The First European Description of Japan, 1585 (14 page)

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 clogs
⁶⁹
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 stylish
⁷¹
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 mend
⁷³
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.