Shades of the Past

by Harold Williams

  The Legation in Yedo was however, by no means sure that Her Majesty's Auditors would approve such reckless expenditure. The Consul, in his own defence, was thereupon obliged to explain that the care which he always exercised in the expenditure of public moneys was amply illustrated by the fact that his country's flag, which he proudly flew from the new flagpole, had actually cost $50 Mex. of which only $30 Mex. was charged in his accounts.

  Even the Consular boat in which the Consul visited Her Majesty's ships, rather than flopping about on a mat in the bottom of a Japanese sampan, or wallah-wallah boat, had been purchased out of his own personal funds. Seemingly those were the days when the value of the national currency was maintained at all costs—even to the extent of the Consul in Nagasaki having to bear some portion of the expense of showing the flag.

  The success of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance has been so overwhelming that it would require some courage at this late date to suggest that they snitched from the British Consular records of Nagasaki the idea that a policeman's lot is not a happy one.

  I shall not therefore labour that theory beyond pointing out that fifteen years before The Pirates of Penzance was written, Consul Morrison treated his superiors in Yedo to a long despatch showing that a constable's job is "without distinction, without profit, and without prospects" and that "no respectable man can be retained for any length of time in the post of constable."

  His own lot was obviously nothing to boast about, because in official correspondence he described the accommodation for himself and the consulate as "a wretched hovel where we have struggled against the want of almost every requisite in a house"

  Apparently even the local butcher had better accommodation, because he further wrote: 'I find that the only persons in Nagasaki unprovided with comfortable habitation are the officers of H. M. Consulate"

  Seemingly that was no exaggeration because his bedroom also served as a sitting room and his dining room as a public office during the day. He had one small room as a private office, but that had to be shared with his many official visitors.

  The consulate was then housed in a temple, and, as millions of tourists to Japan have since discerned, it is difficult to conceive of a building that is less adaptable to a comfortable home than a Buddhist temple or an Imperial palace!

  In 1861 when Morrison travelled to Yedo on official business he arrived at the British Legation just in time to be nearly murdered by Japanese ronin when they attacked the Legation that same night. Morrison showed conspicuous bravery in defending the Legation and his Minister's life. During the course of the fight he was wounded and narrowly missed having his head sliced off.

  Consul Morrison was under no illusions as to the skill with which he had carried out his difficult duties in Nagasaki in the opening years of that port, and he considered he had earned promotion. When therefore the appointment of Secretary of Legation at Yedo was awarded to another, he had the courage to express his disappointment and to suggest that the Secretary of State had welched on a promise:

  With the utmost deference to the pleasure of Her Majesty's Secretary of State on the arrangements which His Lordship pleases to make, I could but express the great disappointment which I naturally feel at the road to honourable promotion which appeared open to me under a promise, as it were conveyed in His Lordship's published despatch, upon which I relied, being thus unexpectedly and indefinitely closed.

  Shortly afterwards Morrison decided there were occupations and climes where he could be more happy, and he thereupon retired from the service. And so there disappeared from the scene a consul who endears himself to us for the vigour with which he pursued his duties and the descriptions which he has left us of the early Settlement days.

  Upon this note I bring to a close this first installment of disclosures of official secrets, which offence—heinous in some countries—has been indulged in to substantiate my statement that the lot of a consul nearly a hundred years ago, like that of a policeman, could not have been a very happy one.

  ST. GEORGE

  FOR

  MERRIE

  ENGLAND

  St. George he was for England.

  —Old English Ballad, 1512

  April 23rd is the day when Englishmen gather together to honour their patron saint.

  Every year at this time the thoughts of Englishmen in the Far East turn to the Cross of St. George: that simple design of a red cross on a white ground; that symbol of a proud Briton who lived three hundred years after Christ, and who died rather than deny his faith at the bidding of a Roman emperor; that banner which became the rallying point for the defiant war cry For St. George and Merrie England; that blessed flag of England.

  The Cross of St. George, although rarely flown in Japan nowadays, was a familiar sight in some parts about two hundred years before the Union Jack was created. In all probability the Cross of St. George was seen in Japan for the first time after the arrival of Will Adams, the English pilot employed by the Dutch, and the first Englishman to visit Japan. That was during the reign of Elizabeth I of England.

  But the first occasion on which an English vessel flying the Cross of St. George was seen by Japanese, and in all probability the first occasion (except for Will Adams) that Englishmen met Japanese, was in 1604 off Pahang in Malaya when two English ships, the "Tiger" and the "Tiger's Whelp," made a chance meeting with a junk manned by Japanese and sailing under the flag of Hachiman—a flag bearing the characters for Hachiman, the God of War. The meeting of those sea dogs of England and the Japanese pirates ended in a fight and a most bloody one that carried on until the Japanese, outnumbered and rather than surrender, died almost to the last man.

  The Japanese had been pirating along the coast of China and Cambodia, which activities probably were not very different to the type of enterprise in which the "Tiger" and the "Tiger's Whelp" were engaged. The Japanese had lost their vessel by shipwreck and had seized a junk laden with rice, in which they were sailing until they could acquire something better, whilst the English were on the lookout for any prize or treasure that was worth their capturing. They met in a spirit of feigned cordiality, but each with designs upon the other. The Englishmen suspected there might be treasure concealed beneath the rice, while the Japanese had in mind capturing the English ships:

  These Rogues being desperate in winds and fortunes, being hopelesse in that paltrie jurike ever to returne to their Countrey, resolved with themselves either to gaine my shippe, or to lose their lives.

  So reads the English account.

  One day the Japanese sprang a surprise attack and during a most bloody fight lasting four hours succeeded in killing the captain of the "Tiger" but were then forced back into the main cabin. There they refused to surrender and attempted to fire the ship, whereupon the English broke down the bulkhead and brought to bear upon them some of the ship's guns loaded with grape-shot.

  Their legs, armes, and bodies were so tome, as it was strange to see, how the shot had massacred them. In all this conflict they never would desire their lives, though they were hopelesse to escape: such was the desperateness of these Japonians.

  All the Japanese were slaughtered with the exception of one who succeeded in jumping overboard, but he was subsequently captured.

  The next day.... the Generall commanded his people to hang this Japonian; but he broke the Rope and fell into the Sea. I cannot tell whether he swamme to the land or not.

  An officer of the "Tiger" in recounting this desperate fight concluded with the comment:

  The Japanese are not suffered to land in any port in India with weapons, being accounted a people so desperate and daring that they are feared in all places where they come.

  In such manner happened the first meeting between Englishmen and Japanese.

  In 1606 the flags of St. George and St. Andrew were combined to form the Union Flag of Great Britain, but its use was confined by proclamation to naval vessels. English merchant ships were required to continue to fly St. George's
Cross and so when the English East India Company established its trading post in Japan at Hirado in Kyushu, the Cross of St. George became a familiar sight in those parts. There is at least one rare Dutch drawing now kept at The Hague, which shows St. George's Cross flying over what appears to be the residence of the Chief Merchant of the English factory at Hirado.

  Will Adams later joined the English East India Company but on coming to Hirado he preferred to take up residence in a separate house (on which he always flew the Cross of St. George) rather than live with Capt. Saris the head of the English factory. He thereby set a wise precedent for the British mercantile community in Japan, which has been followed by thousands of young Britons ever since, namely it is better not to live with the boss.

  Saris was not pleased with this display of independence and comments on Adams in his diary:

  He would for two or three days repair to his colours which he had put out at an old window in a poor house, being a Cross of St. George made of coarse cloth.

  In 1613 when Capt. Saris accompanied by Adams and a staff of eight Englishmen travelled to the Shogun's Court in Yedo, the Cross of St. George was carried at the head of the little cavalcade and was hung out in front of the inns at which they stayed en route. The first part of the voyage from Hirado to Osaka was made by sea and Saris describes the craft in his diary as:

  A King's Gallye filled with 25 oars one aside and 40 men, which I did fit up in a very comely manner with waste clothes and ensigns (the Cross of St. George).

  On arrival in Yedo, Saris presented to the Shogun a letter from King James I of England who styled himself "by the grace of God, King for these eleven years of the three countries of Great Britain, France and Ireland" and then in polite form and with pardonable flattery, but immense exaggeration, added that "the greatness and the splendid fame of His Highness the Lord Shogun of Japan is notorious and well known in our country"

  Incidentally it was Saris who has recorded the first foreign complaint against Japanese servants, when he alleged that his majordomo (or house boy) had "squeezed" 10/- on the sake account! It may be of interest also to those foreigners who have been involved in labour disputes in Japan to know that the first such dispute occurred at the East India Company's factory at Hirado in 1617, but that the Englishmen were instructed by the Japanese Authorities not to accede to the demands.

  Let not the public relations experts and the publicity agents of to-day think that they are pioneers in a new profession. In 1618 when Richard Cocks, then in charge of the English trading post, made his first official visit to Nagasaki from his headquarters in Hirado, his assistant, Will Adams, arrived there one day earlier and with the support of the Chinese merchants arranged to stage for Cocks a thunderous welcome, which Cocks described in a letter:

  Langasaque (Nagasaki) in Japan this 21st Feb., 1618. Loving Frendes,

  We arrived heare yesterday just an hower before sunne seting. Capt. Adams being arrived the day before and came out with the China Captain, all the China junks haveing their flagges and stremers with St. George amongst the rest and shot affe above 40 chambers and pieces of ordinance at my arrival.

  It is evident from this letter that Adams, although then a naturalized Japanese, took advantage of this opportunity to show the flag of England—the Cross of St. George—to the people of Nagasaki and at the same time to give his boss a royal salute of 40 guns.

  After 1620, on account of the growing distrust on the part of the Japanese officials in Christianity, the flying of the Cross of St. George was forbidden in Japan. A cross in any form was then a symbol to be searched for and stamped out.

  Prom about 1622 the persecution of Christian missionaries and converts became violent, and more than three thousand Japanese, men, women and even children, suffered extreme martyrdom for the Christian faith. One of the final acts in this drama was the rebellion at Shimabara when nearly forty thousand Japanese, more than half of whom were women and children, fighting under Christian banners and crosses, were massacred.

  Thereafter the Japanese authorities became so alarmed at the effect that the spread of Christianity might have on their own power, that they proceeded to exterminate this new religion in Japan; churches and monasteries were destroyed and even the Christian graveyards were uprooted, the tombstones overthrown and "all the dead men's bones taken out of the ground and cast forth." Only the Dutch merchants remained enjoying a monopoly of trade, but at the cost of being cooped up on the small island of Deshima in Nagasaki harbour, and suffering various indignities.

  Some years later, around 1672, some merchants in London felt that the East India Company was not sufficiently active and that opportunities for doing business with Japan and China were being lost. They thereupon began pressing for new charters to trade. Spurred by the possibility of outside competition the East India Company thereupon decided to send two ships, the "Experiment" and "Return," to the East and gave very careful consideration to the flag under which they should sail, because sailing under the Cross of St. George, or any other cross, might doom the expedition to failure. The expediency of filling in the four white corners of the cross with the arms of England, Scotland, Ireland and France and of thus rendering the cross less evident, was considered. However after arrival at Nagasaki, the "Return" flew her true colours—the Cross of St. George—which led to troublesome enquiries:

  It being Sunday we put our colours with St. George's Cross; they asked why we put out our colours to-day, not having spread them before since our coming: I said this was our Sunday which came every seventh day, and it was our custom so to do....They departed not saying anything against our usual colours, having been aboard five hours and very troublesome....

  About ten of the clock came aboard the inter-prefers with two chief men and they told us that for the future, until further orders came from Yedo they would not advise us to wear our colours, with the cross in them, it being so nigh the Portugal cross....

  The result was three wearisome months of procrastination, explanations, haggling and negotiation, after which the "Return" sailed away without having accomplished anything.

  In 1801 the Cross of St. Patrick was added to the Union Flag to form the Union Jack which thereafter became a familiar flag in all parts of the world, except Japan. The aborigines of Australia had seen the Union Jack planted on their sunburnt continent; the Maoris of New Zealand had fought against it; the Hawaiians knew it when it floated over their islands; it was unfurled over forts along the Khyber Pass and in northern India close to the Roof of the World; it was sniped at and ambushed; it was known from the Falkland Islands in the south to Baffin Island in the north and north again, and around the world to Hongkong and beyond. But the people of Japan knew nothing of it. The doors of Japan at that time were still closed to all western countries except Holland, and it was not until after 1854 when Japan was forced to open her gates, that the Union Jack was flown in Japan when Britons had occasion to fly their flag.

  As the Knights of the Garter use the Cross of St. George, that flag was again seen in Japan in February, 1906, when the Garter Mission under Prince Arthur of Connaught invested Emperor Meiji with the Order of the Garter, and conferred the Order of Merit on Field Marshals Oyama and Yamagata and Admiral Togo, victorious commanders of the Russo-Japanese War.

  The Cross of St. George can still at times be seen flying in Japan on the flagships of visiting British admirals, or over Anglican churches on St. George's Day (in early times on festival days also), but otherwise the Cross of St. George is now seen only as the main emblem in the scheme of decorations on the occasion each year when Englishmen celebrate and invite others to drink with them the toast of St. George for Merrie England.

  TRADING

  UNDER

  DIFFICULTIES

  It was a proverb among the Dutch, that though a Dutch Man was Cunning, He could go to School to a Japanese.

  CHRISTOPHER FRYKE, 1683

  The Tokyo express pulls out of Nagasaki daily early in the afternoon. Five hours late
r when the train rumbles through the tunnel under the Straits of Shimonoseki, the floors of the carriages are littered with mandarin skins and most of the passengers are dozing. They seem to be still dozing the following morning and the litter on the floor grows deeper. But all are wide awake again when the train pulls into Tokyo station in the afternoon, making a total of twenty-six hours from Nagasaki to the capital. Allowing a full night for a geisha spree, and another for a visit to a cabaret and strip tease, an overworked government official or a busy business man from the provinces could probably complete his important tasks and be ready to leave the capital again on the third day, thereby arriving back in Nagasaki after an absence of less than a week. All this could be done, and generally is, on a single satchel of baggage.

  This is fast, convenient and comparatively cheap travelling as compared with three hundred years ago when the Dutch made their periodical visits to Yedo for the purpose of paying homage to the Shogun. They took with them several hundred pieces of baggage and required about three months for the return trip. So costly were those visits that at one time the Dutch threatened, but only threatened, to close their factory and give up their trade monopoly, rather than submit to the expense.

  Dr. Engelbert Kaempfer, the German physician attached to the Dutch East India Company's factory on Deshima in Nagasaki harbour, and one of the most remarkable chroniclers of all time, spent only two years in Japan, but left in five volumes a most detailed picture of Japan of those days of 263 years ago. He covered the history, geography, manners, customs, art, and religious beliefs of what was then a little-known island empire—a most remarkable achievement considering that all the Japanese with whom the Dutch came into contact were bound under oath not to disclose anything concerning the domestic affairs of the country, its religion, its politics, or its history.