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Authors: Giles Milton

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Adams led the men along the famous Tokaido, which connected Edo with Kyoto. It was thronged with merchants, peddlers,
and peasants whose strange hats and traditional costumes made for a colorful sight. “Ever and anon,” wrote Saris, “you meet with farmes and countrey houses, with villages … with ferries over fresh rivers, and many
futtakeasse
… which are their temples.” Saris was astonished when he saw the quality of the road. Its sand-and-gravel surface was “wonderfull even” and “where it meeteth with mountains, passage is cut through.” The road was divided into leagues, and at the end of each league was a marker in the form of a “faire pine tree trimmed round in the fashion of an arbour.” The purpose of these trees was “so that the hackney men, and those which let out horses to hire, should not make men pay more [than] their due.”
from Arnoldus Montanus’s Atlas Japannensis, 1670
.
William Adams and Captain Saris traveled by boat on the first leg of their voyage to court. They moored their galley at Osaka (above) and continued to Fushimi in a little barque.
The contrast with travel in England could not have been more striking. When Saris traveled from London to see his family in Yorkshire, he suffered the ordeal of broken roads and pitiful lodgings. English roads were muddy, potholed, and often impassable in the wetter months of the year. “They are often very deep and
troublesome in the winter,” wrote William Harrison in 1587 in his
Description of England
. He said that landowners often refused to clean roadside drains, “whereby the streets do grow to be much more gulled [rutted] than before, and thereby very noisome for such as travel by the same.”
Adams had sent a letter to the court informing them that he would soon be arriving with a small band of English visitors. When Ieyasu received this message, he immediately sent a palanquin and horses to make their progress even more pleasurable. Saris was particularly pleased to have been given a slave whose sole purpose was to run in front of him carrying a pike. The men stopped each night in roadside lodgings, where the owners would cook them rice and fish with “pickeld herbes, beanes, raddishes and other roots.” Saris noted that there was an abundance “of cheese,” unaware that he was actually eating tofu, or bean curd.
from Arnoldus Montanus’s Atlas Japannensis, 1670
.
The Tokaido, or Great Highway, was thronged with merchants and travelers. It connected the vast city of Edo (above) with Kyoto and Osaka; transport was tightly regulated and highly efficient.
There were few dangers on the road, and Adams’s presence meant that the men were rarely abused or insulted. He explained to Saris that Japan had a tightly regulated system of local government, which imposed a rigorous discipline on the population: “[There is] not a lande better governed in the worlde by civil pollecy.” Each town had a governor, and every street was gated. Houses were divided into clusters—with a headman charged with maintaining order—and everyone kept a close eye on the doings of their neighbors, especially after dark when a curfew was imposed. “Each street is closed at dusk,” wrote the Spaniard Rodrigo de Vivero y Velasco, “and soldiers are always on duty … If any crime is committed, the alarm is raised and in next to no time the gates are shut in order to catch the wrong-doer.” The only sight to disturb the pleasure of the men’s journey came at the approach to each town, where the road was lined with the crucified remains of thieves and murderers. As the party approached Shizuoka, the number of dead along the road began to alarm Saris. First, they passed a scaffold bedecked with several human heads. Next, they saw row upon row of crosses, “with the dead corpses of those which had been executed remaining still upon them.” Worse still, there were gobbets of flesh lying on the ground, “pieces of others, which after their executions had been hewn again and again by the triall of others’
cattans
[swords].” These were scattered across the road and caused the men “a most unsavourie passage.”
The party arrived in Shizuoka at dawn on September 6, exactly a month after leaving Hirado, and Adams secured lodgings for everyone. Then, while Saris and company relaxed after the long journey, he went “to the court to let the secretarie understand of my coming.” He soon returned with good news. Ieyasu was delighted to learn of their arrival and promised to grant them an audience within a few days. Saris used the intervening time to
select suitable presents: a gold basin and ewer, a satin quilt, a silk carpet, and three Dutch napkins.
At last the big day arrived. A splendid palanquin arrived outside their lodging and Adams and Captain Saris clambered inside. Flanked by guards, the litter was carried to the gates of Shizuoka Castle, where it was met by two “grave comely men.” Chief of these was Ieyasu’s secretary, Honda Masakumi, whose courtly title was
Kodzuke-no-suke
. Adams had gone to great lengths to explain to Saris the importance of conforming to the strict system of Japanese etiquette. Each rank in the court had its own title, and each courtier needed to be greeted with the greatest deference. Saris listened in silence but, unwilling to abase himself before the Japanese court, he contemptuously dismissed Adams’s advice. He showed a distinct lack of graciousness when he was introduced to the courtiers and bluntly informed Ieyasu’s secretary—whom he nicknamed Codskin—that he intended to deliver King James I’s letter in person. Honda was horrified. Such a demand interfered with courtly protocol, for letters to Ieyasu could only be delivered by his secretary. Saris became obstinate and, according to Adams, churlishly announced “that if he might not delliver it himself, he would retourn again to his lodging.” Honda was so distressed that he berated Adams for bringing such uncouth Englishmen to the court and said “that I had not instruckted him in the manners and coustoum of all strangers.” Saris was determined to win the war of words and swore that he alone would hand the letter to Ieyasu.
With tensions running high, Adams and Saris were led into an antechamber, which contained Ieyasu’s chair, “to which they wished me doe reverence.” Then, after a long wait, they were ushered into an inner room where Ieyasu was seated. Saris still refused to follow the rules of courtly etiquette, which demanded that he should fall to the floor in obeisance. Instead, he marched straight up to Ieyasu and “delivered our king’s letter unto his majestie, who took it in his hand, and put it up towards his forehead.”
That, at least, is how Saris chose to record the meeting. Adams remembered it rather differently, reporting that Honda snatched the letter from Saris just as he was about to give it to Ieyasu and personally handed it over. Whatever the truth, Ieyasu seemed untroubled by Saris’s unseemly behavior. He glanced at the letter and, using Adams as his interpreter, told Saris “that I was welcome from a wearisome journey, [and] that I should take my rest for a day or two.” He said he would use the intervening time to compose a suitable reply to King James’s petition for trade. In the meantime, the men were to enjoy themselves and take the opportunity to see something of the courtly city.
Ieyasu also suggested that Saris should visit Edo, where his son Hidetada resided. Saris was delighted. He asked Adams to accompany him on the eighty-mile trip, during which they stopped at the ancient city of Kamakura to visit some of the extraordinary shrines and temples. Kamakura lay some fifteen miles to the north of Adams’s estate at Hemi. It was once “the greatest city in Japan” and had, in the distant past, been the imperial capital. It was said to be four times larger than Edo—which itself was “as bigge as London”—but large parts of the city were now in ruins. However, it was still an important pilgrimage center, whose streets were dotted with dozens of “sumptuouse” Buddhist temples and grandiose shrines, lofty pagodas and rambling monasteries. Each was surrounded by delightful pleasure gardens planted with peonies and magnolias, flowering apricot bushes and brilliantly colored hydrangeas. “There are many faire pagodas or heathen temples standing to this day in woods of pine trees,” wrote Richard Cocks, when he visited on a later occasion, “with pleasant walkes about them kept in good reparation.”
Neither the English nor the Jesuit fathers could understand the peculiar rituals of the monks who lived in such places. Some beat drums as they prayed to their idols, while others performed their devotions in large, two-pointed hats. The strictest followed a rule that seemed designed to cause physical suffering. “In the depths of
winter they bathe in water that has been put out into the open air in order to become chilled,” wrote one monk, “ … and in the hot season they bathe in almost boiling water.”
One of the city’s strangest sights was a “monestary of heathen nuns, being shorne, all the haire off their heades as the papist nuns are.” This was the famous Tokeji temple, which had been founded more than three centuries earlier as a refuge for battered wives. Women who stayed for more than two years were considered legally separated from their husbands, and it was said that “no man may take any woman out of that place by force.” Yet men, and even lovers, were free to come and go as they pleased, for the nuns “hold venery nether sin nor shame, but live at their pleasure.”
Saris was particularly struck by Kamakura’s famous, and monumental, copper statue of a
daibutsu,
or Great Buddha, which stood more than forty feet tall. Completed in 1252, this immense image was constructed of thick bronze plates bolted onto a hollow frame. It stood alone in a field of willowy grasses and wildflowers. It was, wrote Saris, “in the likenesse of a man kneeling upon the ground, with his buttockes resting on his heeles, his armes of wonderfull largenesse, and the whole body proportionable.” This was quite unlike the statues and gargoyles that he was familiar with in England. The Buddha had elongated ears, hair in ringlets, and a mustache that looked like two slugs pinned in the middle. It was seated cross-legged, with its arms folded in an attitude of contemplation. Captain Saris and his men were delighted to discover that they could clamber inside. “Some of our people went into the body of it,” he wrote, “and hoope[d] and hallowed, which made an exceeding great noise.” In a time-honored English tradition, they ended their visit by vandalizing the Buddha, etching their names in the soft copper.
Two days later, the men arrived in Edo—a city of exquisite beauty—whose gilded roof tiles and lacquered doors “made a
very glorious appearance to us.” Unfortunately, there was little time for sightseeing, for as soon as they entered the city they received word that the young Hidetada was eager to meet them. When Saris handed over his gifts, Hidetada responded by presenting him with two varnished suits of armor for King James I (which are today housed in the Tower of London) and a
tachi
, or long sword, “which none wear there, but souldiers of the best ranke.”
from Arnoldus Montanus’s Atlas Japannensis, 1670
.
There were several Great Buddhas in Japan; this illustration shows the Sanjusangendo temple near Kyoto. Captain Saris’s men clambered inside Kamakura’s Buddha “and hoope[d] and hallowed, which made an exceeding great noise.”
BOOK: Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan
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