The First European Description of Japan, 1585 (22 page)

13. Our children have little command and excellence in their manners; children in Japan are exceedingly thorough in their manners, so much so that they are amazing.
¹⁸

Western visitors from Frois' day to the present have been amazed by the polite manners of Japanese children.
¹⁹
By contrast, authors such as Keith Thomas have
written about children in early modern England who ran wild, peeing in the aisles of churches to make ice to skate on.

14. For the most part, our children are embarrassed to participate in public dramas and performances; in Japan they are uninhibited, relaxed, charming, and very graceful in their performances
.

The Jesuits were unusual as a religious order in their warm embrace of the theatre, which they viewed as a great tool for teaching their students and the laity about Catholicism.

Okada
²⁰
believes that the Japanese side of the contrast refers specifically to children of the samurai class and child actors in
No
drama (see
Chapter 13
). Frois may nevertheless describe a more general trait, for the ease with which the Japanese of all ages perform in front of audiences is still apparent today and is by no means restricted to drama. In formal or public situations, it is the Western man or woman who is far more likely to blush when asked to give a speech at a wedding or to sing a song in front of colleagues. Many, if not most, Japanese do so with the aplomb of an old pro. They seem to find what is essentially role-playing (acting out a public
persona
) less stressful than informal conversations, which most Westerners find relaxing rather than stressful. In informal situations, or when asked for their opinions, Japanese individuals above the age of eight tend to be more uptight than Americans and, possibly, most Western peoples. Indeed, the Japanese see themselves as extremely bashful and even lacking in self-expression compared to “outgoing and brave” foreigners. Lacking the unstated agreement to disagree found in much of the West, lively discussion in much of Japan seems all but impossible in many contexts.

15. Children in Europe are reared with many kindnesses, tenderness, and good food and clothing; in Japan they grow up half-naked and essentially lack all kindnesses and pleasures
.

Here “Children in Europe” refers to the offspring of the nobility and the emerging bourgeoisie. The vast majority of European children (i.e. the children of peasants and townspeople) were too busy working for their parents or outside the home to be pampered. Okada
²¹
quotes a Japanese period book of instruction for child rearing that states that it was best for small children to be “starved by a third and frozen by a tenth.” This was thought to be good for long-term health and character. Such advice was doubtlessly for the upper classes and wealthy townsmen. As was the case in Europe, the majority of Japanese children (i.e. the sons and daughters of farmers and townspeople) received these “benefits” automatically. In both early modern Japan and Europe the vast majority of children were not simply
dependents but were important contributors to the preservation and prosperity of households.
²²

As for gifts and treats, the Japanese had no tradition of lavishing affection on a child's birthday. Children received gifts of money and new clothing only on New Year's Day. Still, young children enjoyed festivals on what today are referred to as “Girl's Day” and “Boy's Day,”
²³
as well as visits to local shrines or temples where there were booths selling fun things or offering challenges for children. One of the most common booths today is the
kingyo-ya
, where children use paper spatulas to catch (and take home) goldfish. It is pretty tricky catching a fish before the wet paper breaks, but the seller always gives the smaller children a hand when necessary, so that nearly everyone gets something.
²⁴

16. European parents handle affairs directly with their children; in Japan everything is carried out using messages and a third party
.

The Jesuits as a whole were struck by Japanese reluctance to discuss important matters face to face and their reliance on third parties. Although Okada
²⁵
has suggested that maintaining distance between parents and children was specific to the samurai class, reliance on surrogates seems to have been a more general phenomenon that has persisted into modern times. Anthropologist Takie Sugiyama Lebra has noted that the Japanese make use of surrogates (
migawari
) in various social contexts, and she suggests that letting another act in one's place is consistent with the Japanese understanding of self, which is “
dividual
” (rather than individual) and integrally related to a particular kin group.
²⁶
Today, as in the past, the Japanese hate confrontation; even when they talk face to face, it was, and still is, generally not eye to eye, but with the eyes facing down, off to the side, or past one another.

17. Among us, one acquires godparents at baptism or confirmation
²⁷
; in Japan, this occurs when a youth once again girds his sword and takes on a new name
.

The Christian sacraments of baptism and confirmation entail the acquisition of fictive kin or “godparents” who assist with the rearing of a child. In Portugal,
boys at baptism generally acquired two men and one woman as godparents; girls received two women and one man.
²⁸

At the Japanese coming-of-age ceremony called
genbuku
, the youth wears a “crow-hat” (a tall, black, phallic-looking thing) and acquires a “crow-hat-parent.” The youth at the same time drops his birth name and takes a new name, usually a character from the name of the crow-hat-parent.
²⁹
This coming-of-age ceremony was adopted from China in the Heian era (794–1185) and is delightfully translated in Kenkyusha's Japanese-English dictionary as “assuming the
toga virilis
.” This was also the time when a youth assumed an adult hairstyle and clothing and acquired a valuable sword. The ceremony was held when a boy was between twelve and sixteen. Girls of the same age had a simpler
genbuku
, during which their hair was put up in an adult hairdo for the first time. As a Chinese-derived ceremony,
genbuku
might be called Confucian, but as was the case for most celebratory rituals in Japan, it probably was informed by Shinto.

18. Among us, sons accompany their mothers when they go out; in Japan they rarely or never accompany them (because they are grownups)
.

As was noted in
Chapter 2
(
#34
,
#35
), European women, particularly of the middle and upper classes, were thought to require male guidance or protection; sons who accompanied their mothers out in public presumably discouraged unwanted advances from adult males. The fact that Japanese boys did not accompany their mothers may reflect the fact that Japanese women usually accompanied each other in public. Also, as discussed in
Chapter 2
, Japanese women could venture out in public without fear of harassment.

19. Among us, names don't change after confirmation; in Japan, as one ages, the name changes five or six times
.

Frois is again referring to Japanese men at relatively high levels of Japanese society. Three or four name changes probably were more the norm in Japan: a childhood name, the name received at adulthood, occasionally a name to reflect a new station in life, and one for retirement. Commoners generally did not share in this plethora of name changes, but men active in administration who changed posts could enjoy upwards of a half-dozen names. Names were a sort of title granted by superiors to inferiors to show they had achieved a higher rank. João Rodrigues counted ten categories of names. François Caron noted a contrast that was so obvious that Frois must have imagined that he had already made it, when, in fact, he had not:

The surnames are first pronounced, for being their parents were before them, they think it but reasonable that their names should likewise preceed.
³⁰

20. Among us, children often visit their relatives, with whom they are close; in Japan, they rarely visit relatives and they are treated as strangers
.

As noted in
Chapter 2
(
#36
), the Japanese do not feel compelled to maintain strong family ties to blood relatives. It is perhaps not surprising that an Iberian Jesuit like Frois would be struck by this, particularly as grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins were, and are, an important part of an individual's life in Mediterranean Europe.
³¹

21. In Europe, children
³²
inherit upon the death of their parents; in Japan, parents relinquish their estate early in life in order to hand over the inheritance to their children
.

This contrast can be interpreted in different ways. One is that wealthy Japanese parents do not selfishly (and often with disastrous consequences, especially when they begin to lose their judgment) hold on to the family fortune, but share it early enough to improve the lives of their loved ones, and probably improve the family business. However, it is also possible to say that by handing over the business and retiring, the Japanese parents are selfishly getting out of work and onto the dole while they still are well enough to really enjoy themselves. Both interpretations are perhaps equally true.

So why has the West behaved differently? Bacon
³³
thought that, at least in the case of America, it was because of a dread of dependence on others. But how times and people change. Today, the Japanese are notoriously bad at retiring. Like many Western men and women, work is everything to them. This was not true a hundred or four hundred years ago.
³⁴
Then retirement was a quasi-religious experience: a retreat into a world of leisure, a world of writing provided by the bottomless well of Chinese characters, pilgrimages along narrow roads to mountain shrines, and the game of
go
.

22. For our children's health, we scarify and bleed them; in Japan this is not done; rather, they are treated with buds of flame
.

As discussed in
Chapter 9
(
#2
,
#3
), educated doctors in Europe often used “bleeding” to prevent and treat sickness, which was thought to result from an imbalance of various bodily humors (e.g., phlegm and blood). Scarification is a less invasive form of bleeding that involved making small puncture wounds rather than actually opening a vein and draining off copious amounts of blood (venesection).

The expression “buds of flame” refers to moxibustion, which involves placing a pinch of burning
moxa
(mugwort leaf) on a particular part of the body or skin (again, see
Chapter 9
). Medical practitioners in China and Japan theorized about where on the body the moxa should be placed to achieve the best effect. According
to Okada,
³⁵
a pellet of
moxa
was ritually burnt on the three-day old infant's head and on the end of the navel cord to prevent future illness. There was also an annual treatment ritual that functioned in the manner of a “booster shot,” supplementing the initial moxibustion. Children in Japan did not like this any more than children in the West like getting shots. In one of his haiku, Issa relates how a naked child fled from his “medicine,” despite it being the coldest part of the year. In partial contradiction of
#7
above, while Japanese children were not whipped, they were
sometimes
threatened with corporal punishment in the form of moxibustion.

23. Among us, only women use rouge and face powder
³⁶
; in Japan, some of the sons of nobles, up to the age of ten, also wear makeup when they go out
.

Although European men would one day powder their wigs, Frois is correct that men of his time used no powder or make-up. In Japan, make-up was essentially restricted to boys from the samurai class or nobility. As noted in
Chapter 1
,
#46
, noblemen spent a lot of time on their toilette. Thus, boys were only aping their fathers. Okada
³⁷
cites a Chinese report of “barbarian (i.e., Japanese) boys made up with thick powder like women,” which suggests that this idea arose in Japan.

In the 1990s, Japanese youth began to wear makeup at a faster rate than their Western counterparts. Male
tarento
(minor television personalities who only last until the proverbial bloom is off their adolescent cheeks) pluck and darken their eyebrows and use eyeliner, which was even advertised on TV in at least the Tokyo area. This use of make-up is not necessarily or normally equated with femininity, but with looking attractive.

24. Among us, children's clothing has sleeves that are narrow, with the seams sewn closed [all the way] around the shoulders; in Japan, the sleeves are very loose and under the arms they are open from front to back
.

The young Japanese samurai who toured Europe at the time Frois wrote his
Tratado
were delighted when they encountered youth in Evora, Portugal who wore clothing with broad sleeves like the ambassadors' kimonos. This delight suggests that such sleeves were unusual in Europe and that Frois' observation was, on the whole, valid. Open underarm seams still are found in some traditional Japanese garments, perhaps because they are very cooling in sultry weather.

1
  Daniel T. Reff,
Disease, Depopulation, and Culture Change in Northwestern New Spain, 1518–1764
(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1991), 252–253.

2
  Jay Levenson, ed.,
Encompassing the Globe, Portugal and the World in the 16th & 17th Centuries
(Washington, D.C.: Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 2007), 245.

3
  Daniel Beekman,
The Mechanical Baby
(Westport CT: Lawrence Hill and Company, 1977), 7–8; Linda Pollock, “Parent-Child Relations.” In
The History of the European Family, Volume I, Family Life in Early Modern Times, 1500–1789
, eds. David Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli, pp. 191–220 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 193–196.