Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan Read Online Free Page B

and died; the harvested rice fields turned into mud-gray swamps; and the oaks shed their leaves after a brief but spectacular burst of color. Only the camphor trees in the grounds of the Fukosho-ji monastery held their foliage in the chill north wind.
    Xavier and his companions shivered in their cotton tunics. Their lodgings were freezing, for the paper window panels did little to cut the icy blast that whipped off the sea. Winter brought
the first snows, which Xavier had not seen since leaving Portugal. He stayed indoors and spent his time doggedly studying Japanese, with which he was having great difficulties. His attempt to produce a phonetic Japanese catechism, written in Latin characters, was a disaster. Twice a day, he would clamber up the steep stone steps of the Fukosho-ji monastery and, seated at the far side of the dragon-gate bridge, overlooking the tranquil lotus pool, he would try to read aloud from his book. But the translation was poor and the Christian doctrine was unintelligible to the monks. Worse still, its clumsy style offended the ears of these highly educated men, and they laughed and said he was crazy.
    His more private preaching—done with the help of his interpreter—had reaped a handful of converts. An impoverished samurai had been the first to be baptized; he took the name of Bernardo and devoted himself to studying the Bible. Anjiro’s mother, wife, and daughter had also converted—along with the owner of Xavier’s lodgings. But these were rare successes, and Xavier found that even sympathetic audiences were generally skeptical. He had tried to adopt and adapt Japanese words when he came to teach the local people about Christianity, but quickly mired himself in confusion. Japanese religious words were too laden with symbolism to convey the theology of the gospel.
    So far, Xavier had not penetrated into inland Japan and his knowledge of the country was limited—like Pinto’s—to the coastline. From the moment he had first set foot in Japan, he had intended to travel to the fabled imperial city of Kyoto—then known as Miyako—to seek permission to preach from the emperor himself. He also hoped to be granted an entrance into the famous university of Heizan in order to debate with, and convert, the erudite monks.
    Toward the end of August 1550, he and his companions finally set off on a journey of great hardship. The first leg involved a dangerous sea voyage, braving storms and pirates, while the second stage entailed a treacherous trek over snow-capped mountains.
The mortification of the voyage left Xavier unfazed; indeed, he made it even more arduous by shunning the offer of a pack animal and subsisting on tiny quantities of roasted rice. “He was so absorbed in God,” wrote one of his fellow travelers, “that he wandered off the way without noticing it, and tore his trousers and injured his feet without observing it.” He made few converts en route, for he struck most observers as an eccentric figure whose impoverished demeanor won little respect in Japan. By the time he approached Kyoto, his sleeveless black surplice was torn to shreds, while his tiny Siamese cap—tied to his head with string—gave him the appearance of a jester.
    Xavier had high expectations of the fabled imperial city. “We are told great things,” he wrote, “ … [and] are assured that it has more than ninety thousand homes, and that it has a great university.” He had been told of monumental temples and monasteries, of golden shrines and pleasure houses where the emperor and his court engaged in intellectual tussles. The truth was very different. Kyoto lay in ruins—an expanse of crumbling dwellings and temples—for warfare, pestilence, and floods had left the city in a parlous state. The once-magnificent Sunflower and Moonflower Gates had been wrecked by a typhoon, and the clipped fringe of bamboo that surrounded the palace apartments had been swept away by floodwater. Princesses and courtly mistresses