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Rh becomes 137,000. In spite of the numerous sects represented in Japan there has been virtually no sectarian strife, and it may be said of the Japanese converts that they concern themselves scarcely at all about the subtleties of dogma which divide European Christianity. Their tendency is to consider only the practical aspects of the faith as a moral and ethical guide. They are disposed, also, to adapt the creed to their own requirements just as they adapted Buddhism, and this is a disposition which promises to grow.

 

Foreign Intercourse in Early and Medieval Times.—There can be no doubt that commerce was carried on by Japan with China and Korea earlier that the 8th century of the Christian era. It would appear that from the very outset over-sea trade was regarded as a government monopoly. Foreigners were allowed to travel freely in the interior of the country provided that they submitted their baggage for official inspection and made no purchases of weapons of war, but all imported goods were bought in the first place by official appraisers who subsequently sold them to the people at arbitrarily fixed prices. Greater importance attached to the trade with China under the Ashikaga shōguns (14th, 15th and 16th centuries), who were in constant need of funds to defray the cost of interminable military operations caused by civil disturbances. In this distress they turned to the neighbouring empire as a source from which money might be obtained. This idea seems to have been suggested to the shōgun Takauji by a Buddhist priest, when he undertook the construction of the temple Tenryū-ji. Two ships laden with goods were fitted out, and it was decided that the enterprise should be repeated annually. Within a few years after this development of commercial relations between the two empires, an interruption occurred owing partly to the overthrow of the Yuen Mongols by the Chinese Ming, and partly to the activity of Japanese pirates and adventurers who raided the coasts of China. The shōgun Yoshimitsu (1368–1394), however, succeeded in restoring commercial intercourse, though in order to effect his object he consented that goods sent from Japan should bear the character of tribute and that he himself should receive investiture at the hands of the Chinese emperor’s ambassador. The Nanking government granted a certain number of commercial passports, and these were given by the shōgun to Ouchi, feudal chief of Cho-shu, which had long been the principal port for trade with the neighbouring empire. Tribute goods formed only a small fraction of a vessel’s cargo: the bulk consisted of articles which were delivered into the government’s stores in China, payment being received in copper cash. It was from this transaction that the shōgun derived a considerable part of his profits, for the articles did not cost him anything originally, being either presents from the great temples and provincial governors or compulsory contributions from the house of Ouchi. As for the gifts by the Chinese government and the goods shipped in China, they were arbitrarily distributed among the noble families in Japan at prices fixed by the shōgun’s assessor. Thus, so far as the shōgun was concerned, these enterprises could not fail to be lucrative. They also brought large profits to the Ouchi family, for, in the absence of competition, the products and manufactures of each country found ready sale in the markets of the other. The articles found most suitable in China were swords, fans, screens, lacquer wares, copper and agate, and the goods brought back to Japan were brocade and other silk fabrics, ceramic productions, jade and fragrant woods. The Chinese seem to have had a just appreciation of the wonderful swords of Japan. At first they were willing to pay the equivalent of 12 guineas for a pair of blades, but by degrees, as the Japanese began to increase the supply, the price fell, and at the beginning of the 16th century all the diplomacy of the Japanese envoys was needed to obtain good figures for the large and constantly growing quantity of goods that they took over by way of supplement to the tribute. Buddhist priests generally enjoyed the distinction of being selected as envoys, for experience showed that their subtle reasoning invariably overcame the economical scruples of the Chinese authorities and secured a fine profit for their master, the shōgun. In the middle of the 16th century these tribute-bearing missions came to an end with the ruin of the Ouchi family and the overthrow of the Ashikaga shōguns, and they were never renewed.

Japan’s medieval commerce with Korea was less ceremonious than that with China. No passports had to be obtained from the Korean government. A trader was sufficiently equipped when he carried a permit from the So family, which held the island of Tsushima in fief.

Fifty vessels were allowed to pass yearly from ports in Japan to the three Japanese settlements in Korea. Little is recorded about the nature of this trade, but it was rudely interrupted by the Japanese settlers, who, offended at some arbitrary procedure on the part of the local Korean authorities, took up arms ( 1510) and at first signally routed the Koreans. An army from Seoul turned the tables, and the Japanese were compelled to abandon the three settlements. Subsequently the shōgun’s government—which had not been concerned in the struggle—approached Korea with amicable proposals, and it was agreed that the ringleaders of the raiders should be decapitated and their heads sent to Seoul, Japan’s compliance with this condition affording, perhaps, a measure of the value she attached to neighbourly friendship. Thenceforth the number of vessels was limited to 25 annually and the settlements were abolished. Some years later, the Japanese again resorted to violent acts of self-assertion, and on this occasion, although the offenders were arrested by order of the shōgun Yoshiharu, and handed over to Korea for punishment, the Seoul court persisted in declining to restore the system of settlements or to allow the trade to be resumed on its former basis. Fifty years afterwards the taikō’s armies invaded Korea, overrunning it for seven years, and leaving, when they retired in 1598, a country so impoverished that it no longer offered any attraction to commercial enterprise from beyond the sea.

The Portuguese discovered Japan by accident in 1542 or 1543—the exact date is uncertain. On a voyage to Macao from Siam, a junk carrying three Portuguese was blown from her course and fetched Tanegashima, a small island lying south of the province of Satsuma.

The Japanese, always hospitable and inquisitive, welcomed the newcomers and showed special curiosity about the arquebuses carried by the Portuguese, fire-arms being then a novelty in Japan and all weapons of war being in great request. Conversation was impossible, of course, but, by tracing ideographs upon the sand, a Chinese member of the crew succeeded in explaining the cause of the junk’s arrival. She was then piloted to a more commodious harbour, and the Portuguese sold two arquebuses to the local feudatory, who immediately ordered his armourer to manufacture similar weapons. Very soon the news of the discovery reached all the Portuguese settlements in the East, and at least seven expeditions were fitted out during the next few years to exploit this new market. Their objective points were all in the island of Kiūshiū—the principal stage where the drama—ultimately converted into a tragedy—of Christian propagandism and European commercial intercourse was acted in the interval between 1542 and 1637.

It does not appear that the Jesuits at Macao, Goa or other centres of Portuguese influence in the East took immediate advantage of the discovery of Japan. The pioneer propagandist was Francis Xavier, who landed at Kagoshima on the 15th of August 1549. During the interval

of six (or seven) years that separated this event from the drifting of the junk to Tanegashima, the Portuguese had traded freely in the ports of Kiūshiū, had visited Kiōto, and had reported the Japanese capital to be a city of 96,000 houses, therefore larger than Lisbon. Xavier would certainly have gone to Japan even though he had not been specially encouraged, for the reports of his countrymen depicted the Japanese as “very desirous of being instructed,” and he longed to find a field more promising than that inhabited by “all these Indian nations, barbarous, vicious and without inclination to virtue.” There were, however, two special determinants. One was a request addressed by a feudatory, supposed to have been the chief of the