EAST MEETS WEST

Original Records of Traders, Travellers, Missionaries and Diplomats to 1852

Part 1: The Log Book of William Adams (1564-1620) and other Manuscript and Rare Printed Material from the Bodleian Library, Oxford

PREFACE

In 1991, as a contribution to the Japan Festival - a nationwide series of events aimed at increasing British understanding of Japan - the Bodleian Library mounted an exhibition of manuscripts and printed books designed to illustrate Europe’s encounters with Japan from the 16th century to the mid-19th century. The exhibition - Japan Encountered - made many scholars aware for the first time of the richness of the library’s holdings in this area.

The items for this exhibition were selected by Izumi K Tytler, Bodleian Japanese Librarian at the Nissan Institute.

A few years later in 1996 Izumi Tytler kindly agreed to assist us as consultant editor for this project and to share her extensive knowledge and expertise in the selection of material for Part 1 of East Meets West. Many items from the Japan Encountered exhibition have been included in the collection, as well as a further selection of printed books and manuscripts chosen on the basis of their rarity and intrinsic value to scholars.

East Meets West, Part 1 has been broadly divided into seven sections. A brief history relating to each section written by Izumi Tytler introduces the reader to a selection of the manuscripts and printed books to be found within the collection.

Prologue

European perceptions of Japan go back to the time of the medieval traveller, Marco Polo. The Venetian’s hearsay account of Chipangu - the legendary land laden with gold - stirred the imagination of Europe for centuries and inspired European navigators to sail to the uncharted island kingdom. This project starts with one of the Bodleian Library’s greatest treasures, a remarkable copy of the Travels of Marco Polo, illuminated in England by the artist Johannes, c1400. It is followed by one of the most important early map books - the Théátre del l’univers by Ortleius, 1598.

The Christian Century in Japan

The Portuguese were among the first Europeans to reach Japan. The driving force of their advance in Asia in the mid-16th century was twofold: trade and religion - the drive for new markets and the Catholic missionary zeal of the Counter-Reformation era. In 1543 the first Portuguese merchants landed on a small island off Japan’s southern coast. Six years later Francis Xavier arrived in Japan to found a Jesuit mission.

We include nineteen Jesuit publications illustrating the so-called Christian century in Japan (the mid-16th to the mid-17th century). Jesuit missionaries overseas were instructed to report back to Europe detailed accounts of the country in which they worked. Letters sent from the missions in Japan were soon published in Europe and offered to a wider audience a remarkable picture of the country, [eg Cartas que os padres e irmãos da Companhia de Iesus escreuerão dos reynos de Iapão & China ... des do anno de 1549. até o de 1580 (reel 2)]. Numerous accounts of the history and work of the Church in Japan were also produced, many of which were devoted to accounts of martyrdoms, eventual persecution and suppression by the Tokugawa shogunate.

Eminent among the missionaries was the Italian Jesuit Alessandro Valignano (1539-1606), who advocated sending the Tensho Embassy (1582-1590), the first Japanese mission to Rome of the Christian lords of Kyushu. He also proposed bringing with the embassy a European printing press, which resulted in the setting up of the Jesuit Mission Press in 1590 in Japan. Various kinds of missionary literature of the Press, known collectively as Kirishitan ban, were produced until the expulsion of the missionaries from Japan in 1614. Sanctos no gosagueo no uchi nuqigaqui, the first book printed from movable type in Japan can be found on reel 6.

Early Travels to Japan

This section covers early travels to Japan in various published records of European voyages overseas. Included is Richard Willes’s, The history of trauayle in the West and East Indies, London, 1577, (reel 7) containing the first known account of Japan in English. Hakluyt’s The principal navigations, London, 1598-1600 (reel 7) gives and account of the first Japanese to reach England: “Is it not as strange that the borne naturalles of Japan ... are here to be seene, agreeing with our climate, speaking our language and informing us of the state of their Easterne habitations?” In his celebrated Peregrinaçam, Lisbon, 1614 (reel 9) Fernão Mendes Pinto was claiming to be one of the first Portuguese who landed in Japan in 1543, though the validity of this claim remains doubtful.

The English and Dutch East India Companies

To demonstrate early trading relationships with Japan, this next part concentrates on material relating to the East India Companies of England and Holland. The first direct contact between England and Japan was established in 1613 when the Eighth Voyage of the English Company finally reached Japan and succeeded in opening a factory in Hirado. The Company maintained the factory for ten years, until they retreated towards India and China. The earliest relations between the two island nations are nowhere more explicitly demonstrated than in the original shuinjo of 1613, which was issued by Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa to grant the English Company trade privileges in Japan (reel 10).

Also included in this section is the logbook of Will Adams, also known as Miura Anjin, (1564-1629), who helped in the negotiations between the Shogun, and John Saris, commander of the Company’s Eighth Voyage (reel 12). The letters and journals of these Englishmen were in part published in Purchas his pilgrimes, 1625, which presented the most comprehensive account of Japan of the time in print in English (reel 11). Other interesting archival material of the English Company included in the collection is an official copy of the account kept by the factors of its voyage to Japan in 1673 illustrating their vain effort to reopen trade with the country.

With the adoption of the policy of expelling the Portuguese in 1639, direct European contacts with Japan were deliberately severed except for a small number of Dutch merchants, who were confined to Deshima, an islet in Nagasaki harbour. Nevertheless reports on Japan continued to filter out through the Dutch trading post for the next two centuries. This is documented here by the works of a number of highly talented people in the service of the Dutch East India Company, such as François Caron, Isaac Titsingh, and P F von Siebold. Though the Dutch were kept constantly under surveillance and had very limited contact with local inhabitants, their presence in Japan was reflected in the illustrations of Japanese printed books of the time.

Images of Japan

This section provides a range of beautiful illustrated works depicting Japan. These range from the Shokoku rokuj_hakkei of Hiroshige Utagawa to Takehara’s illustrations in Rito Akisato’s Settsu meisho zue, 1796-98. Also, included in this section is the writing of Immanuel Kant who found the national seclusion policy of the Tokugawa shogunate a prudent one, which was justified on the ground of national peace and independence. His thoughts and ideas can be read in Zum ewigen Frieden, Königsberg, 1795 (reel 15).

Expeditions in the 18th to 19th Centuries

From around the mid-18th century onwards Western ships began to frequent Japanese waters and attempted to open its ports in search of supplies of water and fuel as well as trade with the country. The fifth section looks at the works of explorers of this period including Benyovsky, La Pérouse, Broughton, Kruzenshtern and Golvnin. Concluding with the narrative of the expedition led by Commodore Perry of the US Navy, who finally succeeded in carrying out his mission to reopen the country to the Western world in 1853 (reels 19 & 20).

Japanese Books & Manuscripts

The final part of this collection comprises rare “Saga bon” (Saga Press Editions), the Library’s earliest Japanese acquisitions, in 1629, witnessing to the 360-year-long cultural tie between Japan and the Bodleian. (reel 21)

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