Michael Wise - Travellers Tales of Old Japan

I REALLY THINK that among barbarous nations there can be none that has more natural goodness than the Japanese. They are of a kindly disposition, not at all given to cheating, wonderfully desirous of honour and rank. Honour with them is placed above everything else. There are a great many poor among them, but poverty is not a disgrace to any one.... They have a great many observances of courtesy among themselves. They are very fond of arms and weapons, and rely upon them very much. The highest and lowest alike always wear their swords and daggers even boys of fourteen years of age. They never bear an insult either in word or deed....

They are sparing and frugal in eating, but not in drink. The wine they drink is made of rice, for here there is no other. They abhor dice and gaming as things highly disgraceful, because gamesters are greedy of other mens goods, and their desire of gain leads them on to the desire of stealing. They seldom swear, but when they do, they swear by the sun. Most of them can read, and this is a great help to them for the easy understanding of our usual prayers and the chief points of our holy religion. They have not more than one wife. There are few thieves among them, and this is on account of the severity of the punishments inflicted for theft, as all thieves are put to death. So there is no kind of theft which they do not hate in a remarkable degree. They are wonderfully inclined to all that is good and honest, and have an extreme eagerness to learn.

St. Francis Xavier

Cagoxima

November 11, 1549

MOUNT FUJI

Compilation 1985 Michael Wise

First published in 1985 by Times Books International

This facsimile edition published 2008

Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions

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National Library Board Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data

Travellers tales of old Japan / compiled by Michael Wise with Mun Him Wise. Singapore :

Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2008.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN-13 : 978-981-261-742-2
eISBN : 978 981 4677 32 5

1. Japan Description and travel. I. Wise, Michael, 1937- II. Wise, Mun Him.

DS809

Printed in Singapore by KWF Printing Pte Ltd

Contents

Acknowledgements

Grateful acknowledgements are due to the following publishers, authors and others:

Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd.

A Staff Officers Scrap-Book by Lt.-Gen. Sir Ian Hamilton

Blackie and Son Ltd.

A Journal from Japan by Marie C. Stopes

Jonathan Cape Ltd. and the Executors of Sir Valentine Chirols Estate

With Pen and Brush in Eastern Lands by Sir Valentine Chirol

Church Missionary Society

Sea-Girt Yezo by The Rev. John Batchelor

Constable & Co. Ltd.

The Military Side of Japanese Life by Capt. M.D. Kennedy

J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

An Eastern Voyage by Count Fritz von Hochberg

Dodd, Mead & Co., Inc.

A Beachcomber in the Orient by Harry L. Foster

Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.

Everywhere by A. Henry Savage-Landor

(Originally published by Frederick A. Stokes Company

Arnold Henry Savage-Landor 1924)

Hutchinson Publishing Group Ltd.

With a Passport and Two Eyes by V.C. Buckley

A Diplomatists Wife in Japan by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

Japanese Memories by Ethel Howard

My Travels in China, Japan and Java by H.H. The Raja-I-Rajgan Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala

Methuen & Co. Ltd.

Far Eastern Jaunts by Gilbert Collins

Mills & Boon Ltd.

My Japanese Year by T.H. Sanders

John Murray (Publishers) Ltd.

Scented Isles and Coral Gardens by C.D. MacKellar

Empires and Emperors of Russia, China, Korea & Japan by Count Vay de Vaya and Luskod

Sunny Lands and Seas by Hugh Wilkinson

Putnam Publishing Group

Ends of the Earth by Roy Chapman Andrews

(Copyright 1929 by Roy Chapman Andrews, renewed 1957)

Routledge & Kegan Paul PLC

Japan Today by James A.B. Scherer

University of Washington Press

Revelations of a Russian Diplomat by Dmitrii I. Abrikossow, edited by George Alexander Lensen

T. Fisher Unwin

Present-day Japan by Augusta M. Campbell Davidson

Peter M. Stebbing

Home and Abroad by Sir Merton Russell-Cotes

The British Library

The Japan Society of Londons Library

The National Library, Singapore

National University of Singapore Library

If any other acknowledgements are due but have been overlooked, the Compiler offers his sincere apologies.

The illustrations, which have been selected for their interest and are broadly contemporary with the tales alongside them, come from the following works:

Isabella L. Bird: Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880)

Mrs. Brassey: A Voyage in the Sunbeam (1878)

Christopher Dresser: Japan: its Architecture, Art, and Art Manufactures (1882)

Robert Fortune: Yedo and Peking (1863)

Aim Humbert: Japan and the Japanese (1873)

R.M. Jephson & E.P. Elmhirst: Our Life in Japan (1869)

Edward S. Morse: Japan Day by Day (1917)

E.D.G. Prime: Around the World (1874)

Prince Albert Victor & Prince George of Wales: The Cruise of H.M. Ship Bacchante (1886)

Rev. A.B. Simpson: Larger Outlooks on Missionary Lands (1893)

Illustrations

Preface

A British Minister in the 1870s was reported to have described Japan as a country in which all the women dress from the waist downwards, and all the men from the waist upwards; while an American statesman put the matter more bluntly, calling Japan a country of nudity, lewdity and crudity.