The Boundless Sea

by David Abulafia

  No doubt all this was made easier by the gifts of Portuguese wine that Hideyoshi greatly enjoyed. One night in 1587, while Hideyoshi was in his cups, his physician persuaded him that the Christians were up to no good, since they destroyed Buddhist temples and Shintō shrines, ate cows and horses (which could be put to better uses), and carried overseas Japanese servants whom they had enslaved. Literally overnight, if accounts of these events are to be believed, Hideyoshi transformed himself from a friend of the Christians into their bitter enemy. All of a sudden he banished the missionaries, but emphatically not the Great Ship: ‘as the Great Ship comes to trade, and this is something quite different, the Portuguese can carry on their commerce quite unmolested.’ Yet the Jesuits continued their work in the lands of Christian daimyo beyond the regent’s control, and few left the country; before long, the Japanese authorities tolerated the Jesuits as much-needed intermediaries between themselves and the Portuguese merchants, who could not speak Japanese and knew little about the way of life in Japan.47 Alessandro di Valignano wrote that Hideyoshi was persecuting the Jesuits ‘not for love of the false gods of Japan, for he believes nothing, and has done more to destroy their temples and bonzes [religious teachers] than we have’.48 The fact was that both Jesuits and bonzes appeared to undermine central authority. The testimony of the Florentine traveller Carletti confirms Valignano’s view: ‘this king did not believe in any sect, and he often used to say that laws and religions had been founded only to regulate men and to force them to live with modesty and civility’; Carletti sternly reminded his readers that Hideyoshi’s lack of a belief in an afterlife was at this very moment being disproved to him, while he burned in the fires of Hell.49

  At the same time, Nobunaga and his successors brought a greater degree of peace to Japan, and they valued the trade between Japan and the outside world. They saw the Portuguese, and later the Dutch, as useful sources of luxury products that were especially valued at their own courts, but also across the country (which meant that they generated useful tax revenues). Silver was easy to come by under the soil of Japan, so that the outflow of bullion towards China, whether on Portuguese or Asian ships, does not seem to have placed a strain on the Japanese economy, even though, understood in modern terms, the balance of payments was extremely unfavourable to Japan. Japan had not sealed itself off from the outside world, and the European merchants formed only a small part of a much wider trading network dominated by Japanese, Korean and Chinese merchants that tied the islands to neighbouring lands.

  For the Florentine traveller Francesco Carletti the sea held few fears. He described the routes across the Pacific, linking Acapulco to Manila, Macau and Nagasaki, and beyond the Pacific to Goa and Lisbon, as if the movement of ships was entirely regular and safe.50 Just as Hideyoshi was turning his ferocity upon the Christians, Carletti set foot in Japan. His curiosity took a morbid turn at the very start of his visit: as soon as his ship reached Nagasaki ‘we went immediately to see the spectacle of those poor (as regards this world) six monks of St Francis … who had been crucified with twenty other Japanese Christians – among them three who had donned the habits of the Jesuits – on the fifth of the month of February of that same year, 1597’. He described in intricate detail the design of the cross used in Japanese crucifixions, and he noted how a whole family might be executed for the mistakes of a relative or even a neighbour.51

  Carletti brought back to the duke of Tuscany an elaborate report on the food, manners and products of Japan. It is striking how much has remained the same to this day: he wrote about the Japanese writing system, tatami mats, Japanese screens and many other features of Japanese houses. He was particularly fascinated by the food the Japanese ate, including warm rice wine and a sauce that he called misol, made out of fermented soya beans, ‘taking on a very sharp, piquant flavour’. ‘They eat everything by using two small sticks’, and when they eat they bring their bowl close to their mouth ‘and then, with those two sticks, are able to fill their mouth with marvellous agility and swiftness’. Rice, not bread, was their staple food, and most of the wheat they produced was turned into flour and sent to the Philippines, where the Spaniards baked it into bread; Japanese traders made a profit of up to 100 per cent on these transactions. He noted that the Japanese did have copper coins, used in trade with China, but that many payments were made with weighed chunks of hack silver. Some of this silver was used to pay for the woven and raw silk that was brought each year from Macau aboard a Portuguese ship.52

  Most Serene Prince, I say that Japan is one of the most beautiful and best and most suitable regions in the world for making profit by voyaging from one place to another. But one should go there in our vessels and with sailors from our regions. And in that way one would very quickly make incredible wealth, and that because of their need of every sort of manufacture and their abundance of silver as of the provisions for living.53

  Carletti does not portray a closed-off Japan but an island empire whose elite took great delight in perfumed woods and shagreen, or shark-skin, from Siam and Cambodia. His ambition, which the duke of Tuscany was not in a position to satisfy, was to see his fellow Florentines flocking to make profit out of the trade of Japan.

  Some of the most eloquent evidence for day-to-day contact between Japan and its neighbours comes from ceramics rather than chronicles. The Japanese taste for tea dates back to the eighth century, and by the end of the Middle Ages not just Buddhist monks but members of the lay elite consumed delicate teas in carefully chosen cups. Korean tea bowls were in fashion from the fourteenth century onwards, and among the remains of a ship that foundered in 1322 off the coast of Korea during a violent storm were about 15,000 pieces of Chinese pottery, destined for the Japanese market. As demand for tea continued to develop, so did the fashion in tea bowls, but the interest in exotic pieces was constant, so that ‘found objects’, rustic ceramics made for other purposes in Korea and elsewhere, became specially desirable. This shift in taste took place at the end of the sixteenth century under the influence of Takeno Jôô, a merchant from the port of Sakai, and his protégé Rikyû, tea instructor to both Nobunaga and Hideyoshi and an enthusiast for the strong ‘whipped tea’ that still features in tea ceremonies. Both rulers made use of tea gatherings to draw around themselves a group of political allies. In the sixteenth century samurai warriors, though often short of resources, dined off Chinese porcelain, and Buddhist temples also possessed porcelain dinner services. By the 1620s Japanese merchants were ordering consignments directly from the porcelain factories at Jingdezhen deep inside China, and within ten or twenty years new styles were being developed specially for the Japanese market, the cobalt-blue porcelain known as Shonzui.54

  In the early seventeenth century the Japanese learned to make their own porcelain, but the high-volume trade in ceramics from China and other lands continued, and the development of Japanese pottery bears witness to the importance of the sea route across the Yellow Sea in the transmission of ideas and technology as well as hard goods. Stories circulated about a Korean potter whom the Japanese knew as Ri Sanpei; he was brought to Japan in the 1590s during the Japanese war in Korea, of which more in a short moment. It is difficult to disentangle legend and fact, but excavations at the site where Ri Sanpei is said to have introduced the manufacture of porcelain in 1616 reveal that its porcelain is slightly later in date than that, and it seems that others were busy making Chinese- and Korean-style porcelain before Ri set to work. A document concerning a master potter whose grandfather had made ceramics for Hideyoshi shows that a porcelain kiln was up and running some years before 1616. Maybe, then, Ri was a merchant rather than an industrialist. But he has become a national hero in Japan and Korea, and the symbol of the creation of the Japanese porcelain industry, which depended on the discovery of kaolin in Japan, since it was impossible to import vast amounts of China clay. Out of these innovations developed the beautiful Imari wares which in due course would be carried out of Japan by Dutch merchants.55 In all of this, it is hard n
ot to notice how often the name of Hideyoshi crops up. Cruel and temperamental he may have been, but his vigorous promotion of a wide range of economic activities both at home and overseas marks his period of rule as a golden age in the economic history of Japan.

  IV

  Hideyoshi was interested in more than trade. Having mastered many of the daimyo, he imagined that he could achieve similar results across the water. He still dreamed of conquering Korea and ultimately China, and launched a massive naval expedition to that end in 1592/3. Carletti said that the army was 300,000 strong.56 During the land campaign that followed, Seoul and Pyongyang fell to the Japanese, though a Ming-led army flushed them out of Pyongyang and they proved unable to hold Seoul after the Chinese threatened to unleash an army of 400,000 men against them: ‘Stay here in Seoul and you will be slaughtered.’57 A second invasion was unleashed in 1597, following the defeat of the Korean navy at sea. Hideyoshi ordered his army to ‘mow down everyone universally, without discriminating between young and old, men and women, the clergy and the laity – high-ranking soldiers on the battlefield, that goes without saying, but also the hill folk, down to the poorest and meanest – and send their heads to Japan’.58 Rather than collecting heads, the Japanese preferred to send back mountains of noses sliced off the faces of their dead victims. Just as the ancient Egyptians used to cut off the penises of dead invaders, this was a useful way of counting the enemy dead: ‘To: Kuroda Nagamasa. Total number of noses taken verified as 3,000. 1597, ninth month, fifth day.’59 On land, Japanese troops penetrated deep inside Korea, though not this time as far as Seoul, and they engaged with both Korean and Chinese armies; they also set up bases along the Korean coast, but they failed to achieve the breakthrough they sought. The Ming emperor’s support for his Korean vassals made the Korean nut impossible to crack. At sea, the Japanese needed to keep the supply lines open, as the Korean fleet was well aware.

  Hideyoshi gravely underestimated the abilities of the Korean navy. He assumed that size was all that mattered. In September 1597 thirteen ships under the Korean admiral Yi Sun-sin proved capable of holding back the entire Japanese fleet of over 200 ships at the battle of Myongnyang. In the fifteenth century the Koreans had developed a type of fortified ship known as ‘turtle ships’, with strengthened sides and spiked roofs, making them all but impregnable; they had gone out of fashion, but Yi had new ones built, adorned at the bow with an impressive dragon’s head, through which the muzzles of heavy guns poked. Generously provided with additional firepower at port, starboard and stern, they were rather like floating armoured tanks.60 These ships were also used as rams, because the lighter ships of the Japanese were no match for their heavy prows. Guns blazing, the tiny Korean squadron abandoned all thought of coming out alive and charged the Japanese fleet. The Koreans targeted the Japanese flagship, which was set ablaze and sank; Admiral Yi had the satisfaction of seeing the corpse of the Japanese commander dragged from the water: it was cut in pieces and hung from the mast, so the Japanese could see what had happened to their leader. This was Korea’s battle of Salamis, fought in a narrow channel, from which the Korean ships emerged unscathed, but the Japanese lost thirty-one ships.61

  By 1598 the struggle had become a matter of honour for Hideyoshi. By then, his real intention was not so much to subdue Korea, which now seemed impossible, but to humiliate the Ming emperor, by showing that Korea, a tributary state of China, was open to the armies of the other great empire, that of Japan.62 After a glittering career of naval victories, punctuated by a period when his jealous rivals had him imprisoned, Yi Sun-sin died in his final battle at the end of 1598, struck down by a bullet in much the same way as Lord Nelson, with whom he is often compared. Estimates of the number of Japanese ships destroyed in this battle hover around 200, with another hundred captured and 500 Japanese killed, quite apart from a great many who drowned. He even became a hero in the modern Japanese navy. A Japanese admiral who scored a great triumph over the Russians in 1905 objected when he was compared at his victory celebrations to Nelson and Yi. ‘It may be proper to compare me with Nelson,’ he said, ‘but not with Korea’s Yi Sun-sin. He is too great to be compared to anyone.’63

  V

  These events in Korea might seem to have had nothing much to do with the links between Japan and Macau. However, having spent so much time and money on his futile invasion of Korea, Hideyoshi was all the more inclined to favour trade, in the hope of generating more income. Trade within the Inland Sea was already lively, carrying not just goods but pilgrims between the islands of Japan. With the rise of the new administrative centre at Edo in Tokyo Bay, a new centre of consumption for rice and its much-appreciated by-product, sake, became prominent, and in the early seventeenth century the so-called ‘barrel ships’, named after their barrels of sake rather than their shape, moved back and forth to Edo following a regular timetable.64 Hideyoshi was also interested in much more distant connections. He enthusiastically issued ‘vermilion seal’ passports which allowed Japanese ships to travel back and forth to his lands. As early as 1587 he sent an expedition into Kyushu island consisting of 300,000 troops and 20,000 horses, and both Hakata, the ancient port, and Nagasaki, the new one, were brought under his direct control, which meant that he possessed windows on the world a good distance from Edo and Kyoto. Hideyoshi listened carefully to news of foreign ships, buying Portuguese gold and on one occasion offering to buy all the pottery brought from the Philippines on a Spanish ship – Luzon ceramics, though rather rough, were much appreciated by Japanese tea-drinkers.65 Japan was not isolated from the outside world, but its rulers were selective about the contacts they were willing to encourage. The importance of the Portuguese lay in the access they gave to fine Chinese silks and the links that extended beyond Macau all the way to Melaka and Goa.

  The rulers of Japan also became aware that Spaniards were taking an interest in their dominions. These were not just merchants, whose attempts to integrate Japan into the Manila galleon route have been discussed already. A remarkable Dominican friar, Juan Cobo, had travelled from Mexico to Manila in 1588; he quickly learned 3,000 Chinese characters before moving on to Satsuma in Japan in June 1592. He came as much to spy out the land as to build friendly relations with the regent’s court on behalf of King Philip of Spain; Spanish dreams of conquering China could only be realized if Japanese troops came to King Philip’s aid. In Satsuma, Cobo encountered a merchant from Peru who claimed he had been cheated by the Portuguese, so together they made their way to the military camp of Hideyoshi, who was on campaign near Nagoya. Hideyoshi was intrigued by a globe that Cobo produced, on which the friar traced the extent of the Spanish empire; but he was not convinced that Cobo’s boasts were to be taken seriously, for he was disappointed by the modest presents Cobo had brought from the Philippines, which, in any case, he chose to treat as tribute. Hideyoshi sent a letter to the governor of the Philippines, full of exaggerated boasts about his conquests in Korea and his victories over Chinese armies. He insisted that the Philippines were ‘within my reach’. He concluded with a message that mixed appeasement with threats: ‘Let us be friends forever, and write to that effect to the king of Castile. Do not, because he is far away, let him slight my words. I have never seen those far lands, but from the accounts I have been given I know what is there.’ Cobo was shipwrecked off Taiwan and was killed by local headhunters.66 Spanish Franciscan friars began to compete with the Jesuits in Japan, and one of them, Fray Jerónimo de Jesús de Castro, was thrown out of Nagasaki in autumn 1597, only to bounce back into Japan the next summer; this time the shogun, Ieyasu, who had just come to power, decided that the presence of a Spanish friar in his lands might encourage the Spaniards to strike a trade deal, and Fray Jerónimo was allowed to build a church in Edo in May 1599, even though Ieyasu did not grant him permission to convert his subjects to Christianity. The Jesuits became as busy fending off their Franciscan rivals as they were currying favour at the court of the unpredictable shogun.67

  The complications in deal
ing with Ieyasu were clearly demonstrated in 1599. A Portuguese sea captain based in Nagasaki named Francisco de Gouvea got it into his head that he could enrich himself by coming to the aid of the king of Cambodia, who was fighting his neighbours; he recruited a mixed force of Japanese and Portuguese and sailed by way of Macau to Cambodia, where his ship was joined by two Spanish vessels from Manila. Gouvea never made himself rich and was killed in Cambodia, but many of his followers escaped from Cambodia aboard his ship. Still hoping to make some money out of the expedition, they seized a boat heading across the South China Sea from Malaya, and took it with them to Nagasaki. Their exploits were deemed to be acts of piracy; all the Japanese soldiers as well as many of their wives and children were arrested and crucified, with Fray Jerónimo brought in as a witness. Only the intervention of the Jesuits prevented an even worse massacre – the wife and children of Gouvea had also been arrested but in the end were spared.68 The arbitrary nature of Ieyasu’s rule became very obvious, particularly after he defeated his Japanese foes in 1600.69 Soon after that Fray Jerónimo died of dysentery and his rival Valignano spat out the comment: ‘the Lord taught him a lesson!’ At the root of the disagreement between the Franciscans and the Jesuits was a sense among the Franciscans that the Jesuits were too willing to respect the strict limits placed on their activities by the regime in Edo: ‘they therefore go about in Japanese dress, and they say Mass and administer the sacraments behind closed doors.’ Meanwhile the Jesuits, who certainly knew Japan much better, were convinced that the open evangelization favoured by the Franciscans was placing Japanese Christianity in jeopardy.70