11 Houses, construction, gardens and fruits
1. Our houses are tall and multi-storied; in Japan they generally are low and at ground level.
European cities, including Lisbon, experienced dramatic population growth during the sixteenth century, which led to the erection of apartment buildings with upwards of four and five stories.1 As Frois suggests, the Japanese also erected multi-story buildings but more frequently their Shoin-style homes were single-story structures that were virtually wall-less. Chamberlain, following Morse, noted:
The side of the [Japanese] house, composed at night of wooden sliding doors called amado, is stowed away in boxes during the day-time. In the summer, everything is thus open to the outside air.2
Even with the floor raised a foot or so off the ground for the sake of ventilation, the Shoin-style house3 had to deal with an ever-present threat of mildew and fleas (see #11 below). To block the rain and provide ventilation, the roof tended to extend well beyond the walls. This design feature also limits the amount of sunlight coming in from overhead. The potted plants that most Japanese kept (and still keep) outside, and the inner gardens of the wealthy, all would suffer from multi-story dwellings. For these reasons, Japan in recent decades passed “sunlight laws” to ensure that new development did not take away people’s right to sunlight.4
2. Our houses are made of stone and mortar; theirs are made of wood, bamboo, straw and mud.
Stone was fairly plentiful in Mediterranean Europe and both rich and poor took advantage of it to erect houses that ranged from humble to palatial.5 In Frois’ Portugal granite was a popular building material in the north, while houses of mud and stucco were common in the south.6 Structures of wood were more common in northern Europe (e.g. the wooden churches of Scandinavia, which are often said to appear oriental). As Frois indicates, wood was the main material for Japanese building. Frois’ Jesuit contemporary, Rodrigues, elaborated:
All the houses of the nobles are constructed of various sorts of precious woods, the usual kind being very fine cedar which is most pleasing on account of its luster; all the pillars are made of this cedar or of even more precious wood. Ordinary folk make use of pine or other inferior timber, although well-bred people build at least their guest house with cedar.
Rodrigues went on to note that wood, being light, was mobile, and “Thus they can move an entire house of this sort to another place nearby without dismantling it, apart from removing the roof from on top because of its weight, and this we have seen them do many times.”7
3. Our houses have foundations that are deep in the ground; Japanese houses have a single stone under each hashira and these stones rest on the ground.
The hashira are large square, wooden pillars standing at each corner and in two walls to support the center-ridge of the roof. All but the smallest houses also have a central hashira, which usually retains at least part of its natural features. Some were and still are completely natural, a reassuringly powerful piece of unpainted, polished natural wood that can be seen and felt inside the house. The butt of each hashira rests on a stone, the bottom half of which is slightly under-ground and visible from the outside. Hashira are usually of cedar and resist rot and termites. These pillars may rest freely on their non-foundations, but they are linked together on top by transverse beams. This is another reason the houses can be moved without being dismantled, as Rodrigues pointed out.
4. Our doors generally hang on hinges; Japanese doors almost all slide on sills.
Sliding doors save space and do not push in or pull out air, which is why they increasingly are the choice for modern buildings. Japanese windows, whether door-size or occasionally small, likewise slide on sills. One exception to this rule was noted by Morse: the Japanese privy often has a hinged (butterfly joint) door.
5. The partitions dividing our rooms are made of stone and mortar or brick; Japanese rooms are divided by doors made of paper.
Japanese houses generally have no internal walls per se. The house is divided into rooms by lightly framed sliding “doors” made of paper. The items described in this and the previous distich are referred to as “doors” in English and Portuguese. The Japanese actually use different terms. The outside front door is called a to, the translucent paper inner door and veranda doors are called shoji, and the generally opaque and lightly ornamented room partitions are called fusuma. The fusuma are grooved above as well as below in such a manner that they can easily be lifted and removed from their tracks, turning several rooms into one.
6. Our roofs are made of tile; in Japan they generally are made of wooden planks, straw, or bamboo.
The homes of Portuguese nobles may have had tile roofs, but the majority of people in Portugal lived in simple rectangular homes with roofs of thatch; even some city dwellers had roofs made of broom straw.8
Japanese nobles, like their European counterparts, often had tile roofs. Indeed, raku ware, which was invented in the 1570s for the tea ceremony, was the work of a gifted artisan who made roof tiles.9 That said, most roofs in Japan, particularly in rural areas, were similar to those on farmhouses in Portugal or England. They appear as an extension of the landscape or even a veritable flower garden. Here is a nineteenth century description by Morse:
In many cases the ridge is flat, and this area is made to support a luxuriant growth of iris, or the red lily (fig. 41). A most striking feature is often seen in the appearance of a brown somber-colored village, wherein all the ridges are aflame with bright-red blossoms of the lily; of farther south, near Tokio [sic], the purer colors of the blue and white iris form floral crests of exceeding beauty.10
Sometimes light and dark colored straws were alternatively laid so that the cleanly cut eaves (up to three feet thick) were decorative. They offered superb insulation and came in a great variety of regional styles, especially in terms of the central ridge design. Note that housing-related Chinese characters show a Far Eastern tendency to identify shelter with the roof (i.e. the house radical is a roof).
7. The wood in our rooms is highly finished and polished; the wood in the rooms where they hold their tea ceremony11 is just as it comes from the woods, in imitation of nature.
Rodrigues wrote many magical pages about the sukiya, the name for a tea hut.12 Because meeting to drink cha was for “the quiet and restful contemplation of the things of nature, … Everything employed in this ceremony is as rustic, rough, completely unrefined and simple as nature made it.”13 Such taste is understandable among literati (and that includes many samurai), who respected sage-poets who lived simple lives in the mountains.14 What is perhaps more impressive is that some ordinary houses showed similar taste. Kaempfer wrote:
The ceiling is sometimes neither planed nor smoothed, by reason of the scarcity [rare] and curious running of the veins and grain of the wood, in which case it is only cover’d with a thin slight couch of a transparent varnish, to preserve it from decaying.15
In the first book on China published in the West (1569), Gaspar da Cruz wrote something very similar about the houses of common folk in China: “The timber is all very smooth and very even, and very finely wrought and placed, that it seemeth to be all polished …”16
8. Our rooms generally have windows that allow in a lot of light; the seating area17 of their tea huts are windowless and dark.
This contrast is ironic if not misleading because the Japanese Shoin-style house was essentially all windows and no walls. Because glass was expensive, European houses in the sixteenth century tended to be all walls and no windows, figuratively speaking.18 However, this contrast does not appear to concern houses per se, but the main seating area in a Japanese tea hut as compared with a “living room” or cámara de paramento in a well-to-do Portuguese home.19 Frois’ preoccupation with the tea hut reflects the fact that the tea ceremony was at the peak of its popularity in 1585. The small, enclosed tea hut, allowed for some very quiet person-to-person communion, and it was a democratic place where the usual rank-related formalities were suspended. All in all, the Jesuits appreciated these retreats, if only because these small shrines to quiet and calmness were embraced by high-ranking Japanese Christians who made chanoyu, or the way-of-tea, a discipline of sorts.
9. Treasure for us consists of items ornamented with gemstones and objects made of gold and silver; the Japanese treasure old cauldrons, old and broken porcelain, clay vases, etc.
Europe during the first half of the sixteenth century, especially Spain and Portugal, was awash in gold, silver, and precious stones, mostly from colonial ventures in Africa, Mexico, Peru, and Asia. Kings, nobles, merchants, and church officials (encouraged by the Council of Trent) commissioned all manner of gilt and jewel-encrusted art and religious objects to decorate their homes, churches, and chapels.20
The Japanese “treasures” referenced here are all items related to chanoyu (See also Chapter 14, #21). Rodrigues explains:
The vessels and dishes used in this gathering are not of gold, silver, or any other precious metal, nor are they richly and finely wrought; instead they are made of clay or iron without any polish, embellishment or anything which might incite the appetite to desire them for their beauty and luster … there are utensils, albeit of earthenware, which come to be worth ten, twenty or thirty thousand cruzados or even more—something which will appear as madness and barbarity to other nations that come to hear of it.21
As an aside, the Portuguese and Spaniards actually made handsome profits importing old pottery from the Philippines, especially caddies reputed to be especially good at keeping tea fresh in the humid season.
10. We decorate our rooms22 with tapestries, godomecis,23 and drapes from Flanders;24 the Japanese have folding screens of paper25 that are decorated in gold or with black ink.
Portugal’s elite and indeed the wealthy throughout Europe were fond of wall coverings, particularly from Flanders and Italy.26 Tapestries were not only decorative but helped insulate large, otherwise drafty rooms. Unlike frescoes and paintings, tapestries also were highly portable.27 So too were godomecis, which were rectangular pieces (ca. 66 × 45 centimeters) of worked leather that were adorned with paint or raised artwork and used as a decorative covering on walls, chests, or as bed canopies.28
Japanese folding screens (byôbu) nearly always had six panels.29 Both gold dust and black ink were commonly used to paint scenes or poetry on them. This is, in a sense, an extension of the last two contrasts, for paper is less substantial than tapestry. Byôbu are still used in Japanese-style homes and especially restaurants.
11. We decorate our [rooms] with carpets and rugs; they use straw cushions.
Carpets from the Middle East and Ottoman Turkey were a symbol of taste and wealth in Frois’ Europe.30 This much is apparent from Renaissance art, which often depicts the homes of Europe’s elite; the homes are decorated with “oriental” rugs on walls and floors and draped over tables (“prayer rugs”). Ambassadors from Venice who visited Portugal in 1580 were amazed at the money (40,000 cruzados) spent by the Portuguese on tapestries.31
The cushions favored by the Japanese were/are a good four to six inches thick, like a mattress. Japanese houses were built so as to conform to what was a standard mattress measurement (called ma; approximately three feet by six feet). Even today the size of a dwelling for rent is advertised in terms of this cushion-size measurement. A roku-ma, or six-cushion apartment, would be understood to have 108 square feet of floor space (a figure that would not include the kitchen and bathroom). This standardization of mats extends to other areas as well, since the length of the mat (180 centimeters) is also the height of “paper doors” of all types and the length of all closets and many beds.
Tatami, while beautiful, soft, light and easier to keep clean than carpet, have one Achilles heel: they are loved by fleas. If you are wealthy enough to get new mats every few years, have a well-ventilated floor (all Japanese houses are supposed to be built up from the ground, but not all actually are) and do not allow your cats to rove, tatami will do you no wrong. Otherwise, you will get fleas. One wonders if most Japanese learn to appreciate them as much as the eighteenth-century Japanese poet, Kobayashi Issa, whose one hundred-plus flea haiku32 include:
beauty is as beauty does [title]
the fleas in my hut
are cute as can be:
because, because
they sleep with me!33
12. We [decorate] our [rooms] with leather trunks and chests34 from Flanders or with cedar chests; the Japanese [decorate] theirs with black baskets made from cow hides.
Marques notes that the chest was second only to the bed as the most important piece of furniture in a Portuguese home of the late Middle Ages.35 In Frois’ day the homes of Europe’s elite still proudly displayed large, elaborately decorated chests of carved wood or leather, including a bride’s coffer or chest. The Flemish were particularly known for their chests, including those covered with leather (cuir bonilli). The leather was first steeped in melted wax and boiled; once hardened it was embossed, painted, gilded, or inlaid with velvet.36
On the Japanese side, it is surprising to find even this black basket, which, according to Okada, was probably woven with a wisteria warp and hide weave, then lightly lacquered. Japanese rooms generally have a large closet (oshi-ire, literally “stuff-in”) that includes a shelved area and boxes for storage. Valuables, however, went under the floors, or in the case of the wealthy, into special storerooms. Quality space could thus be saved for people rather than furniture, which was regarded as so much clutter.
Today, most Japanese have more things to fit in fewer and smaller oshi-ire closets, especially in the cheaply designed apartments called “mansions” that many Japanese call home. The result is clutter, and more interesting still is the fact that this development was observed as early as 1891 by Eliza Scidmore:
The very use of foreign furnishings or utensils seems to abate the national rage for cleanliness, and in any tea-house that aspires to be conducted in the foreign fashion, one discovers a dust, disorder, shabbiness, and want of care that is wholly un-Japanese.37
13. People in Europe sleep up off the floor on beds or cots; in Japan they sleep down low on the mats with which the house is floored.
Frois may overstate the extent to which Europeans slept in cots and beds, as many a peasant was happy to have dry straw to sleep on.38 Certainly those who could afford a bed were likely to share it with other family members or servants.39 Well into the eighteenth century concerned clergy complained that a shortage of beds encouraged incest (“How many sins are committed for lack of bread, and how many for want of a bed?”)40 Marques suggests that it was largely the wealthy in Portugal who enjoyed beds. These often were made of heavy, carved wood and had as many as three mattresses (straw, wool or cotton, feathers), not to mention fine linens and a canopy with curtains.41
Many Japanese still prefer sleeping on a futon or “heavily wadded comforter,” to use Morse’s description. After explaining that the ordinary Japanese house had a minimum of furniture, Alice Mabel Bacon waxed enthusiastically about the futon:
Certainly, the independence of furniture displayed by the Japanese is most enviable, and frees their lives of many cares. Babies never fall out of bed, because there are no beds; they never tip themselves over in chairs for a similar reason. There is nothing in the house to dust, nothing to move when you sweep … the chief worries of a housekeeper’s life are non-existent.42
14. Our bedclothes are always spread out over the bed; in Japan, during the day they are always rolled up and hidden from view.
Generally futon are not rolled up but folded in three and put away in the oshi-ire closet. With the beds stashed away, one need only remove the fusuma and one’s living-room is doubled. In good weather, the futons are hung over balconies and thoroughly beaten. This is still true: every modern apartment must have a place for futons to be aired and beaten.
15. Our pillows are made of feathers, canha,43 or cotton, and they are soft and wide; in Japan, they are made of wood, and they use only a single pillow, one palm in width.
Hard, narrow, and as high as a double pillow, Westerners found Japanese pillows a literal pain in the neck. Why did the Japanese use such pillows? According to Morse:
The pillow was evolved to meet the peculiar method of arranging the hair. The elaborate coiffure of the women and the rigid queue of the men, waxed and arranged to last for a number of days, required a head-rest where these conditions would not be disturbed. In hot weather the air circulates about the neck, and this is very agreeable.44
Okada has suggested that Frois mentioned wooden pillows to maximize his contrast. There also were lacquered, woven-bamboo pillows that still can be found in some old inns. Although more giving than solid wood, they are still far too hard for most Westerners and young Japanese. Golownin also reported that “the higher or richer classes make use of a very neat box, about eleven inches high, to the lid of which an oval cushion is affixed, from six to eight inches in length, and from two to three in breadth. This box contains articles which they make use of at the toilette, such as razors, scissors, pomatum, tooth-brushes, powder, &c.”
Today, the top part of the traditional pillow, the conical cushion, without the wood, survives.
16. In Europe we use draperies, bed hangings and curtains made of damask and silk; in Japan during the summer they use very thin mosquito netting45 made of cotton46 or paper.
Frois is contrasting the decorative curtains and bed enclosures used by European elites year-round with the open beds of the Japanese, which in summer had a very insubstantial yet altogether functional mosquito net. To borrow from a haiku of Issa that is only slightly more popular than the one on the flea/s (#11 above), a summer vesper in Japan is an announcement that one has crossed the border and entered mosquito country (kane naru ya ka-no kuni-ni koyo-koyo-to).
Alcock, who minced no words concerning his hatred for “these Poisoners of the human race, and Destroyers of all peace,” cited the mosquito net as a happy example of Japanese ingenuity. At the various inns where he spent the night when traveling, he attests:
We should have been devoured by the musquitoes had the landlords not come to our rescue by the simplest of all contrivances, a musquito curtain, open at the bottom, made up in the shape of a parallelogram, is let down over the mat (6 feet by 3) selected by the sleeper, a cord is run from each of the four upper corners (into which a sort of eyelet hole has been worked), and four nails driven in to enable a servant to suspend it. Under this, the persecuted martyr creeps, tucking in the sides and ends under his cotton quilt or mat …47
17. Among us, it would be unseemly for a nobleman to sweep his room; Japanese lords48 regularly do so and are proud of it.49
Manual labor of any kind was beneath European nobility;50 even a gifted surgeon, because he worked with his hands, was valued less than a college-educated physician (someone who relied solely on “intellect” to treat the sick).51
The Chinese character for a wife has a woman with a broom over her head, so you might think that men in the Sinosphere were opposed to sweeping, yet many Japanese men seem to have delighted in creating wave patterns in the gravel at Zen temples or in their tea gardens. Golownin also offered this bit of insight:
It is a whimsical rule that the guests must leave the apartments as clean as when they entered them; so that no person ever quits an inn, until he has seen his apartment put into proper order, well swept, and washed if necessary. In short, it would be considered an act, not only of impoliteness, but even of ungratitude, if the smallest speck of dirt was to be left behind. So precise are the Japanese in this respect, that even the Dutch,52 when permitted to traffic there were deemed deficient in neatness.53
Note that Frois might also be referring to the annual Beat-out-the-Dust Day (susu-barai). Every year television news in Japan shows battalions of dust-masked priests and volunteers from the congregation doing what looks like a search-and-destroy mission against enormous temples using brooms and dusters with handles as long as those found on pool-cleaning implements. These annual offensives are led and dominated by men.
18. We cleanse our faces with thin towels; they purposefully54 use coarse cloths that are very thick.55
Apparently “hand towels” in Japan were more likely to be thick and coarse rather than thin and soft.
19. Our latrines must always be hidden behind the house; theirs are out front, in plain view to all.
The West always has had an “out of sight, out of mind” approach to human excrement. Accordingly, the outhouse typically was and is “out back,” far enough away from the house so that no one else has to see, hear, or smell anything, if possible. In the urban residences of European elites the latrine often amounted to a small “house-of-office” or “stool house,” or a niche with a curtain where individuals could relieve themselves.
The outhouse in Japan generally was in the front garden but hardly right by the door, as this contrast might lead one to believe. The gentry generally had inside toilets as well, in the far rear or on the far north side of the house. The nobility’s toilets were located inside an interior garden, with one for the lord and very favored guests and another for the women of the house. With a number of lavatories and lavatory practices to choose from, there are many more contrasts Frois could have made:
We use water; they use sand.
We do not take particular measures to reduce noise; they spread leaves in the urinal.
We face out to defecate; they face in.
Why, then, was Frois struck by this particular contrast in the location of toilets? It may reflect his long stay in Miyako (Kyoto), the city that made the greatest efforts to recycle human waste, even boasting public toilets in front of shops on the main avenue and at many crossroads. The Kyoto area was and still is known for its many fine leafy vegetables (they even have a type of cabbage large enough to feed a small village), and this meant that urine, with its phosphate, was in particularly high demand, with people even directly bartering it for vegetables.
People from Edo (Tokyo) were as astounded as foreigners to see urinals out in front of the outhouses proper in Kyoto, in full view of passersby. What shocked them even more was the fact that women also used them, standing with their kimonos hiked up, buttocks bent out slightly over the troughs. And these were not only servants; the wives of wealthy merchants also joined in. Over a hundred years after Frois, senryu poets, largely from Edo, could not resist taking a dig at Kyoto and its women, who were otherwise considered the ideal of womanhood.
20. We sit; they squat.
This refers to what the Japanese call doing the “big” one, or what Americans refer to as “number two.” Sixteenth-century Europeans went to the bathroom by sitting on “closed stools” or chairs with holes in the seat that allowed the urine and excrement to fall into a chamber pot, cesspool, running water, or the ground. At night, when it was often too cold to venture far, Europeans might forgo a trip to the privy and squat in their bedroom over a chamber pot that was dumped in the morning.
When somebody from Europe or the United States who is not used to squatting squats, they often need to grab on to something so as to not tip over. The Japanese, for their part, can read a book while squatting in the toilet. The trick is getting the upper part of your foot to come closer to your shin so that you may squat flat on your heels.
21. We pay someone to carry our excrement away; in Japan they buy it and give rice and money in exchange for it.
European cities in Frois’ day generally lacked what we think of as sanitation systems; most people simply tossed their excrement into a nearby cesspool or river or dumped it into the street at night (with the next significant rainfall gravity might take it to a nearby stream or river). Portugal’s João II, who reigned from 1481–1495, became so offended with the citizens of Lisbon and their cavalier “overturning of chamberpots” that he proposed the construction of a city-wide sewer system. Such a system was still a dream in 1585.56 More affluent Europeans paid people to remove their bodily wastes. As one might imagine, “scavengers” and “goungfermours” were poorly paid for collecting waste and cleaning streets, cesspools, and privies. Social approbation went hand-in-hand with low wages.
As previously suggested, the Japanese attitude toward human waste was much more practical. A straight exchange of rice or some other commodity was common for buckets of urine, while ordure was usually purchased, and food, if offered, was a bonus. In Osaka and Kyoto, according to Aramata,57 waste products comprised a not-to-be-laughed-about portion of the family income. Even store clerks were reimbursed for their contribution. In parts of Japan, four people renting a small room could pay their entire rent with their waste, which is to say, they could stay for free. Kaempfer gives the situation in the seventeenth-century countryside:
… care is taken, that the filth of travelers be not lost, and there are in several places, near country people’s houses, or in the fields, houses of office for them to do their needs. Old shoes of horses and men, which are thrown away as useless, are gather’d in the same houses, and burnt to ashes, along with the filth, for common dung, which they manure all their fields withal. Provisions of this nasty composition are kept in large tubs, or tuns, which are buried even with the ground, in their villages and fields, and being not cover’d, afford full as ungrateful and putrid a smell of radishes (which is the common food of country people) to tender noses, as the neatness and beauty of the road is agreeable to the eyes.58
Most Japanese apparently were inured to the stench, and even toward the end of the twentieth century they put up with the incredibly pungent smell of raw human waste coming from their kumitori toilet. Ironically, this foul-smelling “scoop-take” toilet is a modern invention, which, according to Aramata, is based on the “septic toilet” system minus the septic tank. Instead of waste being channeled away to a distant cistern, it collects in a concrete cistern directly below the toilet, from which it is collected once a year or so.59
Stench aside, the Japanese arrangement made far more sense than ours. Morse alone, in 1877, recognized it as more hygienic than our practices:
Somewhat astonished at learning that the death-rate of Tokyo was lower than that of Boston, I made some inquiries about health matters. I learned that dysentery and cholera infantum are never known here … But those diseases which at home are attributed to bad drainage, imperfect closets [toilet systems], and the like seem to be unknown or rare, and this freedom from such complaints is probably due to the fact that all excrementitious matter is carried out of the city by men who utilize it for their farms and rice fields. With us, this sewage is allowed to flow into our coves and harbors, polluting the water and killing all aquatic life; and the stenches arising from the decomposition and filth are swept over the community to the misery of all … It seems incredible that in a vast city like Tokyo this service should be performed by hundreds of men who have their regular routes. The buckets are suspended on carrying sticks and the weight of these full buckets would tax a giant.60
22. In Europe horse manure is spread on vegetable gardens and human excrement is thrown on dunghills; in Japan horse dung is thrown on dunghills and human excrement goes onto vegetable gardens.
It is not likely that horse manure was thrown away. It may not have been sold in the city but it was surely used by someone for something. Moreover, it is debatable to what extent the Japanese actually had dunghills in the sense that we understand them. Haiku often mention sweep piles (hakidome) and specific piles of shellfish shells, disposable chopsticks or flower petals, but all of these were small and temporary. Honest-to-goodness dumps were hard to find, as noted by Morse in the late nineteenth century:
In country village and city alike the houses of the rich and poor are never rendered unsightly by garbage, ash piles, and rubbish; one never sees those large communal piles of ashes, clam shells and the like that are often encountered in the outskirts of our quiet country villages. In refined Cambridge … This land was so disfigured by a certain type of rubbish that for years it was facetiously called the “tin canyon”! The Japanese in some mysterious way manage to bury, burn, or utilize their waste and rubbish so that it is never in existence.61
A century after Frois, Kaempfer noted that horse dung does not “lie long upon the ground but it is soon taken up by poor country children and serves to manure the fields.” Obviously, horse dung, and also cow dung, was not as abundant as human offal, while cow urine apparently was not used at all, for an old Japanese proverb equates “the lectures of parents to a cow urinating: long and good for nothing.”
23. We lock our trunks with iron locks; they close their baskets with cords, paper seals, or padlocks from China.
Trunks during the Middle Ages often had sliding-bolt locks or padlocks. During the sixteenth century they were increasingly fitted with various new types of locks that were manufactured in southern Germany.
Here Frois would seem to be contrasting solid protection with something far less secure. The Chinese padlock in question would not be of more than nominal value on a weak basket. Locks are not a key part of Japanese culture to begin with. As noted previously, when Japanese doors were locked, it was generally by bolt from the inside only and not by lock and key.
24. We make our chests with compartments inside; they make boxes that fit one inside the other62 in their baskets.
This contrast suggests a more general one that Frois missed, which Lee O-Young focused on in his book Furoshiki Bunka no Posuto-Modan:
We Europeans put things into solid containers or fill up soft ones of a predetermined size; they wrap up things in furoshiki [attractive square cloth] to fit the size of the thing.
In China, Korea and Japan a cloth rather than a container of fixed size is used to store or carry things. Objects are first set on the cloth or furoshiki and then the opposing corners are tied diagonally, two at a time. Professor Lee claims that this “primary opposition” of cultural codes, i.e. “putting in” (the box principle) versus “wrapping up” (the cloth principle), goes back to primeval times. Lee boasts that the greater versatility of the furoshiki, which bring to mind morphing robot toys (largely a Japanese invention), make the Far East more fit for the postmodern world. The box or Ark, suggests Lee, will no longer save us.
25. Our carpenters work standing up; theirs generally always remain seated.
For “us” sitting supposedly impedes all physical work except pushing papers. However, for most cultures (not just Japan’s) sitting allows more work to be done. Not only does it save energy wasted on standing; it also frees up the feet to join in the work. As Percival Lowell put it, “from the tips of his fingers to the tips of his toes, in whose use he is surprisingly proficient, he (the Far Oriental) is the artist all over.”63 People all over the globe used to use their feet in this way, but in Europe and the United States “we” only encourage people without functioning arms to use their feet. Today, most carpenters in Japan feed their table saws from a standing position, but people working on sheet metal and other materials not requiring large tables can still be seen seated on their tatami, with their feet out, fast at work.
26. Our gimlets make holes using the strength of our arms; those of the Japanese are turned by striking them repeatedly with a mallet.
A gimlet is a T-shaped twist drill that works much like a simple corkscrew, which was once called a gimlet. Because the spiral starts close to the tip, “our” drill or gimlet can start screwing from the outset by simply applying a bit of downward pressure and torque.
The Japanese drill was not a spiral. Indeed, the first screws had just arrived in Japan (in the harquebus) and would not find other uses for quite a while. The Japanese drill used a different method to bore, namely three or four very sharp edges (the mitsume-giri had three edges and the yotsume-giri, four). While both Japanese drills work well for boring and enlarging holes, getting them started (the first half-inch or so) is difficult and requires a hammer to gain “purchase.” This is apparently what Frois was struck by (no pun intended).
27. In Europe one does not feed carpenters or their helpers; in Japan they are fed wherever they work, as are their assistants, who do nothing.
This is still true in Japan. Carpenters may bring some snacks of their own or go out for a soft drink, but the lady of the house usually brings out trays of food and tea. Alice Mabel Bacon was of the opinion that:
So rigid are the requirements of Japanese hospitality that no guest is ever allowed to leave a house without having been pressed to partake of food, if it be only tea and cake. Even tradesmen or messengers who come to the house must be offered tea, and if carpenters, gardeners or workmen of any kind are employed about the house, tea must be served in the middle of the afternoon with a light lunch, and tea sent out to them often during their day’s work.64
Another factor may be considered together with this hospitality, and Bacon herself gave much of her chapter on “domestic service” to it. To wit, the Japanese were fundamentally more egalitarian than Westerners when it came to their attitude toward servants and other people doing menial work.
… in Europe and America a servant is expected never to show any interest in, or knowledge of, the conversation of his betters, never to speak unless addressed, and never to smile under any circumstances.65
28. Our adze is large and wide and can perform many tasks; Japanese adzes look like a toy.
Today houses in the United States and Europe often are built with a frame of 2×4 or 2×6 lumber, which carpenters simply order from a lumberyard. In the sixteenth century carpenters had to essentially fashion their own framing timber, and the adze, which had a short handle and a relatively long and wide blade, was the tool of choice for transforming rough-sawn lumber (supplied by a sawyer) into squared beams. (Adzes with smaller blades were used to carve joints or mortises in the beams, which “snapped” together, so to speak.)
The Japanese adze was made from a single piece of iron and had a long, thin handle and a short and narrow blade (relative to the adze used in Europe). Presumably the blade on the Japanese adze was incredibly sharp (as with their other cutting blades), in which case it may not have required the larger mass or size of the Western adze(s). Japanese use of bamboo and soft woods such as cedar may also help explain the smaller size of their adze.
29. In Europe a house is built at the pace the lumber is prepared; in Japan they first prepare all the lumber for the house and then erect it in very short order.
The Japanese actually took just three or four days to erect a house, and this is still true today. A carpenter spends most of his days at home planing, marking, cutting and otherwise preparing parts for assembly. If you are a friend of the carpenter and visit him, you can see he is very busy. Otherwise, you get a very different impression of construction in Japan. Because the foundation is usually laid long before the home itself is ready, an observer might wonder “when are they going to get started.” However, a few days later the house is finished. This approach to construction may make sense in a country with earthquakes, typhoons, and monsoon rainfall, which do not respect half-built buildings.
30. Among us, the more figures in a painting, the better; in Japan, the fewer the better.
Renaissance art such as Quentin Massys’ “Adoration of the Magi,” Tintoretto’s “Last Supper,” or the Manueline artist Nuno Golçalves’ polypytch of São Vicente de Fora,66 are known for their detail and crowded spacing.67 Perhaps this is what Frois meant by “the more figures in a painting the better.” Although Okada has pointed out that genre pictures (fûzoku-e) full of people were painted on screens (byôbu) in sixteenth-century Japan, perhaps the most highly respected genre of painting was sumi-e, or black-ink painting, which was decidedly minimalist. (Frois and Valignano both were amazed that the Japanese ruler, Hydeoshi, spent a fortune on a black ink painting “of a withered tree with a bird in it.”) As Rodrigues explained:
… although they copy nature in their paintings, they do not like a multitude and crowd of things in their pictures, but prefer to portray, even in a sumptuous and lovely palace, just a few solitary things with due proportion between them …68
There is one caveat to this “less is more” esthetic: Kano Eitoku (1543–1590) transformed Japanese painting in 1576 when he was commissioned by Nobunaga to execute huge, wall paintings (shôhekiga) for Azuchi castle; the paintings purportedly featured clouds of gold dust and flowers and birds in brilliant colors, and rather than a few solitary things, left little to the imagination.69
31. We purposefully plant trees in our gardens that will bear fruit; the Japanese place greater esteem on planting trees in their gardens70 that bear only flowers.
The Moorish occupation of Iberia during the latter part of the Middle Ages turned the southern third of the peninsula into a veritable garden. The Japanese ambassadors to Europe reported that a single orchard in Lisbon had no less than seventy-six varieties of pears.71 (No wonder Columbus described the shape of the earth as a pear.)
Japan was practically fruitless. What surprised the Jesuits, however, was not so much the absence of fruit and the abundance of flowers in Japanese gardens, but the fact that the very trees Europeans cultivated for fruit were, in Japan, feted for their bloom. If we do not specify that we are talking about a tree, the words “cherry” and “plum” are assumed to refer to the fruit. In Japan, on the other hand, these trees became synonymous with their blooms, so much so that people use the generic term hana (flowers/bloom) all by itself to refer to what we call a tree.72
The premier garden tree was and is the plum (some say it is actually a variety of apricot). It blooms right on the broken back of winter, at what was the New Year in Japan, attracting the bush warbler (rightly translated as a nightingale to preserve its trope), whose first call was eagerly awaited. Moreover, a big deal is made of the plum’s scent, which is said to slip inside the house and permeate all the cold corners of the room. Because the plum tree’s Chinese rendering combines a tree radical with a mother, the very name has a warm, motherly character, further enhanced by a homophonic affinity with birth.
32. We use fireplaces; the Japanese use a covered cotaccus73 in the center of the house.
The main source of heat in a sixteenth-century home in Portugal and other parts of Europe was the kitchen hearth. European elites might have homes with fireplaces in halls or bedrooms. In Frois’ day, and still today, Iberians also made use of “space heaters” in the form of braziers.74 (The brazier typically amounted to a metal box with heated coals, which is placed under a bed or under a table draped with a heavy cloth that reaches to the floor.)
As noted in Chapter 6, Japanese homes during the sixteenth century generally had an irori, a centrally located, square sunken hearth that functioned much like the kitchen hearth in European homes (i.e. a place to cook and source of heat). The kotatsu essentially is an irori with a wooden frame raised up over it, which in turn is covered with a large quilt. The great traveler, Isabela Bird, who had been around the British Isles and the American West before visiting Japan, put the kotatsu into international perspective. With “the whole” of a Japanese house “being merely a porous screen from the inclemency of the weather,” … “the invitation to creep under the kotatsu is as welcome as the “sit-in” of the Scotch Highlands or the “put your feet in the stove” of Colorado.”75
Okada points out that the kotatsu is a Chinese invention. Still, it is the Japanese who have championed it (haiku is full of kotatsu) and developed it into a splendid heater. Along these lines, there is a hori-kotatsu (which is what Frois seems to be referring to here), consisting of a recessed pit in the floor that contains coals. There is also a modern version, the denki-kotatsu, which amounts to a small electrical heater attached to the bottom of a table.
33. In Europe one pays for the sawyer but not the saw; in Japan you pay the same per day for the saw as you do for the sawyer.
Sawyers in Europe and other skilled laborers in the building trades had modest financial resources and often preferred “simple” as opposed to “ambitious” contracts, that is, many preferred to hire out their labor for a set period at a set wage rather than contract for a job that required them to invest in equipment or assistants who might not be needed once a particular project was finished.76
Perhaps because Japan was home to feudal lords with “deep pockets” who could employ workers on huge construction projects,77 many sawyers and other craftsmen favored ambitious contracts that entailed both their labor and equipment.
34. The lawns in our courtyards78 are valued as a place for sitting; in Japan they purposefully79 remove all grass from the grounds.
All grass is considered a weed by the Japanese, except for bamboo, mungo grass (called ryu-no-hige or dragon-whisker) and grass for walking on. The word for grass is the same as the word for weed, and what we call “weed-pulling” the Japanese call kusa-tori or “grass-taking.” This lack of sympathy toward all things not growing in pots, gardens, or farm fields is said to derive from a farmer’s control-oriented mentality. As Tetsuro Watsuji pointed out in his 1935 classic Fudo: ningengakuteki kōsatsu (wind-earth = natural feature = theory), Japanese crops, unlike those in Europe, were in perpetual danger of being overtaken by the weeds that grow in Japan’s warm, humid summers. Today if you ask, most Japanese are likely to say that their grass taking is to prevent mosquitoes and other harmful bugs (gaichu) from “boiling up” (waki-deru) during the humid season and to allow more air to circulate, preventing houses from rotting. Some Japanese, however, add, “We Japanese like mud, it makes us nostalgic for our paddy fields.”
35. In Europe the streets run to the center, thus allowing the water to drain; in Japan, the streets are high in the center and low next to the houses so that the water can run alongside them.
Here is a clear case of where “we” have changed our ways, as streets that are slightly higher in the center (i.e. crowned) are the norm in the United States and Europe. Today the only streets with a gulley going down the center is likely to be of cobblestone in the “old town” or late medieval section of European cities. Okada cites a Japanese source indicating that Kyoto streets were especially high in the middle. Frois explains immediately below how the Japanese handled water that ran down the sides of the road and in front of their doors.
36. In Europe, the entrance to a house is flush with the ground; in Japan, they build bridges using some wood or stones to enter the house.
European practice makes sense, inasmuch as water was forced to the center rather than the sides of the street (recall #21 above and the dumping of chamber pots late at night or at dawn). The small bridges used by the Japanese likewise allowed the water to flow down the street unobstructed while keeping the entrance high and dry. Needless to say, they also provided an aesthetic opportunity.
37. In Europe, the front door of a home opens directly onto the street; in Japan, they open into their yard or garden,80 and they make an effort to have them not open directly onto the street.
Frois is obviously talking about townhouses in European cities such as his own Lisbon. In Japan, the gate and the door are still generally separate, even for small houses with miniscule yards. One can think of the space between as a buffer because the doors themselves are not very strong, the house itself has few walls, and the front door, like the rest of the house, is left wide open all day in the summer.
But Frois’ contrast only concerns the houses of the gentry. Many if not most of the homes of townsmen and almost all boarding houses in most parts of Japan had no front garden. A note by Golownin’s editor describes the Japan of the “common folk:”
In their houses, the street door always stands open; but there is a jealousy or blind put up at the entrance, formed of small network, which prevents the inmates from being seen, without impeding their sight.81
The biggest difference with Europe would seem to be that the door in Japan remains open. In addition to the blind, which is usually completely open for the bottom three feet, the Japanese take additional measures to prevent dust and heat from blowing in from the street, such as regularly dashing or sprinkling water in front of their homes.
38. In Europe, we build fountains coming out of a wall that are squared and clean; in Japan, they dig small ponds or basins in the ground, with nooks and small inlets and with rocks and little islands in the middle.
There is a world of difference in aesthetic taste expressed here: geometrical perfection (Europe) versus natural scenic beauty (Japan). Arguably, it is the Japanese and not Europeans who long for the Garden of Eden. Today in the West, the Far-Eastern-looking pond (for the credit hardly belongs to Japan alone) may well be more common than rectangular ones. Still, one might only wish that Eliza Scidmore’s prediction came true, namely, “a Japanese gardener will doubtless come to be considered as necessary a part of a great American establishment as a French maid or an English coachman.”82
In all fairness to the West, quite a few homes and estates of wealthy Europeans in the sixteenth century featured gardens and fountains that anticipated Disney World in their hydraulic engineering and “playfulness.” The Japanese teenagers who acted as ambassadors to Europe at the time Frois wrote the Tratado went on for pages (Dialogue 21) about the fabulous gardens they visited, particularly in Italy, which had fountains that squirted “spears of water” such that there was not a single place in the garden where you were safe from a water attack.83
39. We work to get our trees to grow straight upward; in Japan, they purposefully84 hang stones from the branches so that they will grow crooked.
Watsuji claimed that the mild climate of the Mediterranean produced straight trees that seemed artificial to the Japanese, who were used to the windblown, gnarled trees of their own country. While wind may have created the irregularity of Japanese pines in the mountains, Watsuji might have given his countrymen a bit more credit for their work to make domestic trees look “natural.” Alcock was impressed:
It is perfectly astonishing to see the amount of industry and perseverance which the Japanese must have devoted to the production of these plants. There were some little fir trees, not more than a foot in height, and yet I counted upward of fifty ties, by means of which the shoots were bent backward and forward in a zigzag way.85
Some Westerners say the result is stunted and ugly; Frois used the word tortas (meaning “bent” or “crooked”), which shares its root with the English word tortured. Such is the life of a pine tree that has endured for more than a century on the side of a mountain in the face of a brisk wind.
40. We wash our hands and face in silver or porcelain hand basins; in Japan they wash in a wooden tub,86 which at most is lacquered.
The wooden tub or tarai is usually made like a barrel, out of slats reinforced with soft metal bands. These small tubs are used not only for washing one’s face and hands, but also to scoop water out of the bath to wash oneself. Frois caught a small contrast but missed a large one:
We wash with soap inside the bath; they wash and rinse off outside the bath before climbing in.
41. We pour water for our hands through the spouts of our pitchers so that they produce a slow, thin stream; they pour water out of wooden pails, unleashing a very strong stream.
This is a fairly arcane contrast, although Frois seems to depict the washing of hands in Europe as controlled and economical and perhaps more aesthetically pleasing (imagine a pitcher that was probably made of metal or porcelain, versus a wooden bucket). Frois would no doubt be impressed with contemporary Japanese flush toilets, which, when activated, send a little stream of water through the air (you can stick your fingers into the stream and clean them) and then into the tank to refill it.
42. In Europe ordinarily our roofs are clean; in Japan they are loaded down with stones, wood, and bamboo to protect them from the wind.
Much of Japan is like Chicago, and the same gusts of wind that lead to crooked trees can also blow the straw off a poor man’s roof. Big stones are still found on houses that have roofs made of straw or the more popular corrugated tin. Not all are there for wind protection, however, as Okada notes that stones and lumber sometimes were (and are) stored on the roof. The main roof of finely laid straw was usually too sharply sloped for stones to rest upon, and it was heavy enough by itself, so the roofs referred to here by Frois were likely on tiny shacks or were a type of awning-like extension sometimes found on larger roofs.
43. Our pine trees generally bear fruit; in Japan, even though there is an infinite number of pine trees and they bear nuts the size of walnuts, they are worthless.
The Italian stone pine is the most common fruit-bearing pine tree found in Spain, Portugal, and Italy. For centuries the tree’s pignolia nuts have figured prominently in Mediterranean cuisine (e.g. toasted and tossed with pasta, sun-dried tomato, olive oil, garlic, and feta cheese).
The Japanese white pine is as common in Japan as the stone pine is in Mediterranean Europe. Presumably, this is the tree Frois had in mind when he noted it produced inedible fruit. However, “worthless” is a bit extreme, as Kaempfer noted that pine nuts were gathered for use as fuel.
44. Our cherry trees bear very tasty and beautiful cherries; those in Japan bear cherries that are very small and bitter, but also very beautiful flowers that the Japanese value.
In the twenty years that one of us (Gill) lived in Japan he never noticed Japanese cherries, much less heard of anyone tasting them. These develop after the blossoms fall, and nobody goes to view the cherries, but instead focuses on the pretty, dappled shade of the cherry trees. Until something the Japanese call the “cherry-peach” (sakura-momo) was imported in the nineteenth century, there were no real fruit-bearing cherries in Japan. On the other hand, Japanese flowering cherries now bring delight to people by the Reflecting Pool in Washington D.C. and elsewhere.
45. Among us, when one picks a fragrant rose or carnation, we first smell it and then examine it visually; the Japanese pay no attention to the smell and take pleasure only in the visual experience.
Japanese native plants that are the closest equivalents of the “rose” and “carnation” (a briar rose and a pink) are practically without scent, and the cherry blossom is also scentless. Nevertheless, the Japanese pay almost as much attention to the scent of the official bloom of the New Year, the plum flower, as “we” pay to the rose. The difference is that the rose literally is brought to the nose (or vice-versa), while plum blossoms fill the air (all the way to the hazy moon, if haiku are to be believed).
46. We have many roses, flowers, carnations and herbs that are fragrant and quite aromatic; in Japan, very few of these things have a fragrance.
Frois is correct, although he might have noted that the violet is an exception to his rule, at least according to poets such as Issa. The violet’s scent is famous for its effervescence; soon after you have smelled it, you no longer do, so it would hardly work for perfume.
47. Europeans find the fragrant water from roses, angelicas, etc. very pleasing; the Japanese do not find any of these scents pleasing.
Rose water was made by distilling rose petals or by simply letting the petals soak in water for two or three weeks (the more economical route). As far back as the Romans rosewater was something of an aphrodisiac and a means of treating depression. Angelica, including Angelica heterocarpa, a native of Iberia, is an aromatic flower (yellow or greenish in color) that was thought to be especially efficacious against spells and enchantments.
If the Japanese were not wild about rosewater or angelicas this was because they were not used to such scents, which were much sweeter than their own plum blossom or incense. Even today the Japanese feel that Westerners use perfumes that are too powerful. However, it would be remiss not to mention one scent the Japanese do appreciate: thick peels from oranges that are placed in bathwater.
48. We greatly esteem the scent from balsamic resins, calendulas, etc.; the Japanese think they are strong and cannot tolerate them, nor do they find them pleasing.
Calendulas or marigolds are said to have a scent that resembles the smell of hops, which might help explain why they were esteemed by Europeans.87 The Japanese also found balsamic resins or benzoin offensive or “too strong.” One wonders if the occasional bathing of Europeans, as opposed to the daily bathing of the Japanese, had something to do with the differences in their attitudes toward scents.
1 Between 1528 and 1590, the population of Lisbon went from 70,000 to over 120,000. Vitorino Magalháes Godinho, A Estrutura Da Antiga Sociedade Portuguesa (Lisbon: Arcádia, 1980), 27. See also Raffaella Sarti, “The Material Conditions of Family Life.” In The History of the European Family, Volume I, Family Life in Early Modern Times, 1500–1789, eds. David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli, pp. 11–23 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 7; Damião de Góis, Lisbon in the Renaissance, A New Translation of Urbis Olisiponis Descriptio, trans. Jeffrey S. Ruth (Ithaca, N.Y.: Ithaca Press, 1996[1554]); A.R. Disney, A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2009), 148.
2 Basil Hall Chamberlain, Things Japanese, Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected with Japan. Fourth revised and enlarged edition (London: John Murray, 1902), 24; Edward S. Morse, Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings (New York: Dover Publications, 1961[1886]). The latter is still considered an excellent source on Japanese architecture.
3 See Fumio Hashimoto, Architecture in the Shoin Style: Japanese Feudal Residences, trans. H.M. Horton (Tokyo: Kodansha and Shibundo, 1981).
4 The contemporary situation in Japan is summarized well by Richard Ronald, “Homes and houses, senses and spaces.” In Home and Family in Japan, eds. R. Ronald and A. Alexy, pp. 174–200 (London: Routledge, 2011).
5 Sarti, “The Material Conditions of Family Life,” 4.
6 Orlando Ribeiro, Geografia e Civilização: Temas Portuguesas (Lisbon: Livros Horizontes, 1992), 31; A. H. de Oliveira Marques, Daily Life in Portugal in the Late Middle Ages (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971), 97.
7 Michael Cooper, They Came to Japan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965), 216–217.
8 Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 117, 119 (fig. 67).
9 Nicole C. Rousmaniere,“Tea Ceremony Utensils & Ceramics.” In Japan’s Golden Age, Momoyama, ed. Money L. Hickman, pp. 203–236 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 206.
10 Edward S. Morse, Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings (New York: Dover, 1961[1886]), 93.
11 Chanoyu, which transliterates as “tea’s hot-water,” refers to what is commonly called the tea ceremony. In Japanese, different words are used for hot water (yu), water (mizu) and cold water (ohiya).
12 See especially João Rodrigues, Arte del Cha, ed. J.L. Alvarez-Taladriz. Monumenta Nipponica Monographs 14 (Tokyo: Sophia University, [1620]1954, 81–96
13 João Rodrigues, This Island of Japon, trans. and ed., Michael Cooper (Tokyo: Kodansha International Limited, 1973[1620]), 264.
14 See Dennis Hirota, Wind in the Pines, Classic Writings of the Way of Tea as a Buddhist Path (Fremont, California: Asian Humanities Press, 1995).
15 Engelbert Kaempfer, 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]), II, 319.
16 See C.R. Boxer, ed. South China in the sixteenth century, being the narratives of Galeote Pereira, Fr. Gaspar da Cruz, O.P. [and] Fr. Martín de Rada, O.E.S.A. (1550–1575) (London: Hakluyt Society, 1953), 99.
17 Zaxiqis.
18 Most window glass in Frois’ Europe was made from blown glass cylinders that were opened into sheets. Such windows were generally small and relatively expensive, as compared with windows with “panes” of paper, pressed horn, or oiled canvas.
19 Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 121–122.
20 Dias, “The Manueline,” 32–34.
21 Rodrigues, This Island of Japon, 264–265.
22 The Portuguese original is corrupted. Although Schütte suggests ‘houses,’ it seems that ‘rooms’ (from ‘camaras’) is more probable, given that this is the term Frois uses in both 7 and 8 above. It appears that “rooms” is also the referent in 11 and 12 below.
23 Ricardo de la Fuente Ballesteros, ed. and trans., Tratado sobre las contradicciones y diferencias de costumbres entre los europeos y japoneses por Luis Frois (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2003[1585]), 103, suggests that the term is from the Arabic gadaamesii, which, according to Corominas and Pascal, refers to the Libyan city of Gadames, where this famous item was made. The word is documented as early as the twelfth century, in the poem El Cid. In Spanish the word is rendered as guadamecíes (plural of guadamecí).
24 Panos de Frandes.
25 Beobus [byôbu], or in Portuguese, biombo.
26 Pedro Dias, “Manueline Art.” In Museum With No Frontiers Exhibition The Manueline, Portuguese Art During the Great Discoveries, pp. 22–38 (Lisbon: Programa de Incremento do Turismo Cultural, 2002), 34.
27 Lisa Jardine, Worldly Goods: a New History of The Renaissance (New York: Nan A. Talese, 1996).
28 Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 131–132.
29 For some examples of these screens, which depict Japanese interaction with Europeans, see Money L. Hickman, ed., Japan’s Golden Age: Momoyama (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); Yukio Lippit,“Os Biombos Dos Bárbaros Do Sul.” In Portugal E O Mundo Nos Séculos XVI E XVII, 343–354 (Lisbon: Museu Nacional de Arte Antíga, 2009). See also Naban Art: A Loan Exhibition from Japanese Collections, eds. Shin’ichi Tani and Tadashi Sugase (International Exhibitions Foundation, 1973).
30 Rosamond Mack, Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
31 Dias, “Manueline Art, 34.
32 Shinano Kyoiku-kai, ed., Issa Zenshuu, Vol. 1, Hokku. (Nagano: Shinano Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1979), 377.
33 Iori no nomi kawai ya ware to inurunari (shack’s flea/s cute! me-with sleep-become).
34 Frois used the word arca for both leather and cedar furniture. (In Portuguese, the word encompasses chest, large box, treasure and the ark). Another interesting note is that Frois spells Flanders as “Frandes” rather than “Flandres.” One might assume that the loss of ‘r’ in the final syllable and the substitution of ‘r’ for ‘l’ in the initial syllable are a reflection of Frois’ lengthy contact with the Japanese language, particularly given the well-known phenomenon of Japanese speakers who confuse the liquid consonants ‘r’ and ‘l’ when they speak European languages. Such an assumption would be mistaken, however, as this substitution of ‘r’ for ‘l’ is a common feature in the historical development of Portuguese. There are many such examples, so while Latin fluitare ‘to flow’ is the root of Modern Portuguese flutuar ‘to float,’ we also find examples such as frota ‘fleet (of ships)’ from the Old French flote, as well as branco ‘white’ from the Old Germanic blank.
35 Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 127.
36 Esther Singleton, Furniture (New York: Duffield and Company, 1911), 102.
37 Jinriksha Days in Japan, 375.
38 Thomas, The Ends of Life, 117.
39 Sarti, “The Material Conditions of Family Life,” 5–6.
40 Brian Pullan,“The Counter–Reformation, Medical Care and Poor Relief,” In Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe, eds. Ole P. Grell, Andrew Cunningham, and Jon Arrizabalaga, pp. 18–40 (London; Routledge, 1999), 19.
41 Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 123–127.
42 Alice Mabel Bacon, A Japanese Interior (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1893), 42.
43 Although Schütte has suggested that Frois intended “canga,” cana, which can be translated as reeds or rushes, seems to make more sense in the context of stuffing for a bed pillow.
44 Japan Day By Day, I, 62.
45 Cayas [kaya].
46 Nuno.
47 Alcock, Capital of the Tycoon, II, 423.
48 Senhores.
49 Tem antre si por primor.
50 Thomas, The Ends of Life, 83.
51 Laurence Brockliss and Colin Jones, The Medical World of Early Modern France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 188–189.
52 Cleanliness was so celebrated in Holland that Dutch warships had brooms atop their masts, signaling that they would sweep the sea of their enemies.
53 Captain Vasilĭi Mikhăilovich Golownin, Memoirs of a Captivity in Japan during the years 1811, 1812, and 1813 (London: Henry Colburn & Company, 1824), III, 135.
54 Vaza to. We noted with surprise in the previous chapter Frois’ use of this Japanese expression that means “on purpose” (see Chapter 10, #15).
55 Liteiros ou tomentos muito grossos. The term liteiro refers to a wool-blend fabric typical of the Alentejo region of Portugal, and tomento refers to the coarsest fibers taken from the flax plant.
56 Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 141.
57 Hiroshi Aramata, Nihon Gyôten Kigen [Japan-shocking-origins] (Shûeisha, 1994), 80.
58 Englelbert Kaempfer, 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]), II, 293–294.
59 Aramata, Nihon Gyôten Kigen, 102.
60 Morse, Japan Day By Day, I, 23. Note that in his later book, Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings, Morse qualified his remarks, admitting that the runoff from the fertilizer might sometimes cause cholera in the southern part of Japan.
61 Ibid., 42.
62 Caquegos [kakego].
63 The Soul of the Far East (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1888), 111.
64 Japanese Girls and Women (London: Kegan Paul, 2001[1892]), 79.
65 Ibid, 250.
66 See the “Prince’s Panel” in particular, In Museum With No Frontiers Exhibition “The Manueline: Portuguese Art During the Great Discoveries,” pp. 48–49 (Lisbon: Programa de Incremento do Turismo Cultural, 2002), 30–31.
67 Anne Fitzpatrick, The Renaissance (Mankato, MN: Creative Education, 2006), 38.
68 Cooper, They Came to Japan, 254.
69 Carolyn Wheelwright, “A Visualization of Eitoku’s Lost Paintings at Azuchi Castle.” In Warlords, Artists, & Commoners, eds. George Elison and Bardwell Smith, pp. 87–112. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1981), 96.
70 Nivas [niwa].
71 Valignano, De Missione Legatorum Iaponen, Dialogue 17.
72 See Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, “Cherry Blossoms and Their Viewing.” In The Culture of Japan as Seen Through Its Leisure, eds. Sepp Linhart and Sabine Fruhstuck, pp. 213–237 (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998).
73 Kotatsu.
74 Marques, Daily Life in Portugal, 134–135.
75 Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987[1880]), 254.
76 Richard A. Goldthwaite, The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic and Social History (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1982), 126.
77 Oda Nobunaga employed thousands of laborers for three years (1576–1579) on the construction of “Azuchi castle,” which included not simply a magnificent residence for himself, but an entire castle town.
78 In Iberian homes patios refers to a walled space within the structure of the residence itself, separated from the street.
79 Vazato.
80 Nivas [niwa].
81 Golownin, Memoirs of a Captivity in Japan, III, 157.
82 Jinrikisha Days in Japan (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1897), 12.
83 Alessandro Valignano, De Missione Legatorum Iaponen, trans. Duarte de Sande (Macao [Lima Library Collection], 1590).
84 Vazato [waza to].
85 Capital of the Tycoon, 324.
86 Taray [tarai].
87 Beer, which is made with hops, apparently became more popular than ale (made without hops) over the course of the sixteenth century. Richard Unger, Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).