Things Japanese

being notes on various subjects connected with Japan for the use of travellers and others

THINGS JAPANESE

BEING

NOTES ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS CONNECTED WITH JAPAN

FOR THE USE OF TRAVELLERS AND OTHERS

BY

BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF JAPANESE AND PHILOLOGY IN THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY OF TŌKYŌ

Fifth Edition Revised

LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET

YOKOHAMA SHANGHAI | | KELLY & WALSH, LIMITED | | HONGKONG SINGAPORE

1905 [All rights reserved]

Les longs ouvrages me font peur. Loin d'épuiser une matière, On n'en doit prendre que la fleur.

(La Fontaine.)

PREFACE.

In the unlikely event of any one instituting a minute comparison between this edition and its predecessor, he would find minor alterations innumerable,—here a line erased, there a paragraph added, or again a figure changed, a statement qualified, a description or a list brought up to date. But take it altogether, the book remains the same as heretofore. It would seem to have found favour in many quarters, to judge from the manner in which, years after its first appearance, newspapers and book-makers continue to quote wholesale from it without acknowledgment; and the title, which cost us much cogitation, and which we borrowed ultimately from the Spanish phrase cosas de España, has passed into general use, even coming to supply titles for similar works written about other lands in imitation of this one.

The article on Archæology contributed by Mr. W. G. Aston, C. M. G., to the second edition, and that on Geology by Prof. John Milne, F.R.S., remain untouched. Best thanks, once more, to these kind friends, as also to Mr. James Murdoch, Mr. H. V. Henson, Rev. Dr. D. C Greene, and Abbé J. N. Guérin, who have supplied information on points beyond the scope of our own knowledge. To Mr. W. B. Mason and to Mr. W. D. Cox we are under special obligations,—to the former for constant advice and assistance during the progress of the work, to the latter for revision of the proofs, a task of a different order of difficulty in this country from what it is at home with printers whose native language is English. The greater part of the index has been compiled by Mr. E. B. Clarke, of the First Higher School, Tōkyō.

November, 1904.

Note on the Pronunciation of Japanese Words

NOTE ON THE PRONUNCIATION OF JAPANESE WORDS.

Sound the vowels and diphthongs as in Italian, that is (approximately),

a as in "father." e „ „ "men." i „ „ "police." o „ „ "for."

u as in "bush." ai as the "y" of "my." ei as the "ay" of "may." au as the "ow" of "cow."

Distinguish long vowels from short, as in Latin; thus tori, "bird" but tōri, "street;" zutsu, "[one, etc.] at a time," but zutsū, "headache."

Sound the consonants as in English, noting only that g never has the "j" sound. At the beginning of a word it is pronounced as in "give;" in the middle it has the sound of English ng. Note, too, that z before "u" is pronounced as dz, thus Kōzu (kō-dzu).

Consonants written double are distinctly pronounced double, as in Italian. Thus amma, "a shampooer" sounds quite different from ama, "a nun." (Compare such English words as "oneness," "shot-tower.")

There is little if any tonic accent, all syllables, except such as have long quantity, being pronounced evenly and lightly, as in French. For instance, the word ama given above sounds almost exactly like the French word "amas," and would not be understood if pronounced like English "armour".

Introductory Chapter

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

To have lived through the transition stage of modern Japan makes a man feel preternaturally old; for here he is in modern times, with the air full of talk about bicycles and bacilli and "spheres of influence," and yet he can himself distinctly remember the Middle Ages. The dear old Samurai who first initiated the present writer into the mysteries of the Japanese language, wore a queue and two swords. This relic of feudalism now sleeps in Nirvana. His modern successor, fairly fluent in English, and dressed in a serviceable suit of dittos, might almost be a European, save for a certain obliqueness of the eyes and scantiness of beard. Old things pass away between a night and a morning. The Japanese boast that they have done in thirty or forty years what it took Europe half as many centuries to accomplish. Some even go further, and twit us Westerns with falling behind in the race. It is waste of time to go to Germany to study philosophy, said a Japanese savant recently returned from Berlin:—the lectures there are elementary, the subject is better taught at Tōkyō.

Thus does it come about that, having arrived in Japan in 1873, we ourselves feel well-nigh four hundred years old, and assume without more ado the two well-known privileges of old age,—garrulity and an authoritative air. We are perpetually being asked questions about Japan. Here then are the answers, put into the shape of a dictionary, not of words but of things,—or shall we rather say a guide-book, less to places than to subjects?—not an encyclopædia, mind you, not the vain attempt by one man to treat exhaustively of all things, but only sketches of many things. The old and the new will be found cheek by jowl. What will not be found is padding: for padding is unpardonable in any book on Japan, where the material is so plentiful that the chief difficulty is to know what to omit.

In order to enable the reader to supply deficiencies and to form his own opinions, if haply he should be of so unusual a turn of mind as to desire so to do, we have, at the end of almost every article, indicated the names of trustworthy works bearing on the subject treated in that article. For the rest, this book explains itself. Any reader who detects errors or omissions in it will render the author an invaluable service by writing to him to point them out. As a little encouragement in this direction, we will ourselves lead the way by presuming to give each reader, especially each globe-trotting reader, a small piece of advice. We take it for granted, of course, that there are no Japanese listening, and the advice is this:—Whatever you do, don't expatiate, in the presence of Japanese of the new school, on those old, quaint, and beautiful things Japanese which rouse your most genuine admiration. Antiquated persons do doubtless exist here and there to whom Buddhist piety is precious; others may still secretly cherish the swords bequeathed to them by their knightly forefathers; quite a little coterie has taken up with art; and there are those who practise the tea ceremonies, arrange flowers according to the traditional esthetic rules, and even perform the mediæval lyric dramas. But all this is merely a backwater. Speaking generally, the educated Japanese have done with their past. They want to be somebody else and something else than what they have been and still partly are.

When Sir Edwin Arnold came to Tōkyō, he was entertained at a banquet by a distinguished company including officials, journalists, and professors, in fact, representative modern Japanese of the best class. In returning thanks for this hospitality, Sir Edwin made a speech in which he landed Japan to the skies—and lauded it justly—as the nearest earthly approach to Paradise or to Lotus-land,—so fairy-like, said he, is its scenery, so exquisite its art, so much more lovely still that almost divine sweetness of disposition, that charm of demeanour, that politeness humble without servility and elaborate without affectation, which place Japan high above all other countries in nearly all those things that make life worth living. (We do not give his exact words, but we give the general drift.)—Now, do you think that the Japanese were satisfied with this meed of praise? Not a bit of it. Out comes an article next morning in the chief paper which had been represented at the banquet,—an article acknowledging, indeed, the truth of Sir Edwin's description, but pointing out that it conveyed, not praise, but pitiless condemnation. Art forsooth, scenery, sweetness of disposition! cries this editor. Why did not Sir Edwin praise us for huge industrial enterprises, for commercial talent, for wealth, political sagacity, powerful armaments? Of course it is because he could not honestly do so. He has gauged us at our true value, and tells us in effect that we are only pretty weaklings.

Since Sir Edwin Arnold's time, doubtless, more than one war has been fought and won, and has proved to an astonished world and to the Japanese themselves that they are no weaklings, but extremely plucky, practical men. Since his time, too, Japan's sunny towns and even her green valleys have been darkened by the smoke of factory chimneys, and the flag of her merchant marine has been seen in every sea. Nevertheless, the feeling above alluded to persists, and to us it appears perfectly natural under the circumstances. For, after all, Japan must continue ever more and more to modernise herself if the basis of her new departure is to remain solid, if her swiftly growing ambition is to be gratified, and if her minister of finance is to be able to make both ends meet. Besides which, our European world of thought, of enterprise, of colossal scientific achievement, has been as much a wonder-world to the Japanese as Old Japan could ever be to us. There is this difference, however. Old Japan was to us a delicate little wonder-world of sylphs and fairies. Europe and America, with their railways, their telegraphs, their gigantic commerce, their gigantic armies and navies, their endless applied arts founded on chemistry and mathematics, were to the Japanese a wonder-world of irresistible genii and magicians. The Japanese have, it is true, evinced less appreciation of our literature. They esteem us whimsical for attaching so much importance as we do to poetry, to music, to religion, to speculative disquisitions. Our material greatness has completely dazzled them, as well it might. They know also well enough—for every Eastern nation knows it—that our Christian and humanitarian professions are really nothing but bunkum. The history of India, of Egypt, of Turkey, is no secret to them. More familiar still, because fought out at their very gates, is the great and instructive case of the West versus China,—six or seven young tigers against one old cow. The Japanese would be blind indeed, did they not see that their best security for continued safety and success lies in the determination to be strong, and in the endeavour not to be too different from the rest of mankind; for the mob of Western nations will tolerate eccentricity of appearance no more than will a mob of roughs.

Indeed, scarcely any even among those who implore the Japanese to remain as they are, refrain, as a matter of fact, from urging them to make all sorts of changes. "Japanese dress for ladies is simply perfection," we hear one of these persons cry; "only don't you think that gloves might be added with advantage? And then, too, ought not something to be done with the skirt to prevent it from opening in front, just for the sake of decency, you know?"—Says another, whose special vanity is Japanese music (there is considerable distinction about this taste, for it is a rare one)—says he—"Now please keep your music from perishing. Keep it just as it is, so curious to the archæologist, so beautiful, for all that the jeerers may say. There is only one small thing which I would advise you to do, and that is to harmonise it. Of course that would change its character a little. But no one would notice it, and the general effect would be improved."—Yet another, an enthusiast for faience, wishes Japanese decorative methods to be retained, but to be applied to French forms, because no cup or plate made in Japan is so perfectly round as are the products of French kilns. A fourth delights in Japanese brocade, but suggests new breadths, in order to suit making up into European dresses. A fifth wants to keep Japanese painting exactly as it is, but with the trivial addition of perspective. A sixth—but a truce to the quoting of these self-confuting absurdities. Put into plain English, they mean, "Do so-and-so, only don't do it. Walk north, and at the same time take care to proceed in a southerly direction."

Meanwhile the Japanese go their own way. Who could expect that either their social conditions or their arts should remain unaltered when all the causes which produced the Old Japan of our dreams have vanished? Feudalism has gone, isolation has gone, beliefs have been shattered, new idols have been set up, new and pressing needs have arisen. In the place of chivalry there is industrialism, in the place of a small class of aristocratic native connoisseurs there is a huge and hugely ignorant foreign public to satisfy. All the causes have changed, and yet it is expected that the effects will remain as heretofore!

No. Old Japan is dead, and the only decent thing to do with the corpse is to bury it. Then you can set up a monument over it, and, if you like, come and worship from time to time at the grave; for that would be quite "Japanesey." This unpretentious book is intended to be, as it were, the epitaph recording the many and extraordinary virtues of the deceased,—his virtues, but also his frailties. For, more careful of fact than the generality of epitaphists, we have ventured to speak out our whole mind on almost every subject, and to call things by their right names, being persuaded that true appreciation is always critical as well as kindly.

Yes, we repeat it, Old Japan is dead and gone, and Young Japan reigns in its stead, as opposed in appearance and in aims to its predecessor as history shows many a youthful prince to have been to the late king, his father. The steam-whistle, the newspaper, the voting-paper, the pillar-post at every street-corner and even in remote villages, the clerk in shop or bank or public office hastily summoned from our side to answer the ring of the telephone bell, the railway replacing the palanquin, the iron-clad replacing the war-junk,—these and a thousand other startling changes testify that Japan is transported ten thousand miles away from her former moorings. She is transported out of her patriarchal calm into the tumult of Western competition,—a competition active right along the line, in diplomacy and war, in industries, in shipping, possibly even in colonisation. Nevertheless, as Madcap Hal, when once seated on the throne, showed plainly, despite all individual difference, that the blood of prudent Henry IV. ran in his veins, so is it abundantly clear to those who have dived beneath the surface of the modern Japanese upheaval that more of the past has been retained than has been let go. It is not merely that the revolution itself was an extremely slow growth, a gradual movement taking a century and a half to mature. It is that the national character persists intact, manifesting no change in essentials. Circumstances have deflected it into new channels, that is all. The arduous intellectual training of the Japanese gentry of former days—the committing to memory of the Confucian classics—fostered a mental habit at once docile, retentive, apt for detail. With these very same qualities their sons sit to-day at the feet of the science of the West. The devotion of the Samurai to his Daimyō and his clan was unsurpassed; for them, at any time, he would offer up his life, his all. This same loyal flame glows still at a white heat; only, the horizon having been widened by the removal of provincial barriers and the fall of petty feudal thrones, the one Emperor, the united nation have focused all its rays into a single burning-point. The Japanese of former days, even when political combination for any purpose was penal, always moved in families, in clans, in wards of townsmen, in posses of peasants, in any corporate way rather than as individuals. The boycotts, the combines, the sudden fashions and gusts of feeling before which the whole nation bends like grass, manifest exactly the same trait in a novel guise. To take a more radical characteristic, the ingrained tendency of the national mind towards the imitation of foreign models does but repeat to-day, and on an equally large scale, its exploit of twelve centuries ago. At that early period it flung itself on Chinese civilisation as it has now flung itself on ours; and in both cases alike certain reservations have been made. The old national religion, for instance, was not abolished then, neither has it been abolished now, though in both cases full latitude has been accorded by this nation of thorough-going latitudinarians to the alien religious and philosophical ideas.

Having absorbed all the manifestly useful elements of our culture, Young Japan’s eager wish is to communicate them to her neighbours. To act as broker between West and East is her self-imposed mission. We cannot help thinking that Japan's precept and example will more rapidly leaven the Chinese lump with the leaven of Europeanism than Europe has been able to do in her own person,—and this for the simple reason that though Japan and her continental neighbours heartily despise each other, as the manner of neighbours is, they nevertheless understand each other in a way in which we can never hope to understand any of them. Europe's illusions about the Far East are truly crude. Who would dream of coupling together New-Englanders and Patagonians, simply because arbitrary custom has affixed the single name of "America" to the two widely separated regions which these two peoples inhabit? Yet persons not otherwise undiscerning continue to class, not only the Chinese, but even the Japanese, with Arabs and Persians, on the ground that all are equally "Orientals," "Asiatics," though they dwell thousands of miles apart in space, and tens of thousands of miles apart in culture. Such is the power over us of words which we have ourselves coined. Then a further step is taken:—on a basis of mere words a fantastic structure is raised of mere notions, among which the "Yellow Peril" has had most vogue of late. When a new power, or an old one in new shape, arises on soil which we have labelled "Western,"—for instance, Germany or Italy during the lifetime of men still living, the United States or Russia at an earlier date,—no one descries any special menace in such an event; it is recognised as one of the familiar processes of history. But let the word "Asia" be sounded, and at once a spectre is conjured up. In fact, we find ourselves back in that strange limbo of contradictions already noticed; for the very same folks blow hot and cold, raving about Japan's perfections at one moment, fearing her possible excesses at another.

It might be interesting to push these considerations further. But Japan herself is our theme, not Europe's fancies concerning her. We have merely alluded to these last in pursuance of our general plan, which is to indicate lines of thought for the reader himself to follow out. He will find leisure for such meditations as he speeds along in his jinrikisha, or else at some wayside resthouse among the blossom-strewn hills, while waiting for the dainty handmaiden to bring him his thimbleful of tea.

Abacus

Abacus. Learn to count on the abacus—the soroban, as the Japanese call it—and you will often be able to save a large percentage on your purchases. The abacus is that instrument, composed of beads sliding on wires fixed in a frame, with which many of us learnt the multiplication table in early childhood. In Japan it is used, not only by children, but by adults, who still mostly prefer it to our method of figuring with pen and paper. As for mental arithmetic, that does not exist in this archipelago. Tell any ordinary Japanese to add 5 and 7: he will flounder hopelessly, unless his familiar friend, the abacus, is at hand. And here we come round again to the practical advantage of being able to read off at sight a number figured on this instrument. You have been bargaining at a curio-shop, we will suppose. The shopman has got perplexed. He refers to his list, and then calculates on the instrument (which of course he takes for granted that you do not understand) the lowest price for which he can let you have the article in question. Then he raises his head, and, with a bland smile, assures you that the cost of it to himself was so and so, naming a price considerably larger than the real one. You have the better of him, if you can read his figuring of the sum. If you cannot, ten to one he has the better of you.

The principle of the abacus is this:—Each of the five beads in the broad lower division of the board represents one unit, and each solitary bead in the narrow upper division represents five units. Each vertical column is thus worth ten units. Furthermore, each vertical column represents units ten times greater than those in the column immediately to the right of it, exactly as in our own system of notation by means of Arabic numerals. Any sum in arithmetic can be done on the abacus, even to the extracting of square and cube roots; and Dr. Knott, the chief English—or, to be quite correct, the chief Scotch—writer on the subject, is of opinion that Japanese methods excel ours in rapidity. Perhaps he is a little enthusiastic. One can scarcely help thinking so of an author who refers to a new Japanese method of long division as "almost fascinating." The Japanese, it seems, have not only a multiplication table, but a division table besides. We confess that we do not understand the division table, even with Dr. Knott's explanations. Indeed we will confess more: we have never learnt the abacus at all! If we recommend others to learn it, it is because we hope that, for their own sake, they will do as we tell them and not do as we do. Personally we have found one method of ciphering enough, and a great deal more than enough, to poison the happiness of one life-time.

The use of the abacus is not the only peculiarity of this nation in matters numerical. A more irritating one to the accurate European mind is their habit of "inclusive" reckoning. An example or two will best make this clear. You arrived in April, say. It is now June. According to the Japanese, you have been here three months;—for the month of your arrival and the present month are both counted in. A child is born in December, 1901. By January, 1902, they currently talk of the child as being two years old, because it has lived through a part of two separate years. The thing may be exaggerated a degree further still, when, forgetting that the Japanese year formerly began some time in our February (as the Chinese year still does), they fail to make allowance for this in the case of births that took place in January or early February, previous to the reform of the calendar in 1873. In the case of a public man who died early in 1901, at the (real) age of 65, we noticed that all the obituaries were wrong by three years. They credited him with being 68; and of the various other dates mentioned, some were two years out, some three, according to the month to which they referred. The new-comer will therefore do well to treat Japanese statements regarding dates and ages with caution.

Book recommended. The Abacus, in its Historic and Scientific Aspects, by Dr. C. G. Knott, F. R. S. E., printed in Vol. XIV. Part I. of the "Asiatic Transactions."

Abdication

Abdication. The abdication of monarchs, which is exceptional in Europe, has for many ages been the rule in Japan. It came into vogue in the seventh century together with Buddhism, whose doctrines led men to retire from worldly cares and pleasures into solitude and contemplation. But it was made use of by unscrupulous ministers, who placed infant puppets on the throne, and caused them to abdicate on attaining to maturity. Thus it was a common thing during the Middle Ages for three Mikados to be alive at the same time,—a boy on the throne, his father or brother who had abdicated, and his grandfather or other relative who had abdicated also. From A.D. 987 to 991, there were as many as four Mikados all alive together:—Reizei Tennō, who had ascended the throne at the age of eighteen, and who abdicated at twenty; En-yū Tennō, emperor at eleven and abdicated at twenty-six; Kwazan Tennō, emperor at seventeen and abdicated at nineteen; and Ichijō Tennō, who had just ascended the throne as a little boy of seven. Under the Mikado Go-Nijō (A.D. 1302–8) there were actually five Mikados all alive together, namely Go-Nijō Tennō himself, made emperor at seventeen, had his four abdicated predecessors: Go-Fukakusa Tennō, emperor at four and abdicated at seventeen; Kameyama Tennō, emperor at eleven and abdicated at twenty-six; Go-Uda Tennō, emperor at eight and abdicated at twenty-one; and Fushimi Tennō, emperor at twenty-three and abdicated the same year. Sometimes it was arranged that the children of two rival branches of the Imperial family should succeed each other alternately. This it was, in part at least, which led to the civil war in the fourteenth century between what were known as "the Northern and Southern Courts;" for it was of course impossible that so extraordinary an arrangement should long be adhered to without producing violent dissensions.

After a time, it became so generally recognised that the monarch in name must not be monarch in fact, and vice versâ, that abdication, or rather deposition (for that is what it practically amounted to), was almost a sine quâ non of the inheritance of such scanty shreds of authority as imperious ministers still deigned to leave to their nominal lords and masters. When a Mikado abdicated, he was said to ascend to the rank of abdicated Mikado. It was no longer necessary, as at an earlier period, to sham asceticism. The abdicated Mikado surrounded himself with wives and a whole Court, and sometimes really helped to direct public affairs. Nor was abdication confined to sovereigns. Heads of noble houses abdicated too. In later times the middle and lower classes began to imitate their betters. Until the period of the late revolution, it was an almost universal custom for a man to become what is termed an inkyo after passing middle age. Inkyo means literally "dwelling in retirement." He who enters on this state gives over his property to his heirs, generally resigns all office, and lives on the bounty of his children, free to devote himself henceforth to pleasure or to study. Old age being so extraordinarily honoured in Japan, the inkyo has no reason to dread Lear's fate. He knows that he will always be dutifully tended by sons who are not waiting to find out "how the old man will cut up." The new government of Japan is endeavouring to put a stop to the practice of inkyo, as being barbarous because not European. But to the people at large it appears, on the contrary, barbarous that a man should go on toiling and striving, when past the time of life at which he is fitted to do good work.

Book recommended. The Gakushikaiin, by Walter Dening, printed in Vol. XV. Part I. of the "Asiatic Transactions," p. 72 et seq.

Acupuncture

Acupuncture. Acupuncture, one of the three great nostrums of the practitioners of the Far East (the other two being massage and the moxa), was brought over from China to Japan before the dawn of history. Dr. W. N. Whitney describes it as follows in his Notes on the History of Medical Progress in Japan, published in Vol. XII. Part IV. of the "Asiatic Transactions," p. 354:—

"As practised by the Japanese acupuncturists, the operation consists in perforating the skin and underlying tissues to a depth, as a rule, not exceeding one-half to three-quarters of an inch, with fine needles of gold, silver, or steel. The form and construction of these needles vary, but, generally speaking, they are several inches long, and of an average diameter of one forty-eighth of an inch. Each needle is usually fastened into a handle, which is spirally grooved from end to end.

"To perform the operation, the handle of the needle is held lightly between the thumb and first finger of the left hand, the point resting upon the spot to be punctured. A slight blow is then given upon the head of the instrument with a small mallet held in the right hand; and the needle is gently twisted until its point has penetrated to the desired depth, where it is left for a few seconds and then slowly withdrawn, and the skin in the vicinity of the puncture rubbed for a few moments. The number of perforations ranges from one to twenty, and they are usually made in the skin of the abdomen, although other portions of the body are not unfrequently punctured."

Adams (Will)

Adams (Will). Will Adams, the first Englishman that ever resided in Japan, was a native of Gillingham, near Chatham, in the county of Kent. Having followed the sea from his youth up, he took service, in the year 1598, as "Pilot Maior of a fleete of five sayle," which had been equipped by Dutch merchants for the purpose of trading to Spanish America. From "Perow" a portion of the storm-tossed fleet came on to "Iapon," arriving at a port in the province of Bungo, not far from "Langasacke" (Nagasaki), on the 19th April, 1600. From that time until his death in May 1620, Adams remained in an exile which, though gilded, was none the less bitterly deplored. The English pilot, brought first as a captive into the presence of Ieyasu, who was then on the point of becoming practically what Adams calls him, "Emperour" of Japan, had immediately been recognised by that shrewd judge of character as an able and an honest man. That he and his nation were privately slandered to Ieyasu by "the Iesuites and the Portingalls," who were at that time the only other Europeans in the country, probably did him more good than harm in the Japanese ruler's eyes. He was retained at the Japanese court, and employed as a shipbuilder, and also as a kind of diplomatic agent when other English and Dutch traders began to arrive. In fact, it was by his good offices that the foundations were laid both of English trade in Japan and also of the more permanent Dutch settlement. During his latter years, he for a time exchanged the Japanese service for that of the English factory established by Captain John Saris at "Firando" (Hirado) near Nagasaki; and he made two voyages, one to the Luchu Islands and another to Siam. His constantly reiterated desire to see his native land again, and his wife and children, was to the last frustrated by adverse circumstances. So far as the wife was concerned, he partially comforted himself, sailor fashion, by taking another,—a Japanese with whom he lived comfortably for many years on the estate granted him by Ieyasu at Hemi, where their two graves are shown to this day. Hemi, at that time a separate village, has since become a suburb of the bustling modern seaport, Yokosuka, and a railway station now occupies the site of the old pilot's abode. Another adventurer, who visited him there, describes Will Adams's place thus: "This Phebe is a Lordshipp geuen to Capt. Adames pr. the ould Emperour, to hym and his for eaver, and confermed to his sonne, called Joseph. There is above 100 farms, or howsholds, vppon it, besides others vnder them, all which are his vassalls, and he hath power of lyfe and death ouer them they being his slaues; and he hauing as absolute authoritie ouer them as any tono (or king) in Japan hath over his vassales." From further details it would seem that he used his authority kindly, so that the neighbours "reioiced (as it should seeme) of Captain Adames retorne."