto float (dashi) carriers, which still can be seen today in Japan, to the slow-motion deliberate wobbling and rotating of each foot in turn by courtesans on parade on high geta clogs. Finally, during the Tokugawa period poor poets were said to engage in “aimless walking” (sozoro-aruki) through the so-called “pleasure quarters” of Edo, poking fun at people.
28a. Our swords and most valuable possessions are beautifully adorned; their precious belongings have no grandeur or adornment.
Europe’s elite prized well-balanced swords with blades, pommels, hilts, and hand guards that often were engraved or featured complex designs, highlighted with gold and silver and sometimes jewels. The peak of perfection in Japanese sword manufacturing, which was characterized by simple-looking yet incredibly sharp and resilient blades, was reached in the fourteenth century. By Frois’ time, the secrets of the old masters were so completely lost that no one has since been able to duplicate the quality of Japanese blades from the fourteenth century.51 It is no wonder, therefore, that the Japanese valued old, “plain-looking” swords.52 However, the best and most revered swords were not really “plain,” as Dobrée points out; the blades often had exquisite wavy markings like wood grain. Some swordsmiths apparently also signed their blades, albeit on the hidden tang of the blade, and occasionally embellished their blades with inscriptions or images.53
29a. We consider it rude if a servant does not remain standing once his master is seated; they consider it poor etiquette if the servant does not take a seat when his master does.
Japan shared the extreme up-and-down consciousness of much of Southeast Asia and Pacific island cultures, where a superior had to be literally higher than others at all times. To fold a wife’s clothing on top of a husband’s would disrespect him; to use a book as a pillow would disrespect the author.
30a. We use black for mourning; the Japanese use white.
The equation, black = mourning has not always held true in the West. Aristocratic women in Roman antiquity wore white for mourning, as did European queens during the Middle Ages and the early modern period. In Portugal, black was adopted for mourning only decades before Frois’ birth.54
With respect to Japan, the association of white with mourning apparently originated in China. The association, however, was not as absolute as Frois implies, because in one of his letters Frois noted that the bonzes wore fine black upper garments to funerals. Today, partly as a result of Western influence, black is more common than white at Japanese funerals. In neighboring Korea, white is still the color of bereavement (and worn all the time by the elderly as if to say “I’m ready to go!”).
31a. When we walk, we lift up the front of our clothing so it does not get soiled; the Japanese lift up the back of their clothing, so much so that their entire north55 is exposed.
Japanese men typically lifted and then tucked the hem of their kimonos into their obi belt such that their behinds, and more often, their loin-cloths, were exposed. The Japanese even have a term for this “tucking up” (shiri-karage). It is possible that men showed more than their rear-ends, for loin-cloths were loosened in the humid summer and might be washed and tied to a bamboo pole to dry while walking. Japanese women, kept “the north” covered, “tucking up” instead in the front (and less radically, to be sure).
32a. Among us, pages and nobles accompanying their master should never reveal even so much as a toe; when travelling down the street with their master, the Japanese roll their breeches up clear to the groin.
If Europeans found their inferiors’ nudity insulting and professed to be disgusted by it, the Japanese rather enjoyed it. This attitude lasted well into the Edo era (1603–1868), when Issa wrote haiku of cold winter moonlight congealing on the rumps of butt-proud footmen. In Japan, a lord would be proud of, rather than embarrassed by the magnificent gluteus maxima of his charges.
33a. We spit at any time; the Japanese normally swallow their sputum.
In his influential work, “On Good Manners,” Erasmus (d. 1536) did not take issue with spitting, but rather advised fellow Europeans to “Turn away when spitting to avoid spitting or spraying someone else.”56 Today, it is Japanese men who seem to spit too freely for the taste of most Westerners. Interestingly, neither Frois nor other Europeans mention that one bodily function that is considered a privilege of the male sex, and which aroused by far the most international controversy, at least judging from the countless letters to the editor on this topic published in English-language newspapers in Japan. We are referring here to tachi-shoben or “standing-urination.” Japanese men were once infamous for doing this practically anywhere and at any time, and eighteenth-century short poems called senryu (similar to haiku) tell of wise guys who peed on signs that forbid urination in public.
34a. We wield our swords with one hand; since Japanese swords are so heavy, all of them are wielded with both hands.
As noted, the civilian swords worn by European elites were mostly a thin, straight-bladed thrusting weapon. Although Frois attributes the Japanese use of two hands to their heavy swords, two hands holding, grasping, or cupping an object seem to sanctify it and its function. Polite drinking (a mark not just of formality but also of sincerity) was done with two hands, as was all giving and receiving of gifts. As is true of many things, this attitude and practice apparently was introduced from China during Japanese antiquity.
35a. We wear leather shoes and, [in the case of] our nobles, [shoes made of] felt; Japanese of all classes wear sandals made of rice straw.
Europeans did not want for shoes made of calfskin, goatskin, deerskin, sheepskin, and unsoled cloth or felt, which were worn indoors.57 Unlike shoes from the Middle Ages, which were ridiculously pointed, those of the sixteenth century tended to have rounded toes.
The humidity in Japan is high during a good part of the year and especially in summer. Therefore, in addition to being costly because of a lack of cattle hides, shoes made of felt or leather would have given many Japanese athlete’s foot. Made from rice straw or not, the fine weave of the zori, worn by the wealthy, and the crude macramé weave of the waraji, worn by the poor, both kept the feet cool and relatively dry. Today this footwear is seldom worn except by elderly ladies and visiting foreigners. Japanese men say they don’t wear sandals for fear of having their feet crushed on the subway, while women, by contrast, do not hesitate to wear toeless shoes. Those sandals that are found in Japan today are mostly hideous plastic surippa (slippers). The footwear situation proves beyond a doubt that the Japanese have become vulnerable to fashion trends, particularly from the West.
36a. We in Europe would think it insane for a noble to remove his shoes before presenting himself before a prince; the Japanese consider it poor etiquette not to remove one’s shoes before presenting oneself before another, regardless of rank.
You have to believe European feet stunk a lot,58 given their bathing habits (or lack thereof). With regular bathing and cooler and better ventilated footwear, presumably Japanese feet stunk a lot less (even if the same feet were more easily soiled).
37a. We enter our homes with our shoes on; in Japan this is rude and shoes should be left at the door.
Shoes do not mix with finely woven tatami; these straw mats are easily scuffed and soak up dirt. However, leaving one’s shoes outside did have its drawbacks. The Jesuits were quick to realize that they could not go anywhere without komono (literally “little-people”), child servants responsible for keeping track of their shoes. The problem was not that shoes were stolen, but that they got lost amid hundreds of other shoes at public places. Even today, finding one’s shoes at a public function can be like trying to find your car in an airport parking lot. Today, the Japanese generally trade in their shoes for slippers at the office, and both home and office have a special rack or container with slippers for guests. But all is not well, for unlike the open-heeled traditional geta or zori, the Western shoe, which the modern Japanese seem to be stuck with, does not easily shake off. The sole exception to the shoes-off-at-the-door rule is when someone dies; those removing the deceased from the house do not remove their footwear.
38a. In order to wash our face and hands, we roll up our sleeves only as far as the wrist; for the same purpose the Japanese strip down from the waist up.
Stripping to the waist was both easy to do (see 9a above) and hygienic, inasmuch as it exposed more of the body for washing. Ease of dressing and undressing apparently was one reason the Japanese engaged in bathing as often as they did.
39a. We show obeisance by placing a knee on the floor; the Japanese prostrate themselves with their legs, arms and head virtually flat to the ground.
“One knee for my lord, two knees for The Lord” is an apt way of conveying European obeisance. Neither Frois nor his equally observant contemporary, Rodrigues, noted the wordless auditory element of Japanese obeisance. The Englishman Saris was the first European to mention these noises, which seem to say “I am tense and awed! I am tense and awed!” Alcock, writing in the mid-nineteenth century, was the first to do the subject justice:
… suddenly, on some signal apparently, there is a general and long-prolonged sibilated sound impossible to describe, something between a ‘hiss’and a long-drawn ‘hish-t.’ … It was immediately after one of these rustlings of the breeze of reverence vibrating through the lips of a thousand sibilating courtiers, that I received the signal to advance to the entrance of the council chamber. I have never seen or heard anything like it, or, indeed, in the least resembling this strange but impressive way of bespeaking reverence.59
Today, the Japanese still occasionally suck air and make strange noises in the presence of superiors. However, they no longer prostrate themselves (that custom was given up in the mid-nineteenth century).
40a. We wear angular or rounded hats made of cloth; the Japanese wear silk hats, some of which are pointed and others shaped like bags.
Round hats of fine cloth or velvet and sombrero-like-hats with narrow brims do seem characteristic of sixteenth century Mediterranean Europe. Japanese portraiture from the sixteenth century includes figures with what might be described as “pointed” and “baggy” hats,60 but the reality might not have been so simple. Japan’s most beloved poet, Matsuo Basho (1644–1694), is usually shown wearing a hat shaped like a cake about two layers high.61
41a. Among us, patched clothing is considered extremely vulgar; in Japan, princes think very highly of a kimono or dobuku made entirely of patchwork.
The sixteenth-century Japanese were hardly into grunge. Tea masters and poets were nevertheless wild about patchwork, mostly made of old brocade and other fine materials. Some nobles emulated the “art crowd’s” taste for patchwork. The rage apparently became an aesthetic tradition that was not confined to fine materials. Two hundred years after Frois, Issa celebrated what is probably a poor poet’s dress (his own garb): a kimono of paper or kamiko that was a collage of hanko, i.e., reusable paper from old books, calendars, paintings, manuscripts, etc.
42a. In Europe, all our cloth is cut with scissors; in Japan everything is cut with a knife.
It is not that the Japanese did not have scissors, but they preferred to cut cloth with a particular knife called a monotachi or monotachi-gatana, literally “thing-cut-off-sword.” Apparently if a single blade is sharp enough, there is no need for two. Conversely, scissors may have developed further in Europe in order to allow tailors and seamstresses to make “fine cuts,” button holes, “pinking,” and such–functions that were unnecessary for the production of Japanese clothing.
43a. In Europe it would be considered effeminate for a man to carry and use a fan; in Japan a man always carries a fan in his belt and he would otherwise be considered base and wretched.
If you ever have been stared at by a barracuda fanning its fins you can imagine that a samurai with a fan could look menacing, even if the fan itself rarely was used as a lethal weapon (as in Japanese TV “Easterns”). The Dutch physician Philipp Franz von Siebold, who lived in Japan for six years between 1823 and 1829, nicely captured some of the fan’s uses:
Among the men, the fan serves a great variety of purposes: visiters [sic] received the dainties offered them upon it; and the beggar, imploring charity, holds out his fan for the alms his prayers may have obtained. The fan serves the dandy in lieu of the whalebone switch; the pedagogue instead of a ferule for the offending schoolboy’s knuckles; and, not to enumerate its many other uses, a fan, presented upon a peculiar kind of salver to the high-born criminal, is said to be the form of announcing his death-doom, his head being struck off the moment he stretches it towards this emblem of his fate.62
Fans are still common in Japan and are distributed free for use in folk dances (bon) that are held throughout Japan during the summer, although today little children and elderly women dominate the “fan dancing.”
44a. Among us, lords and princes are preceded by [retainers carrying] torches of wax; in Japan they use bundles of old, dried lengths of bamboo, or bundles of straw.
Quality candles and torches of beeswax were important to Europeans, especially religious men like Frois (Catholicism, then as now, involved considerable sacrifices of candles as part of religious ritual). The common Japanese term for torch is taimatsu or “pine-light,” reflecting the fact that pine resin was the principal combustible used to “light the way” for nobility. Ideally, the resin was applied to straw and bound up within a bamboo (yadake) framework.
45a. In Europe baring even one’s foot before a fire to get warm would be considered strange; in Japan anyone standing before the fire to get warm unabashedly bares his entire backside.
The Zen abbot, Sengai, painted himself with his testicles in plain view, and punning on their euphemistic name, “golden gems,” wrote an accompanying poem about breaking out the gold for the entire world to share! (kintama-o uchi-akete …). This lack of shame with respect to revealing one’s private parts in a non-sexual context survived the long feudal era to shock the nineteenth-century West. Conversely, the nineteenth-century Japanese were equally shocked by the décolletage of Western women, not to mention corsets and other devices that emphasized the “female figure.” The Japanese also took umbrage with nudes in painting exhibitions, because they had no similar tradition of showcasing the naked body. Thus, while they could look at pornography in private with little if any of the guilt attached to it by Westerners, the idea of displaying the human figure as a beautiful ideal was so far from their mind that they could only see this Western art as vulgar or “low-culture.”
46a. We consider it effeminate for a noble to look in the mirror; Japanese nobles ordinarily all get dressed in front of a mirror.
The mirror had negative and positive connotations for Europeans as a function of how much time one spent looking into it: a brief glance could reveal virtue and remind the viewer of the transient nature of life, while prolonged scrutiny bespoke one or more of the “seven deadly sins.”63 As Frois’ comment implies, women in Europe were perceived as being particularly prone to vanity. Of course, it is ridiculous to believe that European men, particularly nobles, did not prune themselves before venturing out to “perform” in public, as per Castiglione or Machiavelli. Correspondingly, Okada has pointed out that Hagakure, the classic manual for the samurai revival of the Edo era (1603–1868), advises warriors to use a mirror to make certain that they are properly dressed and groomed. In Shinto, the mirror is revered as a gift from the gods for our spiritual edification; in Buddhism, it was identified with the redeeming light of the moon. Its use by either sex was not thought to be narcissistic, but reflective, in the best meaning of the word (i.e., as an instrument of self-knowledge, purity, or cleansing). Philosophy apart, however, Japanese men spent so much time grooming that the presence of a mirror was hardly surprising.
47a. Among us, to wear clothing made of paper would be considered a joke or madness; in Japan, bonzes and many nobles dress in paper [kimonos] with silk fronts and sleeves.
As noted above (see 41a), paper kimonos were becoming high fashion in Frois’ time, particularly those made of fancy paper, which had a fine, lacquered finish made of persimmon sap. During the seventeenth century, paper robes called kamiko came to be associated with poets and prostitutes, who could not afford silk. Like many homeless in America today, the Japanese understood that many layers of paper make good insulation in the winter, particularly in Japan where those months are the driest part of the year. During the eighteenth century only the elderly were allowed to use paper kimonos.
48a. What we consider a dressing robe for wearing around the house, the Japanese wear [in public], with sleeveless dobukus over their katabiras.64
Here Frois seems to be suggesting that the Japanese wear their light robes outside whereas Europeans do not. The dobuku vest, which during the seventeenth century became the sleeveless haori, was de rigeur in Japan during Frois time for men who would be called professionals: magistrates, doctors and tea-masters.65 These professionals generally worked indoors.
49a. We wash clothes by scrubbing them by hand; in Japan clothing is washed by stomping on it with the feet.
Okada has taken issue with Frois and argues that the Japanese generally washed clothes by hand and less frequently did so using their feet. As it happens, some people in the West also used their feet: Thomas Hood wrote a poem in 1815 about women in Edinburgh who used their feet. While not stomping, pounding new silken cloth with sticks to soften it (called kinuta or “clothes-board”) is perhaps the most common human sound found in haiku (no matter where a poet hears it, he thinks of mother). It may well be that kinuta was once the preferred Japanese method of cleaning all laundry, as was the case in Korea.
50a. We carry handkerchiefs and tissues in our sleeves or pockets; the Japanese tuck theirs into their breasts, and the higher up, the dandier.66
The broad sash worn by the Japanese turned the entire garment above the waist into an enormous pocket, and the contents were by no means limited to tissue. Okada cites two Tokugawa-era sources (one Japanese and one Russian) who marveled at the way Japanese men turned their kimonos into “warehouses,” filled at times with “cakes from receptions” and sundry other items that would put a contemporary woman’s purse to shame. While sleeves apparently were fairly short, i.e., narrow, at the time the Tratado was written, in earlier centuries they sometimes held more than the body of the kimono.
51a. We use pockets67 ; the Japanese use a purse hung from their belt.
Europe at this time was in the midst of transitioning from an external purse to an internal pocket; the first such pockets were often purses worn within one’s clothing that were accessed by reaching through a slit or open side seam.
Purses worn by Japanese of both sexes were made of leather, cotton, and occasionally wood. While the sleeves served for coins and other little trinkets, the dangling body purses mentioned above served to carry paper, books, and more specialized items: nosegays, writing equipment, medicine, tobacco, fire-making kits, and so forth. The purse string usually was wrapped around the obi, or sash, rather than being tied to it. To prevent them from slipping off, a counter-weight was tied to the end of the purse string. This counterweight, or netsuke, forms the main body of perhaps the finest Japanese miniature sculptures. It kept the purses from falling not so much by its weight as by the fact that, small or not, it was big enough to catch on the upper or lower edge of the belt (depending on which way it was wrapped). Unlike most pockets, the dangling container has the advantage of not spilling its contents when one sits or lies down.
52a. In Europe purses are used to carry money; in Japan the purses of nobles and soldiers are used to carry scents, medicines and flint.
Japanese men, especially nobles, were very big on scent. The Tale of Genji tells of nobles who roamed about all night visiting women and leaving behind a scent trail that was still detectable a day later. A generation after Frois wrote, tobacco appears to have been the main scent left by all men, gentry or peasant.
53a. Among us people bathe at home, well hidden from the eyes of others; in Japan, men, women, and bonzes use public baths or bathe at night by their doorstep.
During the late Middle Ages, “licentious behavior” and the plague largely ended a European tradition of public bathing begun by the Romans.68 In Japan, public baths were everywhere and often run by Buddhist temples. Some claim the practice of collective bathing started with laity who were recruited to clean Buddhist sculptures (getting wet and “blessed” in the process). Be that as it may, bathing caught on and by the Edo period (1603–1868) the Japanese enjoyed bathing and were not embarrassed to do so by their doorsteps or in public baths.
Considering the amount of bathing and showering that Europeans and Americans do today, one could say that this is one instance in which the West has emulated Japan, rather than the other way around. But alas, public baths seem headed for extinction in Japan as well; today most Japanese homes have their own baths and public baths are found mostly in rural areas. This is lamentable in light of Alcock’s (1863) perceptive comment that the bathhouse in Japan was “what the baths were to the Romans, and what the cafe is to the Frenchman–the grand lounge.”
54a. When it rains we wear boots or ordinary shoes; the Japanese go barefoot or wear wooden clogs69 and walk with a staff.
The wooden clogs mentioned here apparently were a wooden geta elevated by two six-inch stilts called ashida. This footwear was worn during Frois’ time primarily during the summer, when monsoon rains inundated towns and villages. The cane staff obviously provided additional stability for navigating mud and standing water. Up to the mid-twentieth century this footwear continued to be worn as rain, or rather, mud gear by men working in the so-called “water trades” (men working in bars and cheap inns, possibly because these tended to be in muddy areas). During the Tokugawa era, wooden geta were worn by prostitutes in parades. They used no staffs and walked in slow motion, taking advantage of the length of the stilts, slowly rotating each foot.
55a. We make our shoes of strong, thick leather; in Japan the tabi are made of glove leather.
As noted, Europeans who could afford good shoes had access to various types of footwear, including outdoor shoes of well-oiled zebra hide or calfskin, not to mention more expensive shoes and boots of deerskin, sheepskin, or polished goat-skin.70 This contrast, however, is perhaps misleading, as tabi (literally “leg-bags”) are more like socks or slippers than shoes. Perhaps Frois was misled by the fact that tabi at the time often were made of goatskin (soon to be replaced by cotton). Tabi divided the first and second toe and were worn with sandals or geta. If the soles of the tabi were clean, they also could be worn indoors. Today, most Japanese carpenters still wear tabi that have thin corrugated rubber soles. Unlike American construction workers who worry about things falling on their feet (thus their heavy boots), the Japanese worry about falling from beams. Since we are on the subject of footwear, many Japanese today wear socks that have individual “compartments” for all ten toes. The cotton variety keep the spaces between the toes cool and healthy in summer, while the wool variety (gun-soku or military-socks) are great in winter (although they are despised by young people). Doctors often prescribe the latter to combat athlete’s foot (or “water-worm,” as the Japanese call it).
56a. Our gloves are folded back at the wrist; Japanese gloves sometimes extend as high as the elbow.
Because Japanese “gloves” worn by both sexes are fingerless (see Chapter 2 #25), they might better be called palm-gloves. At first glance, they resemble Western archery arm-guards, but the back of the arm is covered as well as, if not better than, the front. The Japanese also had (and Buddhist priests still wear) bamboo mesh tubes on the forearms to keep the sweaty skin from rubbing on the inside of the sleeve.
57a. Among us, only a crazy man would wear clothing with unfinished edges; the Japanese wear their fur dobukus the way the hides were cut from the deer.
The Japanese side of this distich fits the tendency of Japanese handicrafts to preserve natural textures and shapes. This is equally true for architecture, food, utensils, and clothing. Thus, the natural grain of wood was preferred to paint (see Chapter 11, #7); unglazed pottery was used for formal occasions (Chapter 6, #30), and clothing was worn as it was woven, in the best form (rectangular) to show off the material rather than the human body underneath.
58a. Our shoes, boots and slippers have soles that are separate [from the uppers]; Japanese tabi have no separate sole and are made of one continuous piece of leather.
Tabi are a lot like moccasins and, as noted above (see 55a) they functioned as a “thick sock” when worn with geta or zori.
59a. In Europe it would be ridiculous to wear shoes with half the foot sticking out; in Japan this is considered most stylish71 and only bonzes, women and the elderly wear shoes that fit the entire foot.
This idea of the hanging heel as stylish persists to this day with respect to traditional Japanese footwear. Note that it is not the case that the foot does not fit into the shoe. The Japanese shoes are all open and generally wide enough for any foot; the length of the sole is just too short in the back. Foreigners, who complain that the Japanese zori, geta or surippa (a semi-traditional slipper) are far too small, often receive a lecture on the correct and stylish way to wear traditional Japanese footwear. It is interesting that there was a stylish way to wear shoes. Perhaps it might be compared to Europeans generally having correct ways to wear hats. It also is economical: an entire population (men and women) utilized but one, or two, medium-size geta or zori.
It is hard to say how this tradition started. Ancient Japanese footwear generally had gripping pegs. In Frois’ time, thongs that could be gripped between the first two toes were common. Either way, people with large or small feet could wear medium-size footwear. Note that if traditional Japanese shoes are one-size, their socks or tabi come in as many sizes as European shoes, for they must fit just right, as they do not stretch like Western socks.
60a. We walk with our entire foot touching the ground; the Japanese walk on only the front part of the foot, which is placed on the short shoe.
For the reason of style noted immediately above (see 59a), the Japanese had to either exercise their arches (walking on the front of their feet) or soil the heels of their tabi. They chose the former. It is no wonder the Japanese did not walk for relaxation (see 27a above).
61a. At no time of the year, be it summer or winter, do we wear clothing so thin as to reveal the body; in Japan summer clothing is so thin that almost everything can be seen.
Inexpensive summer linen was so thin that haikai (proto-haiku) joke about poor women not being able to ford waist-high rivers. Be that as it may, the West (including the purveyors of Western fashion in Japan who are blind to traditional wisdom) still has a lot to learn from Japan when it comes to hot-weather fabrics. Traditional Japanese sheets soak up and evaporate sweat extremely quickly, and jinbei (a Bermuda-length shorts suit) boast a cotton and hemp fabric that is far, far cooler than our seersucker.
62a. The hem on our long coats and robes extends all the way to the floor on all sides; in Japan, on both men’s and women’s katabiras and kimonos, the front hem is a hand’s span higher than it is on the back.
Fellow missionary Rodrigues,72 who wrote some twenty years after Frois, contradicted the latter, noting that women’s robes were floor-length and were worn over a white petticoat. Either there was a change in fashion during the two intervening decades or each Jesuit described different classes of women or robes. A full- or floor-length hem was difficult to keep clean, but apparently this was not a concern for Europeans, particularly those who had servants to wash and repair clothing.
63a. We never stitch or mend73 black clothing with white thread; the Japanese see no problem in sewing black clothing with white thread.
The Japanese sometimes retained, as decoration, thread that was used for fitting a kimono.74 This fits the same general pattern of contrast noted in 57a above, and we might add the Japanese theatrical tendency to show prop changes or a puppeteer. Sometimes it is beautiful to reveal rather than conceal things.
3 Of course, class and wealth also mattered and thus male peasants exercised less power than wealthy and upper-class women in both Europe and Japan. See for example, Anne Walthall, “The Life Cycle of Farm Women,” in Recreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945, ed. Gail Lee Bernstein, 42–70 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 43.
4 Bronwen Wilson, The World in Venice (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 205.
5 William E. Deal, Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 358.
6 Akio Okada, trans. and ed., Yoroppa-Bunka to Nihon-Bunka [European Culture and Japanese Culture] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1965), 16.
7 Allan D. Peterkin, One Thousand Beards, A Cultural History of Facial Hair (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2001), 29–32.
8 Michael Cooper, They Came to Japan, An Anthology of European Reports on Japan, 1543–1640 Rev. ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 37.
9 Peterkin, One Thousand Beards, 32.
10 Linda Schiebinger, Nature’s Body (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), 120–25; Allan Peterkin, One Thousand Beards, 29.
11 Japanese screen art or biombos suggest that the chonmage was indeed a seventeenth-century development. See João Paulo Oliveira e Costa, Da Cruz de Cristo ao Sol Nascente, Um Encontro do Passado e do Presente (Lisbon: Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais/Torre do Tombo, 1998), 22–23, 30.
12 These Japanese analogs to the American “Western” are typically set during the Tokugawa era and feature a patient “good-guy” who is trying to lead a quiet life as a small-town doctor, judge, or travelling blind man. The reluctant hero invariably is compelled to take up his sword against the forces of evil (often corrupt authority figures). Like the hero of the American “Western” who wields his six-gun with breath-taking skill, the chambara hero deftly uses his sword to vanquish his unsuspecting and arrogant enemies, winning the gratitude of peasants, townspeople, and, not infrequently, a fair maiden.
13 Schiebinger, Nature’s Body, 121.
14 John W. Dower, War Without Mercy, Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986).
15 Ann Jannetta, The Vaccinators: Smallpox, Medical Knowledge, and the “Opening” of Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 19; William McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (New York: Anchor Books, 1976), 124, 202; Linda A. Newsom, Conquest and Pestilence (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009), 17.
16 Keith Thomas, The Ends of Life (London: Oxford University Press, 2009), 83, 107.
17 Ukiyo-e prints were mass-produced and relatively inexpensive woodblock prints that were popular among Japan’s urban class, particularly in Edo (Tokyo) during the second half of the seventeenth century. The prints often depict “city life,” particularly the entertainment district with its courtesans, actors, and sumo wrestlers.
18 Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
19 Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
20 “Basic attire” for Portuguese peasants was a knee-length tunic and trousers of coarse wool or cotton, and shoes; a hooded-mantle and a simple cap or sombrero were worn outdoors, depending on the weather. Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 73, 92.
21 Ibid., 92.
22 Although under Valignano the Jesuits emulated the Japanese in many of their customs, the Jesuits abandoned silk kimonos as early as 1570 because such dress was at odds with their vow of poverty. Josef Franz Schütte, Valignano’s Mission Principles for Japan 1573–1582. Volume I, Part II, trans. J. Coyne (St. Louis: Institute for Jesuit Sources, 1985), 43–44.
23 Cooper, They Came to Japan, 205–206.
24 Joanna Woods-Marsden, Renaissance Self-Portraiture: The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 49–51.
25 J.C. Flugel, The Psychology of Clothes (London: The Hogarth Press, 1950), 110–111.
26 Capwell, The Noble Art of the Sword, 34, points out that an Italian sword in the Wallace Collection that dates to ca. 1540 has a bulbous pommel that apparently was designed to complement the “puffed-and-slashed clothing” of the period.
27 Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 59–61.
28 Ibid., 37.
29 … nas ylhargas e hum tanga[nho] ou arsáo de sela de [?]. A knot of some kind is suggested by Frois’ mention of a “saddle pommel.”
30 Cooper, They Came to Japan, 206.
31 The terms used by Frois for these materials are canga (apparently from the Chinese word yang, meaning coarse fabric of cotton) and nuno. Josef Franz Schütte, S.J., Kulturgensate Europa-Japan (1585) (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1955), 102, f.2.
32 Okamoto, The Namban Art of Japan, 25, 38; Oliveira e Costa, Da Cruz de Cristo, 20, 34, 56.
33 Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 39–41.
34 James Murdoch, A History of Japan. 3 Vols. (New York: Ungar Publishing, 1964), II, P. I, 80, f.5.
35 Cooper, They Came to Japan, 206.
36 Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 52–53.
37 Dores.
38 We have translated camisas as shirts to reflect current English usage, although shirts during the sixteenth century often were belted and could extend well below the waist, even to the knee.
39 Liteiro.
40 Daily Life in Portugal, 91.
41 Traçado
42 Tobias Capwell, The Noble Art of the Sword (London: The Wallace Collection, 2012), 28–82; Thomas, The Ends of Life, 44–78; Dobrée, Japanese Sword Blades.
43 Veludo. Note that Frois speaks of felt (feltro) in distich 26a.
44 Actually it is the cutting edge that is made of tempered steel; behind the edge is soft steel that is wrapped in hard steel, making the sword incredibly sharp and resilient. Coats, “Arms & Armor,” 263.
45 Cooper, They Came to Japan, 167.
46 See for instance, Capwell, The Noble Art of the Sword, 77.
47 Beden. Not only is “bedém” a Moorish tunic; it can also be a rain-cape or a tunic made of rushes. Frois’ use of the term, which is Arabic in origin, makes it clear that in Europe such capes were not made of rushes. This raises the interesting question of whether the Portuguese experience in Japan eventually led to a broadening in the semantics associated with this term. No similar term is used in Spanish.
48 In yet another twist to the raincoat story, it has been suggested that a group of Japanese who visited Mexico in 1610 introduced the raincoat of grass to the Indians of West Mexico! Zelia Nuttall, “The Earliest Historical Relations Between Mexico and Japan.” University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 4:1–47 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1906–07), 47.
49 Englebert Kaempher, The History of Japan, Together With a Description of the Kingdom of Siam, 1690–92. 3 Vols. (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1906[1690–92]), I, 400.
50 See Maria Rodriguez del Alisal, Peter Ackerman, and Dolores P. Martinez, eds., Pilgrimages and spiritual quests in Japan (London: Routledge, 2007).
51 Dobrée, Japanese Sword Blades, 11.
52 According to Okada, Yoroppa-Bunka to Nihon-Bunka, 27, the Japanese did, in fact, embellish with gold and silver certain swords that were used for ritual purposes.
53 Catharina Blomberg, The Heart of the Warrior (Sandgate, UK: Japan Library, 1994), 55; Coats, “Arms & Armor,” 263.
54 Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 92.
55 Todo o norte desquberto. Far be it for Frois to make a direct reference to the derriere.
56 Erika Rummel ed., The Erasmus Reader (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 105.
57 Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 45, 50, 67.
58 Mary Dobson, Tudor Odours (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
59 Sir Rutherford Alcock, The Capital of the Tycoon, A Narrative of a Three Years’ Residence in Japan (London: Longman, Green, and Roberts, 1863), I, 394.
60 See Money L. Hickman, ed., Japan’s Golden Age, Momoyama (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 70, 85
61 See the book cover to the Penguin edition (1966) of Basho’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which features a reproduction of a portrait of Basho in the Itsuo Museum in Ikeda City, Osaka.
62 Phillip Franz Von Siebold, Manners and Customs of the Japanese in the Nineteenth Century (Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1973[1841]), 25–26.
63 Woods-Marsden, Renaissance Self-Portraiture, 31.
64 See 1-1a, 1-4a, 1-8a, 1-12a, and 1-13a above.
65 Okada, Yoroppa-Bunka to Nihon-Bunka, 33.
66 Primor. Elsewhere (see footnote 17 above) we have translated this term as stylish. Here we elected to go with “dandier” as it seems more consistent with Frois’ thoroughly male-gendered perspective.
67 Aljibeiras.
68 Paris in 1292 (with a population of seventy thousand) had twenty-six public bathhouses. François De Bonneville, The Book of the Bath (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1998[1997]), 34. Today perhaps only the Finns can be said to enjoy public bathing. Garrett G. Fagan, Bathing in Public in the Roman World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 1–2.
69 Chapis.
70 Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 45.
71 Primor.
72 João Rodrigues, This Island of Japon, trans. and ed. Michael Cooper (Tokyo: Kodansha International Limited, 1973[ca. 1620]).
73 Part of the text is missing here, but what is missing begins with the letter ‘r,’ most likely (given the context) remendar, or repair.
74 Okada, Yoroppa-Bunka to Nihon-Bunka, 38.