The First European Description of Japan, 1585 (2 page)

Daniel Reff has also written a very helpful introduction to the “tratado” or main body of the text, which assesses the aim of Frois's writing, probably meant to help newly-arrived Jesuit missionaries to settle in. His superior, Valignano, was determined to convince Europeans that Japanese were “civilized” enough
to become clergy themselves, and thus take over judicial control of the Church in Japan. He realised that neither Spain nor Portugal would ever be in a position to successfully invade Japan (and China) and overpower the indigenous elite, so learning the language and local customs was essential. He also took four Japanese teenagers to Rome, partly to convince them that Europeans were not barbarians either, but still he asked his missionaries to live like Japanese in Japan.

In his introduction to the text, Frois wrote:

Many of their customs are so distant, foreign, and far removed from our own that it is difficult to believe that one can find such stark contrasts in customs among people who are so civilized, have such lively genius, and are as naturally intelligent as these [Japanese].

This book demonstrates that some of these stark contrasts have been amazingly persistent on both sides of the world despite a growing knowledge about each other's ways. Would that a few more of the Europeans who set out to study around the world could be as accepting of such continuing difference as a couple of priests committed to conversion in the sixteenth century!

Acknowledgments

Over the years, a number of people read drafts, fielded questions, or otherwise helped with the realization of this book. We especially want to thank Nina Berman, Serena Connolly, Liza Dalby, Frank Dutra, Nancy Ettlinger, Prudence Gill, Hanna Gotz, Joy Hendry, Natsumi Hirota, Suzanne Inamura, Eric Johnson, Karen Kupperman, Sarah Kernan, Donald Larsen, Mary McCarthy, Sabine McCormack, Catarina Marot Mendez, Wamae Muriuki, Hirochika Nakamaki, Shelley Fenno Quinn, Kristina Troost, Tenki-san, and Julia Watson.

We also appreciate the support of the College of Arts and Humanities at The Ohio State University and the National Endowment for the Humanities (Daniel Reff), Marietta College (Richard Danford), and the Grapetree Productions Fellowship (Robin D. Gill).

Thanks also to Jeff La Frenierre for compiling our maps.

Critical introduction

The
Tratado
, the Jesuits, and the governance of souls

Daniel T. Reff

Introduction

Nobody seems to want to go to prison and yet it has provided a surprising number of people with the opportunity and some might say inspiration for some of the most moving literature that the world has ever known. Consider the
Travels of Marco Polo
, which was committed to paper in 1298, while Polo was in a Genoese prison. The
Travels
encouraged generations of Europeans to dream of far-away lands abounding in fabulous riches that were strange and exotic—where men might have long tails and heads like dogs.
¹
Although Polo wrote at considerable length of China (Cathay), what particularly fired the imaginations of Europeans were his brief comments about an island to the east of China called Cipangu. According to Polo it was inhabited by a good-looking people with fair complexions and good manners who were awash in gold, fine pearls, and precious stones.
²

Little more was heard of Cipangu until 1549, when Francis Xavier initiated a sustained Jesuit commentary on what was now referred to as
Japão
.
³
The Japan that Portuguese sailors and Jesuits “discovered” in the 1540s was a society in the throes of profound changes, including a rapidly expanding and highly mobile population, increased urbanism and trade, and political instability, evidenced by frequent wars between aspiring members of a feudal warrior class, the
bushi
or samurai. In Japan, as in Europe, a religious elite wielded considerable power, including fielding armies of Buddhist monks who sought to protect and expand the interests of particular temples and sects.
⁴

Map 1
. Jesuit Missionary Activity in Asia to 1585

When Portuguese traders and the Jesuits happened on the south coast of Japan,
⁵
both were embraced by a small number of Japanese lords or
daimyo
who sought to use Christianity and Western goods, including firearms, to advance their political interests. Between 1549 and 1585, a relatively small number of Jesuit missionaries,
⁶
beginning with Francis Xavier, used this window of opportunity to establish some 200 churches with upwards of 150,000 Japanese converts, principally on the southern-most island of Kyûshû.
⁷

In 1585, at the very height of Jesuit success, a twenty-year veteran of the Jesuit mission to Japan, Luis Frois (1532–1597), drafted the earliest systematic comparison of Western and Asian cultures.
⁸
Frois' comparative study apparently was not conceived as a book to be published. The manuscript, which is thirty-three folios, with text front and back, was written in Portuguese and has no title
per se
. Just below “Jesus [and] Mary”—a dedication at the top of the first page—the first line of the manuscript reads tratado em que se contem muito susinta e abreviadamente algumas contradisões e diferenças de custumes antre a gente de Europa e esta provincia de Japaõ (see
Figure 1
). The same line in English reads: treatise containing in very succinct and abbreviated form some contrasts and differences in the customs of the people of Europe and this province of Japan. The bottom half of the title page and page two of the Tratado list fourteen chapters on subjects as varied as gender, child rearing, religion, medicine, eating, horses, writing, ships and seafaring, architecture, and music and drama. Interestingly, whereas most Jesuit missionary texts from the period are dramatic narratives (i.e. epistles/letters, histories, dialogues) intended for the public as well as a Jesuit audience, the
Tratado
is a catalogue of over 600 numbered distichs or brief couplets, again divided among fourteen chapters. The following distich is from
Chapter 9
(Figure 2), which is titled “Physicians, Medicines and Mode of Healing:”

11. Among us, abscesses are treated using intense heat; the Japanese would rather die than use our harsh surgical methods
.

Here Frois sought to convey to fellow Europeans (implied by “us” and “our”) how the Japanese perceived Western medical practices as harsh or invasive. Similarly, in the following distich from
Chapter 2
, which is entitled “Women, Their Persons and Dress,” Frois rather dispassionately described the Japanese attitude toward female chastity:

1. In Europe a young woman's supreme honor and treasure is her chastity and the inviolate cloister of her purity; women in Japan pay no mind to virginal purity, nor does a loss of virginity deprive them of honor or matrimony.

As detailed below, we believe Frois and his Jesuit superior, Alessandro Valignano, drafted the
Tratado
as a pedagogical tool to explain Japanese customs to European Jesuits recently arrived in Japan. Quite unlike Marco Polo or other would-be ethnologists (e.g. Mandeville, Isidore of Seville, Pliny, Herodotus),
including contemporary and fellow Jesuit, José de Acosta,
⁹
Frois based his comparative study almost entirely on first-hand observation. Moreover, rather that relegate Japanese difference, excepting perhaps Buddhism, to
Homo monstrum
or the work of the devil, Frois attributed it to rationally-based choice.
¹⁰
As suggested, this understanding that civilized and European were
not
necessarily the same thing undoubtedly sprang in significant part from Frois' many years studying the Japanese language and his more than twenty years residence in Japan.
¹¹
Paradoxically, Frois' generosity—the many instances where he states or implies that Japanese customs were on a par or even superior to European practices—remains problematic, inasmuch as it is Frois, the European (not the Japanese), who judges, makes distinctions, categorizes, and pronounces.
¹²
Moreover, for all his respect, neither Frois nor his fellow Jesuits recanted their “mission from god,” even when it led—as it often did—to the razing and burning of temples and the upending of many thousands of Japanese lives.
¹³

Figure 1
. Photocopy of Title Page of Tratado

Figure 2
. Photocopy of First Page of
Chapter 9
of the Tratado

Luis Frois: jesuit missionary and author

The
Tratado
was discovered after World War II by Josef Franz Schütte, S.J., in the
Real Academia de la Historia
, in Madrid, Spain.
¹⁴
In 1955, Sophia University published a German-language edition of the manuscript, edited and translated by Schütte.
¹⁵
The edition also contains a transcription of the original Portuguese, which has been used by scholars to generate editions in Japanese, Chinese, French, Spanish, and modern Portuguese. Somewhat surprisingly, this is the first critical, English-language edition of the
Tratado
.

Although the
Tratado
is not signed and lacks other direct evidence of authorship, scholars universally have followed Schütte in attributing the manuscript to
Luis Frois.
¹⁶
There are striking, substantive similarities between the
Tratado
and a table of contents for an otherwise missing Part I of Frois'
Historia de Japam
,
¹⁷
which was written around the same time as the
Tratado
. Moreover, Frois was perhaps the only Jesuit who had the knowledge of Japanese language and culture that is evident in the
Tratado
.
¹⁸
This knowledge, and Frois' substantial respect for Japanese customs, is apparent in the letters Frois wrote during the years preceding the drafting of the
Tratado
.
¹⁹

Frois was born in Lisbon in 1532 and was given the name Polycarp at birth. Not much is known about Frois, although it is apparent that he was born into a mercantile or otherwise affluent family that could provide him with a quality education. In practical terms this meant learning to read and write in Portuguese and Latin.
²⁰
This education made possible at age thirteen Frois' employment as an apprentice scribe in the Royal Secretariat in Lisbon. Although by 1545 rag paper and the printing press had ushered in a communication revolution, the functioning of government and society, more generally, still hinged on scribes who drew up all manner of decrees, contracts, legal decisions, exams, licenses, etc. Scribes essentially operationalized the wishes of the rich and powerful; they were accordingly respected and well paid.

During Frois' childhood, his city of birth, Lisbon, was the hub of Portugal's far-flung empire—an empire secured financially in 1498 when Vasco de Gama stunned the Western world by reaching India and establishing a sea route to Far Eastern
markets.
²¹
For the next sixty years or so Portugal enjoyed a near-monopoly on the importation of pepper and other expensive spices.
²²
Frois as a child would have watched ships from Asia, Africa and America arrive in Lisbon harbor—unloading slaves, precious spices, gold, and all manner of exotic plants and animals.
²³
(In 1515, King Manuel I staged a fight between an elephant and a rhinoceros for the amusement of the queen!)
²⁴
And then there were the parades of new found peoples from places such as Africa, Brazil, and India.