The Japan they encountered was very different from the hearsay. Gold there was, but not enough to arouse passions. As in China, the people were ruled by an emperor, but more in principle than in fact, for the land was divided into smaller kingdoms or domains (what the Japanese called han), whose rulers seemed to enjoy absolute power over their subjects. These kingdoms were then engaged in intermittent wars with one another. Indeed, in that second half of the sixteenth century, Japan seemed awash in blood. This favorably impressed European visitors, whose own behavior gave them a well-founded respect for force and violence. As a Portuguese Jesuit put it, those who knew Japan "set it before all the countries of the East, and compared it with those of the West in its size, the number of its cities, and its warlike and cultured people." This image persisted, even after the Japanese stopped fighting: "The national character is strikingly marked, and strongly contrasted with that which generally prevails throughout Asia. The Japanese differ most especially from the Chinese, their nearest neighbors. . . . Instead of that tame, quiet, orderly, servile disposition which makes [the Chinese] the prepared and ready subjects of despotism, the Japanese have a character marked by energy, independence and a lofty sense of honour." The Europeans were used to strange peoples; the Japanese, not: "The Japanese were first surprised to see the red-bearded, blue-eyed men,and then astonished by the natural power of their guns and powder. They were made to realize how great was the world . . . by the strange birds, curious beasts, precious silk, and beautiful damask brought from islands in the tropical zone and China. They wondered at the ideas and learning . . . the Japanese people, putting all this together, believed that there was a new heaven and earth far over the sea, and were thirsty to know this civilization. For this civilization was not like the quiet study of Confucianism, but a practical achievement before their eyes. Those who came from this new heaven and earth raised the price of merchandise, which had been almost a drug, to the great surprise of the Japanese, and demanded an unlimited supply, so that even a blade of grass or a tree had some value in the market. . . . The Japanese could not understand why this foreign trade was profitable to them. That they should become intimate with the Portuguese thus rich and thus strong, and learn their civilization, was the general idea of that time. . . ." In these circumstances, European visitors got a much warmer greeting than they had received in China. The Chinese had wanted to quarantine them, like an infection. The Japanese, as soon as they realized the mighty powers of these strangers—their ability, for example, to shoot down birds in flight—took them in with open arms and vied with one another to learn their secrets. They also sought to trade with them, because the gains were substantial. And the Europeans, on their side, seeing an opportunity to plant themselves in this welcoming society and get rich, scurried to make themselves useful.
David S. Landes “The Wealth And Poverty Of Nations”
