Hildreth's "Japan as It Was and Is": A Handbook of Old Japan, Volume 1 (of 2)Hildreth, Richard
History
Hildreth's "Japan as It Was and Is": A Handbook of Old Japan, Volume 1 (of 2)
Hildreth, Richard
Japan -- History
[62] The fathers resident at this college had been by no means idle.
They had printed there, in 1593, a Japanese grammar, prepared by Father
Alvarez, and, in 1595, in a thick quarto of upwards of nine hundred
pages, a Portuguese, Latin, and Japanese Lexicon. A vocabulary entirely
Japanese was printed at Nagasaki, 1598.
[63] Yet the Japanese are said to maintain to this day a garrison on
the coast (Golownin, vol. iii, ch. 9), and to receive tribute from
Corea; but this seems doubtful.
[64] Go-kirai, including Yamashiro, Yamato, Kawachi, Izumi, and
Settsu.—EDR.
[65] Father Valignani died in 1606, at Macao, whither he had gone to
look after the Chinese missions, a few Jesuits having at length got
admission into that empire. Father Rodriguez, in his annual letter of
1606, from Miyako, in noticing Valignani’s death, speaks of him as
justly entitled to be called the apostle of the missions of Japan and
China,—a title, indeed, which he had already received from the king of
Portugal. Purchas, who published a few years later, mentions him as the
“great Jesuit.” He enjoyed in his own day, and deservedly, a reputation
quite equal to that of our most famous modern missionaries; but these
missionary reputations are apt not to be very long-lived. Five of his
letters are in the collection of Hay, “De Rebus Japonicis,” etc.
The death of Father Louis Froez has been mentioned in the previous
chapter. We have of his letters, in Maffei’s “Select Epistles,” nine,
written between the years 1563 and 1573; and in Hay’s collection,
eight, written between 1577 and 1596. Many of these are of great
length. That of February, 1565, contains a curious account of what he
saw at Miyako, on his going thither with Almeida to aid Vilela, who
had labored there alone for six years with only Japanese assistants.
The translation of it in Hackluyt has an important passage in the
beginning, giving a general account of the Japanese, not in the Latin
editions that I have seen. Those in Hay’s collection are rather reports
than letters. That of 1586 contains an account of Valignani’s first
interview with Taikō-Sama, that of 1592 a full account of Valignani’s
embassy, the second of 1595 the history of Taikō-Sama’s quarrel with
his nephew, and the two of 1596 a full account of the first martyrdoms
and of the state of the church at the time.
Almeida had died in 1583, after a missionary life of twenty-eight
years. We have five of his letters, which show him a good man, but
exceedingly credulous, even for a Portuguese Jesuit.
[66] This chapter, also the twenty-second, is taken, with alterations
and additions, from an article (written by the compiler of this work)
in “Harper’s Magazine” for January, 1854.
[67] See Appendix, Note E.
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