The First European Description of Japan, 1585 (19 page)

Fellow Jesuit Rodrigues provided a detailed description of the “public kitchens” in the palaces of Japanese lords and nobility. The kitchen was one of the best parts of the house, and the preparation area was beautiful and clean. That cooking was deemed dignified and honorable is consistent with the fact that carving was a major activity in the kitchens of nobility, owing to plentiful game and fish. In Japan, where nearly everything is carried to the table bite-sized (see
Chapter 6
), carving was one of the ten principal “liberal arts.” In fact, there were even competing schools of professional carvers, with the prestigious “
shi
” suffix for their title. These finely attired pros could even be found putting on a practical show in the dining room.

Nevertheless, Frois' contrast is overdone, for women did much of the cooking in Japan as well as served and removed the food. Not much has changed in this regard, as suggested by a late twentieth-century Japanese commercial in which a woman says, “I'm the one who makes it” (literally “I'm a making-person”)
and the man says “I'm the one who eats it” (literally “I'm an eating person”). The mass media generally slight feminist complaints in Japan, but complaints about this ad developed into a national controversy, or rather, reflection, because it called attention to a sad but true fact: few Japanese men do any cooking at home.

52. In Europe tailors are men; in Japan they are women
.

Throughout the Middle Ages and well into the modern period European women spun cotton and wool and sewed, first in their homes and then in workshops and factories, coincident with mercantilism and the rise of capitalism in the sixteenth century. Men did the weaving and dying and monopolized the higher-skilled profession of tailoring, meaning the actual design and assembly of clothing and fabric, which was big business in sixteenth-century Europe.

With respect to Japan, the production of clothing provides one example of how differing gender roles may have helped Japan preserve separately, rather than fuse and lose, items of Eastern and Western culture. For most of modern times, Japanese-style clothing (
wafuku
) was generally made by women,
⁶²
while many, if not most, tailors of Western-style clothing (
yofuku
) were men. Men adopted Western clothing in the nineteenth century and became tailors because a tailor might have to deal with foreigners. Japanese women retained their native garb much longer than men, so Western dress became essentially synonymous with menswear.

In one sense, however, Japanese men
always
had a hand in the sewing business, as the Japanese did not buy their kimonos; they bought rolls of cloth produced by manufacturer-dyers that were generally run by males. This cloth was very good and equally expensive. Labor, however, was cheap, so in-house “tailors” finished the product for free. In this sense, Japanese women were not really tailors (an independent calling) but seamstresses.

53. In Europe men eat at high tables and women at low ones; in Japan women eat at high tables and men at low ones
.

Among the upper class in both Europe and Japan, men and women of the same household often ate separately. Men in both societies not only ate more and better food, but in the case of Europeans, they often were afforded a privileged seat and place at the table (“the head”), if not a table of their own. European women often ate at a work table in the kitchen.

Okada's edition includes a picture of a Japanese nobleman, legs folded, eating with his table (more like a portable writing desk) directly in front of him, while the woman diagonally across the small room has a table by her side that is about eight inches high. Because both sit on the floor (as per
Chapter 6
), no one is really looking down on anyone.

54. In Europe it is considered offensive for women to drink wine; in Japan it is very common, and on festive occasions the women sometimes get drunk
.

Not all European women were as proper as Frois suggests. One need only glance at one of Dürer's paintings of European peasant life to know that clerical preferences and societal prescriptions were not empirical reality. In Frois' Portugal, the Crown regularly tried to do away with taverns that were frequented by “women of low repute” as well as ladies and maidens who enjoyed gambling more than embroidering and sewing.
⁶³

With respect to Japan, older women in particular were almost as free to imbibe as the men for whom they heated sake.
⁶⁴
Still, in Japan as in the West, a woman was supposed to “stand by her man,” not lie plastered next to him. The Spanish merchant Avila Giron summed it up quite well: “The women drink very little, although their men folk are like Frenchmen.”
⁶⁵

55. Women in Europe generally eat both meat and fish; Japanese noblewomen usually do not eat meat and many do not eat fish either
.

This is an exceptionally nuanced contrast on the part of Frois, as it includes three qualifications (generally, usually, many). As Okada points out, noblewomen were more likely to refuse fish and meat because of their Buddhist upbringing. Japanese men conveniently construed four-legged animal meat as “medicine,” and thus put health above karma. (Interestingly, sixteenth-century Europeans often cast chocolate, which was otherwise “sinful,” as medicine). Japanese peasant women ate fish if they could, although they seemingly got little of anything tasty because they put others (i.e., their mother- and father-in-law, husband and children) first.

56. If women in Europe are wearing a head covering, they cover their faces even more when they are speaking with someone; Japanese women must remove their scarf, for it is discourteous to speak with it on
.

As noted, European women were discouraged from revealing their bodies in public, including their faces. Ironically, the Council of Castile complained to Philip II that the veil had become something of a double-edged sword, inasmuch as men were “mistakenly” accosting innocent girls and other men's wives, while prostitutes were passing for good women. Although Okada
⁶⁶
points out that Japanese dramas of the time show women carrying on a discussion with their mantle in place, these dramas were
kyogen
, meaning “crazy-talk.”

57. European noblewomen do not conceal themselves when speaking with someone who has come to pay them a call; in Japan, if the caller is unknown, the lady of the house speaks from behind a screen
⁶⁷
or a bamboo blind
.

As readers of the
Tale of Genji
know, the custom of a Japanese noblewomen conversing from behind a screen went back at least five hundred years before Frois
wrote. There also was a tendency for all Japanese women to hide their faces; one sees this still today, particularly when Japanese women laugh. Still, women (at least townswomen during the Tokugawa era) began showing their faces more and more (nobles held out until the late 19th century). While American and English feminist scholars often have equated attention to personal beauty with female oppression, some Japanese feminist writers see the cult of public beauties (represented by the
bijin-e
, which are prints of beautiful women, mostly, but not all, courtesans) as a mark of a new freedom for women to exist as individuals rather than as faceless belongings of men. When a courtesan or female street vendor caught Edo's imagination and even initiated new styles, she had something modern: her own identity.

58. In Europe, women are free to enter any church they want; in Japan, noble-women cannot enter certain temples that are prohibited to them
.

Although Japan on the whole offered more freedom of worship than Europe (see
Chapter 4
), for “reasons of purity”
all
women were taboo at shrines during periods when they were menstruating (officially this was seven days per month). Moreover, one can still find temples (usually on mountains) where women are taboo except for one day a year. In Japan, the mountains and the seashore have official “openings,” i.e., times of the year when certain activities such as visits by women are acceptable. The famous haiku poet Issa fondly observed that the first thing old women did when they visited Mitsui temple was look at the sea. If they were farm wives, chances are it was their only look at the sea for the entire year.

59. Among us it is very unusual for a woman to carry anything using poles
⁶⁸
; in Japan it is normal for female servants to carry pails full of water
.

This is one of Frois' stranger contrasts, although it is perhaps less so when one recalls that Frois is mostly thinking about European women of nobility who had servants or slaves who fetched water and handled other domestic chores. Marques notes that Lisbon in circa 1550 had some 3,500 women who made a living washing clothes (not included in this figure are household slaves).
⁶⁹
European women of modest means who washed their own clothes presumably relied on children to fetch and carry water.

The editors of the French-language edition of the
Tratado
have suggested that
pinga[h]
is a Malay word used in Macao (a Portuguese colony in 1585) for poles of bamboo or wood that were shouldered to carry things suspended from the ends.
⁷⁰
The Japanese term for the same is
tenbinbo
(literally “scale-pole”). Japanese prints or illustrations feature few freshwater-carrying maids (as implied by Frois) and many more “brine maidens” (
shikumi
), who used poles to carry buckets of brine to the vats at salt works. It should be noted that Japanese men also used poles to shoulder heavy loads.

60. In Europe, women stand up to greet their guests; in Japan, they receive them while allowing themselves to remain seated
.

Europeans think of snapping to attention as the ultimate in formal posture, as opposed to actual gestures of greeting such as bowing, tipping one's hat, or curtsying. The Japanese posture of proper seating puts the entire body into a tight rectangle and has a formal name,
seiza
(literally correct-sit), which is difficult to maintain because the weight of the body rests entirely on folded legs (see
#63
below). Frois' contrast is correct as it is written, but faulty in failing to note that both Europeans and the Japanese make an equally active effort at being polite. While the physical gestures are clearly opposite, both are stiff postures, showing attentiveness toward the guest.

61. In order to go out in public unrecognized, women in Europe wear a hooded cowl; in Japan when they go out in public, women tie a towel on their head so that the two corners hang down in front of their face
.

In a society that enclosed and otherwise restricted women's freedom, being able to lose oneself in a crowd provided a convenient way for European women to engage a world that was otherwise off-limits. Japanese women generally draped their light robes (
katabira
) over their heads, but some also wore
zukin
(literally head-clothes). Today, these light, usually colorful, two-foot long pieces of cloth are used for headbands at work or as neckerchiefs and for removing sweat at
bon
dances. Perhaps the “towels” spoken of by Frois had similar practical uses rather than functioning as concealment.

62. European women conserve their hair until they die; in Japan the old women and widows shave their hair in place of grief and mourning
.

Frois' use of “in place of” (
em lugar de
) in the second half of the distich wrongly implies that Japanese women cut their hair, rather than actually mourn the loss of a loved one. We are reminded of the
nihonjinronka
(modern writers who define Japanese identity and culture in terms of contrasts with the West) who wrote that by saying “thank you” a Western person had no lingering feelings, whereas the Japanese still feel much obliged. Perhaps what Frois meant to say was that Japanese women often in old age cut their hair and retired to a convent, there to pray for the souls of their family and to die gracefully (see
Chapter 4
). Similar practices were not uncommon in Europe and the New World, where widows often “withdrew from the world” and joined convents.
⁷¹

63. Women in Europe sit on divans, chairs, and stools; women in Japan always kneel on the floor with their feet turned up together behind them, with one hand on the tatami, supporting them
.

In a formal setting both Japanese men and women fold their legs straight back under them, with their shins resting on the tatami and with their hands resting symmetrically on their respective thighs (or in front if the person bows). What Frois describes here is actually an informal posture adopted by women (and which men never use as they sit informally with crossed legs). In this informal position,
the arm is needed to support the body because the legs are allowed to stray to one side. Even more informally, some women let their legs, still bent back, slip out one to each side so that their seat comes in direct contact with the tatami. This form of sitting (used by Chinese Taoists while meditating) is even harder for most Westerners than sitting on their heels. How do they do it? Here is Alice Bacon, writing at the end of the nineteenth century:

The flexibility of the knees, which is required for comfort in the Japanese method of sitting, is gained in very early youth by the habit of setting a baby down with its knees bent under it, instead of with its legs out straight before it, as seems to us the natural way. To the Japanese, the normal way for a baby to sit is with its knees bent under it, and so, at a very early age, the muscles and tendons of the knees are accustomed to what seems to us a most unnatural and uncomfortable posture.
⁷²

64. Among us, women pick up a cup of water with the right hand and drink with the same; Japanese women pick up the sake cup
⁷³
with their left hand and drink with the right hand
.