Sherard Osborn

“ The reception of the Japanese envoys at Rome was not a jot more magnificent than the grand tournay held by the Emperor Nobananga at Miaco to receive some present sent him by a Pope. We there read how he caused a vast space to be levelled, three times as large as the great square of Lisbon; how it was set round with the tents and pavilions of all his princes and barons; how it was filled with men in rich liveries; how the good priests could not find words to extol sufficiently the gorgeous richness of the velvets and brocades, the tapestries; the long lines of gentlemen bravely attired ”

“ A man in the garb of a Japanese sailor, leads a large monkey which climbs up a pole, and seats itself on the summit, and to the delight of the villagers fans itself à la Japonaise. The mountebank climbs on top of a pile of tea-cups, and stands on one foot on the summit of fragile crockery; the clown chaffs, and excites ridicule, and the peep-showman vaunts his marvels, and beseeches the patronage of your distinguished self. ”

“ Naked, swarthy, coarse, but hearty, look those tillers of the fields, as we view them in the midst of their labours transplanting the rice plants from their damp bed, in which they have been closely reared, into more open order, where each stem shall have room to grow and ripen. Mark the neat regularity of the drills, the cleanliness of the soil—not a weed or tare—what an abundance of labour must be at command. That the grateful soil fully repays farmer and labourer for time and trouble, we have proof in many a Japanese sketch. ”

“ Under the term Bikuni, these pretty damsels travel in pairs, clothed in a dress not unlike that of a sister of charity, and frequenting the great routes which, at certain seasons, are thronged with pilgrims and travellers, these fair nuns are said to seldom beg in vain. The artful hood hides a laughing black eye and rosy cheek, the modest robe covers far too faultless and well developed a form to pass unscathed where warm hearts are untrammeled, in a climate of Italian fervour, by those social rules which we have the Poet Laureate’s authority for saying, “Sin against the strength of youth.” ”

“ The other anxiety of this enlightened prince and the progressionist party was, how to bring about the change without giving rise to tumult and rebellion within their borders from squabbles and differences with foreigners along the sea-board, which, fanned by one functionary and another, would lead Japan into the same sad state embroglio as China had been so cursed with ever since she had swerved from the great Confucian maxim: “Happy those who never depart from the wisdom of their ancestors.” ”

“ The Japanese of to-day are just the same people first seen by Pinto and praised by Xavier. The very cut of their garments is unchanged, they shave the tops of their heads and brush up their back hair as in the sixteenth century, and although their curiosity and skill are as great as when they imitated the petronels of their Portuguese visitors and Toledo blades of the Spaniards, yet they are in all other respects that same people of the isles of the day-dawn who repelled Kublai-khan’s fleets and armies, and preferred heathen independence to the Christian vassalage of the Church of Rome. ”

“ The opening of trade and political relations with Japan, at one and the same time, was, to say the least of it, a hazardous measure with a people who had been so long excluded from foreign intercourse, and who had such good cause to look back with jealousy to their former relations with Christendom; but it could not be helped, America had taken the initiative. It would never have done for our merchants to have been in a less favourable position than those of the United States, and the responsibility of precipitancy must be with her, not with Great Britain. ”

“ Elated at the prospect of being rid of Chinese questions and Chinese difficulties, we hob and nob, in sakee, to our shadow, a Japanese funcionary, who follows us and reports all we say and do to his masters. We pay our far from exorbitant bill, gravely confer little courtesies upon the fair handmaidens, amidst the cheers of the small boys, and shout to horse in good Saxon, which is readily understood by our eager-eyed attendants. ”

“ One of the runners has a short bamboo-pole over his shoulder, and suspended from it a black lacquer despatch-box, formidable for its size, and we recognise the strength that has brought it to our feet so rapidly—no, not to our feet, for it never touches the ground. In a second it is slipped from the tired man’s shoulder to that of the fresh runner, who starts down the road like a hare, his comrade’s bell ringing to warn all travellers to make way. Thus the Taikoon’s despatches speed through the land; if one man drops, the other takes up the burden. ”

“ That first news of Nipon was brief, yet admirably calculated to awaken the curiosity and cupidity of races who had for ever been accustomed to look to the remotest East, as a land of wondrous wealth, where gold, precious stones, and almost as precious spices, were as dross. Lands which, if the mail-clad warlike sons of Western Europe could only reach, their strong arms and stout hearts would enable each impoverished knight and desperate soldier to carve out a kingdom for himself. ”

“ Nay more, we question whether the contrast between the condition of the tramp, who begs food at the English farm-labourer’s door, and the honest fellow himself, is as great as we have authority for saying must be the case in Japan, when we contemplate the lean and hungry creature who is holding out his platter to the well-fed woman on the left of our engraving. ”

“ Better still, we see, when war’s alarms are laid aside, little touches of nature, which make the whole world a-kin. We read of Japanese Portias, who will not survive disgrace;—of others, whose gentle wit saves a husband’s life and honour; and last, but not least, we hail such proofs of the civilisation of these Eastern people as are evinced in the little sketch on the opposite page.
A distinguished general—it may be the great Taiko-sama himself, although we fear the officer is not half ugly enough—encounters a beautiful maiden, in a heavy shower of rain. ”

“ Inhabitants and travellers, labourers, mendicants and priests, nobles, followers and ladies, children, jugglers and porters, who shall tell them all,—a human living kaleidoscope-full of beauty and interest are streaming along the road. We will travel a stage down it with the host of pilgrims who are going from Yedo to Yesi, the great shrine of the believers in Sin-too. The work is a good work, for they go there to be shrived of their sins—to obtain absolution, and by the toil and suffering undergone in the journey to give a living proof of the warmth of their faith. ”

“ They are great economists these good Japanese, and they know how precious for the field is the dirt of the highroad; there is quite a competition for it; women and children, with little baskets and brooms, are collecting it for the husbandman, whose intelligent industry is so conspicuous in the well-tilled fields and terrace-sided hills. Agriculture in Japan, as in China, is considered the most honourable of pursuits ”

“ There is little doubt, from the rapid decadence of Portuguese commerce and influence after the arrival of The Erasmus and William Adams, that Englishmen and Dutchmen contributed in no small degree to enlighten the Japanese as to the best mode of getting rid of those their first European friends. Year by year, fresh restrictions, fresh annoyances, rendered the position of the Portuguese more and more intolerable, and at last they may almost be said to have voluntarily withdrawn, leaving the field clear to their more energetic opponents, the heretics of Europe. ”

“ Every man is responsible for some one else’s good conduct and obedience to the law. Every man, therefore, makes a note of his neighbour’s acts, and his neighbour takes notes for a similar reason. We are all very much shocked at such a system, but the people directly interested do not appear to consider it irksome or inconvenient. Indeed, open espionnage, or a system of recording publicly every infringement of the rules of the states, must naturally bring about its own remedy, by people taking very good care not to break those laws and customs. ”

“ Marco Polo reported them to be, from Chinese authority, and ancient English writers of Queen Elizabeth’s time, state, “that the inhabitants of Japan show a notable wit, and incredible patience in suffering labour or sorrows. They take diligent care lest, either in word or deed, they should evince fear or dulness of mind, and above all are anxious not to trouble others with their cares or wants. Poverty with them bringeth no damage to the nobility of blood, and they covet, exceedingly, honour and praise. ”

“ All impartial foreign writers bear testimony to the abilities, and we almost say virtues, of this extraordinary man, who may be said to have reformed and reconstituted the Japanese Empire, and left it much as we now find it. When he ascended the throne—to use his own words—he found the kingdom distracted with civil wars, the native bonzes endeavouring to grasp the supreme power, so as to re-establish the Theocracy as founded of old, the Christianised chiefs attempting to throw off their allegiance to the imperial power, and the whole land a scene of turmoil. ”

“ Could an artist, in most continental countries of Europe, we ask, sit down and sketch what was passing before him in a street or on a highway, without introducing figures from which one would turn with loathing? Not only does it appear to be otherwise in Japan, but the remarks of European travellers in the interior confirm the fact to a very great degree. We do not in Japan find, as in India, the roadside leading to some great shrine or temple beset with starving disease-stricken pilgrims ”

“ The English sailor, the English wanderer, in those remote regions where the blue Pacific rolls its vast proportions through frigid and burning climes, may be pardoned for naturally seeking amidst its isles and continents for some resemblance to the pleasant shores of Britain. ”

“ Curious to know what a Japanese show may be like, you peep into one lens—brilliant—a vivid life-like scene, a Japanese earthquake, everything topsy-turvey, wreck, fire, death, and horror, quite worth the fraction of a penny charged. The next one is hardly inferior in interest; a great battle against rebels. They are valiant, and stand in firm array, discharging clouds of arrows, which perpetually darken the sky ”

“ With a political foresight which rebounds in no small degree to the credit of the United States lawyer, who then ruled the destinies of his country, President Polk did not sit down, and bemoan, as our British statesmen now do, the extension of dominion, as a sign of weakness in the empire; but leaving California to become the great state it now is, he at once laid down the theory which is yet being developed, that the Pacific is the natural route of North America to China and the Indies! ”

“ Let America and England look to this—we have compelled the Eastern government to risk destruction by throwing open the millions they govern to the influences of European civilisation and ideas. Do not let dishonest men embroil us with these people. ”

“ In Japan we have rough, strong-handed justice without what we should term liberty; but still the people of that country are a vast deal better governed, better protected, the laws better enforced, the public and private reputation of its officers and servants stand far higher, and a much better condition of social and moral polity exists, under the rule of the Taikoon and his princes, than can anywhere be found amongst the court, mandarins, or masses of China. ”

“ He hails a country where the oak and pine-tree flourish, where the land is green with herbage, where the field throws forth its flowers, and the wheat will ripen, not scorch, under the glare of a noontide sun. Revelling in the recollection of his home, he loves the new land more, because it resembles the one from which he is an exile. ”

“ In 1853, President Fillmore, having beaten a very big drum, and talked a wonderful talk, of philanthropy, science, trade, and revolvers, dispatched from pious America a strong squadron under Commodore Perry, with a letter to the Taikoon of Yedo, assuring him of his unalterable friendship and adding, with a keen eye to business, that “the great state of California produced sixty million dollars in gold every year, besides silver and precious stones,” and guesses Japan and the United States might do a good stroke in trade, if the Taikoon would have no objection. ”

“ Yet, in days still more remote, a peaceful conquest of Japan had been effected by the swarming hive of human beings located in the great plain which forms the heart of China. The Chinese dwelling in that rich valley of the Yangstye-keang appear from the earliest ages to have been the prey of their neighbours, or else to have been constantly over-run by fresh inroads from those wide plains of Mongolia whence they derived their origin. ”

“ There is much confusion as to the particular form of faith which might be considered the state religion of Japan; but, so far as we can glean, it appears to be a form of Budhism modified by the Spiritualism of the ancient Sintoo faith. We hear of many orders of priesthood, but those of the highest class are indubitably better educated, more intelligent, and far more respected than in China. They are spoken of as the encouragers of intellectual progress and education, and the natives give them credit as the introducers and inventors of many of their arts and sciences. ”

“ The five imperial, or reserved provinces, are supposed to support the expenses of the Taikoon and Mikado’s Courts; but the various princes all contribute in rich presents, which are duly acknowledged with certain complimentary or honorary distinctions.
In strange contradistinction to China, whence many of their laws and ordinances must have been derived, all rank and office in Japan is hereditary, and the old feudal system of Western Europe exists to-day in a well governed and powerful empire on exactly the opposite side of the globe. ”

“ Beggars there are in Japan; but it appears to be a lawful institution, not an unpleasant occupation, and kindly supported out of the surplus of their neighbours,—somewhat resembling the religious mendicant societies once so common in Europe. Yet the Japanese mendicants are original: the beggars do not trust to your mere charity to move your heart. ”