With pleasaunce of the breathing fields yfed,
With pleasaunce of the breathing fields yfed,
With pleasaunce of the breathing fields yfed,
With pleasaunce of the breathing fields yfed,
to visit the temples, and give themselves up to all kinds of rural diversions. Nothing could be more grotesque than the appearance of these crowds. The women were richly dressed in various-coloured robes, with a purple-coloured silk about their foreheads, and wearing large straw hats, to defend their beauty from the sun. Here and there among the multitude were small groups of beggars, some dressed in fantastic garbs, with strange masks upon their faces, others walking upon high iron stilts, while a third party walked along bearing large pots with green trees upon their heads. The more merry among them sung, whistled, played upon theflute, or beat little bells which they carried in their hands. In the streets were numbers of open shops, jugglers, and players, who were exercising their skill and ingenuity for the amusement of the crowd. The temples, which were erected on the slope of the neighbouring green hills, were illuminated with numerous lamps, and the priests, no less merry or active than their neighbours, employed themselves in striking with iron hammers upon some bells or gongs, which sent forth a thundering sound over the country. Through this enlivening scene they pushed on to their inn, where they were ushered into apartments, which, being like all other apartments in the empire, destitute of chimneys, resembled those Westphalian smoking-rooms in which they smoke their beef and hams.
Having visited the governor, and the lord chief justice of Miako, and delivered the customary presents, the embassy proceeded towards Jeddo. Short, however, as was their stay, Kæmpfer found leisure for observing and describing the city, which was extensive, well-built, and immensely populous. Being the chief mercantile and manufacturing town in the empire, almost every house was a shop, and every man an artisan. Here, he observes, they refined copper, coined money, printed books, wove the richest stuffs, flowered with gold and silver, manufactured musical instruments, the best-tempered sword-blades, pictures, jewels, toys, and every species of dress and ornaments.
They departed from Miako in palanquins on the 2d of March, and travelling through a picturesque country, dotted with groves, glittering with temples and lakes, and admirably cultivated, arrived in three days at the town of Mijah, where they saw a very curious edifice, called the “Temple of the Three Scimitars,” where three miraculous swords, once wielded by demigods, are honoured with a kind of divine worship. On the 13th of March theyarrived, by a fine road running along the edge of the sea, at Jeddo, and entered the principal street, where they encountered as they rode along numerous trains of princes and great lords, with ladies magnificently dressed, and carried in chairs or palanquins. This city, the largest and most populous in the empire, stands at the bottom of a large bay or gulf, and is at least twenty miles in circumference. Though fortified by numerous ditches and ramparts, Jeddo is not surrounded by a wall. A noble river, which divides itself into numerous branches, intersects it in various directions, and thus creates a number of islands which are connected by magnificent bridges. From the principal of these bridges, which is called Niponbas, or the Bridge of Japan, the great roads leading to all parts of the empire radiate as lines from a common centre, and thence likewise all roads and distances are measured. Though houses are not kept ready built, as at Moscow, to be removed at a moment’s notice in case of destruction by fire or any other accident, they are generally so slight, consisting entirely of wood and wainscotting, that they may be erected with extraordinary despatch. Owing to the combustible materials of those edifices, the very roofs consisting of mere wood-shavings, while all the floors are covered with mats, Jeddo is exceedingly liable to fires, which sometimes lay waste whole streets and quarters of the city. To check these conflagrations in their beginnings every house has a small wooden cistern of water on the house-top, with two mops for sprinkling the water; but these precautions being frequently found inefficient, large companies of firemen constantly patrol the streets, day and night, in order, by pulling down some of the neighbouring houses, to put a stop to the fires. The imperial palace, five Japanese miles in circumference, consists of several castles united together by a wall, and surrounded by a deep ditch. The variousstructures which compose this vast residence are built with freestone, and from amid the wilderness of roofs a square white tower rises aloft, and, consisting of many stories, each of which has its leaded roof, ornamented at each corner with gilded dragons, communicates to the whole scene an air of singular grandeur and beauty. Behind the palace, which itself stands upon an acclivity, the ground continues to rise, and this whole slope is adorned, according to the taste of the country, with curious and magnificent gardens, which are terminated by a pleasant wood on the top of a hill, planted with two different species of plane-trees, whose starry leaves, variegated with green, yellow, and red, are exceedingly beautiful.
When their arrival at Jeddo was notified to the imperial commissioners, to whom was intrusted the regulation of foreign affairs, they were commanded to be kept confined in their apartments, and strictly guarded. This, in all probability, was to prevent their discovering the tremendous accident which had lately occurred in the city, where forty streets, consisting of four thousand houses, had been burned to the ground a few days before their arrival. Several other fires, exceedingly destructive and terrific, and an earthquake which shook the whole city to its foundations, happened within a few days after their arrival. On the 29th of March they were honoured with an audience. Passing through the numerous gates and avenues to the palace between lines of soldiers, armed with scimitars, and clothed in black silk, they were conducted into an apartment adjoining the hall of audience, where they were commanded to await the emperor’s pleasure. As nothing could more forcibly paint the insolent pride of this barbarian despot, or the degraded position which, for the sake of gain, the Dutch were content to occupy in Japan, I shall describe this humiliating ceremony in the words of thetraveller himself. “Having waited upwards of an hour,” says he, “and the emperor having in the mean while seated himself in the hall of audience, Sino Comi (the governor of Nangasaki) and the two commissioners came in and conducted our resident into the emperor’s presence, leaving us behind. As soon as he came thither, they cried out aloud ‘Hollanda Captain!’ which was the signal for him to draw near, and make his obeisance. Accordingly he crawled on his hands and knees to a place shown him, between the presents ranged in due order on one side, and the place where the emperor sat, on the other, and then kneeling, he bowed his forehead quite down to the ground, and so crawled backwards, like a crab, without uttering one single word. So mean and short a thing is the audience we have of this mighty monarch.”
After a second audience, to which they were invited chiefly for the purpose of allowing the ladies of the harem, who viewed them from behind screens, an opportunity of seeing what kind of animals Dutchmen were, and having despatched the public business, which was the sole object of the embassy, they returned to Nangasaki. During this second visit to Jeddo, in the following year, nothing very remarkable occurred, except that they were invited to dine in the palace, and thus afforded an opportunity of observing the etiquette of a Japanese feast. Each guest was placed at a small separate table, and the repast commenced with hot white cakes as tough as glue, and two hollow loaves of large dimension, composed of flour and sugar, and sprinkled over with the seeds of the sesamum album. Then followed a small quantity of pickled salmon; and the magnificent entertainment was concluded with a few cups of tea, which Kæmpfer assures us was little better than warm water! When they had devoured this sumptuous feast, they were conducted towards the hall of audience, where, after havingbeen questioned respecting their names and age by several Buddhist priests and others, Kæmpfer was commanded to sing a song, for the amusement of the emperor and his ladies, who were all present, but concealed behind screens. He of course obeyed, and sung some verses which he had formerly written in praise of a lady for whom he says he had a very particular esteem. As he extolled the beauty of this paragon to the highest degree, preferring it before millions of money, the emperor, who appears to have partly understood what he sung, inquired the exact meaning of those words; upon which, like a true courtier, our traveller replied that they signified nothing but his sincere wishes that Heaven might bestow “millions of portions of health, fortune, and prosperity upon the emperor, his family, and court.” The various members of the embassy were then commanded, as they had been on the former audience, to throw off their cloaks, to walk about the room, and to exhibit in pantomime in what manner they paid compliments, took leave of their parents, mistresses, or friends, quarrelled, scolded, and were reconciled again. Another repast, somewhat more ample than the preceding, followed this farce, and their audience was concluded.
Having now remained in Asia ten years, two of which were spent in Japan, the desire of revisiting his native land was awakened in his mind, and quitting Japan in the month of November, 1692, he sailed for Batavia. Here, in February, 1693, he embarked for Europe. The voyage lasted a whole year, during which they were constantly out at sea, with the exception of a few weeks, which they spent upon the solitudes of an African promontory, for so he denominates the Cape of Good Hope. He arrived at Amsterdam in the October following; and now, after having, as M. Eriès observes, pushed his researches almost beyond the limits of the old world, began to think of taking his doctor’s degree,a measure which most physicians are careful to expedite before they commence their peregrinations. He was honoured with the desired title at Leyden, in April, 1694, and custom requiring an inaugural discourse, he selected for the purpose ten of the most singular of those dissertations which he afterward published in his “Amœnitates.”
This affair, which is still, I believe, considered important in Germany, being concluded, he returned to his own country, where his reputation and agreeable manners, together with the honour of being appointed physician to his sovereign, the Count de Lippe, overwhelmed him with so extreme a practice that he could command no leisure for digesting and arranging the literary materials, the only riches, as he observes, which he had amassed during his travels. However, busy as he was, he found opportunities of conciliating the favour of some fair Westphalian, who, he hoped, might deliver him from a portion of his cares. In this natural expectation he was disappointed. The lady, far from concurring with her lord in smoothing the rugged path of human life, was a second Xantippe, and, as one of Kæmpfer’s nephews relates, poured more fearful storms upon his head than those which he had endured on the ocean. His marriage, in fact, was altogether unfortunate; for his three children, who might, perhaps, have made some amends for their mother’s harshness, died in the cradle.
It was upwards of eighteen years after his return that he published the first fruits of his travels and researches—the “Amœnitates Exoticæ;” which, however, immediately diffused his reputation over the whole of Europe. But his health had already begun to decline, and before he could prepare for the press any further specimens of his capacity and learning, death stepped in, and snatched him away from the enjoyment of his fame and friends, on the 2d of November, 1716, in the 66th year of his age.He was interred in the cathedral church of St. Nicholas, at Lemgow; and Berthold Haeck, minister of the town, pronounced a funeral sermon, or panegyric, over his grave, which was afterward printed.
Upon the death of Kæmpfer being made known in England, Sir Hans Sloane, whose ardour for the improvement of science is well known, commissioned the German physician of George I., who happened to be at that time proceeding to Hanover, to make inquiries respecting our traveller’s manuscripts, and to purchase them, if they were to be disposed of. They were accordingly purchased, together with all his drawings; and on their being brought to England, Dr. Scheuchzer, a man of considerable ability, was employed to translate the principal work, the “History of Japan,” into English. From this version, which has since been proved to have been executed with care and fidelity, it was translated into French by Desmaigeneux, and retranslated into German in an imperfect and slovenly manner. However, after the lapse of many years, the original MS was faithfully copied, and the work, hitherto known to our traveller’s own countrymen chiefly through foreign translations, published in Germany. Many of Kæmpfer’s manuscripts still remain unpublished in the British Museum.
Kæmpfer may very justly be ranked among the most distinguished of modern travellers. To the most extensive learning he united an enterprising character, singular rectitude of judgment, great warmth of fancy, and a style of remarkable purity and elegance. His “Amœnitates” and “History of Japan” may, in fact, be reckoned among the most valuable and interesting works which have ever been written on the manners, customs, or natural history of the East.