#luis frois

Thank you to the helpful people who forwarded links to the digitized version of Cartas, I was able to identify some of the stories I found in Japanese articles about Luis Frois letters. The most important one being the supposed story of how Nobunaga called himself "Dairokuten Maō".

Letter from Luis Frois in the capital, addressed to Francisco Cabral, 20 April 1573:

There in the text you can see that he recorded of Shingen having called himself "Tendai no Zasu Shamon Shingen" in a letter, and to which Nobunaga responded with "Dairokuten no Maō Nobunaga".

This is a kind of unusual transcription. Most people today would write the epithets as "Dairokuten Maō" and "Tendai Zasu" respectively, without the "no" particle in the middle. I'm assuming this was just the way things are rendered in medieval Japan, which would have been different from modern Japanese.

Even if Frois had gotten incorrect information, I don't believe he would be making this up. He possibly had heard of it from rumours in town.

There's also a brief comment about how Nobunaga called himself the "living god (kami) and Buddha".

*) By the way, if anyone reading this can read Portuguese, can you please help confirm what is "paos"? The Japanese translation of "aspedras & paos" is "stone and trees".

Also, there was something strange when I was trying to check this out. The Japanese article I got said that this Dairokuten Maō story is in a letter from Luis Frois addressed to Antonio de Quadros in 1573. The problem is, in Cartas none of Frois's 1573 letters are addressed to Quadros. Frois's letters to Quadros were from 1571. It had some discussion about Hieizan, but not Shingen.

FUCKING

FINALLY

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU PERSON 

THANK YOU FOR SOLVING THE MYSTERY OF NOBU’S “KISAMA”

The article says that what Frois wrote in the original Portuguese was that Nobu uses “tu”, which they say is “a non-formal form of second person pronoun”. It is not literally “kisama”. What the actual Japanese word used here is unknown, since Frois did not transcribe it. The English translation wasn’t wrong, then, in rendering that as “Nobunaga addressed people arrogantly”.

........................ YOU KNOW IF WE DON’T KNOW WHAT THE ACTUAL TERM IS, THEN IT’S POSSIBLE THAT WHATEVER IT IS MIGHT HAVE BEEN AN OWARI LINGO. Like maybe he thinks it’s not formal because it’s not what the other hoity toity samurai usually use.

This is taken from the Japanese translation of Luis Frois's Historia, which has been criticised for unfortunately containing mistranslated texts in various parts (examples included inserting arbitrary Japanese words when Frois originally recorded no Japanese words).

I don't know if the translation has been revised since, so this account might be somewhat flawed if it was taken from the old version, but for the time being this is what I have.

信長は…その権力と地位をいっそう誇示すべく、三河の国王（徳川家康）と、甲斐国の主将たちのために饗宴を催すことに決め、その盛大な招宴の接待役を彼（光秀）に下命した。これらの催し事の準備について、信長はある密室において明智と語っていたが、元来、逆上しやすく、自らの命令に対して反対（意見）を言われることに堪えられない性質であったので、人々が語るところによれば、彼（信長）の好みに合わぬ要件で、明智が言葉を返すと、信長は立ち上がり、怒りをこめ、一度か二度、明智を足蹴にしたということである。だが、それは秘かになされたことであり、二人だけの間での出来事だったので、後々まで民衆の噂に残ることはなかったが、あるいはこのことから明智は何らかの根拠を作ろうと欲したのかも知れぬし、あるいは[おそらくこの方がより確実だと思われるが]、その過度の利欲と野心が募り、ついにはそれが天下の主になることを彼（光秀）に望ませるまでになったのかもわからない。（ともかく）彼はそれを胸中深く秘めながら、企てた陰謀を果す適当な時機をひたすら窺っていたのである。 Nobunaga… in order to further display his power and position, decided to hold a feast for the king of Mikawa (Tokugawa Ieyasu) and the generals of Kai Province, and the role of the host was tasked to him (Mitsuhide). Nobunaga had a discussion with Akechi in a private room about the preparations for these events, but being someone who was by nature easily offended and could not bear to be spoken against, people say that when Akechi replied to him (Nobunaga) with things not to his liking, Nobunaga stood up and kicked Akechi once or twice in anger. However, this incident was private, where only the two of them bore witness to it, and it didn't become a publicly known rumour until later. Perhaps Akechi wanted to establish justification from this, or [perhaps more reasonably], his excessive greed and ambition rose, such that it finally led him [Mitsuhide] to desire to become the master of the land. (Anyway), he kept this deep in his heart, waiting for the right moment to carry out his plot.

(the quoted passage taken from this article)

Luis Frois pretty clearly did not like Mitsuhide, maybe because Nobunaga's death robbed the Europeans of the security that they had under his reign. In his letters and Historia, Frois repeatedly describes Mitsuhide as cunning, and that all his well-seeming actions were only to cover up his treacherous intentions.

That being said, this is one of the very few actually contemporary accounts of such an incident happening. The story that was frequently seen in dramas and movies, that Mitsuhide got beat up due to accidentally serving rotten food to Ieyasu, was from the Ehon Taikouki that was created in the Edo period. This narrative might have been an exaggerated version from the account in the Kawasumi Taikouki (itself already a rather late date account), where Mitsuhide was dismissed because of the rotten food, but was not beat up.

Because the incident of Mitsuhide being beat up by Nobunaga—or by another vassal under Nobunaga's orders— cannot be found in contemporary and reliable accounts, various researchers have considered that story to be dubious.

It still doesn’t necessarily mean that he wore them, though.

I’m posting this as something of a correction and update on my previous post saying that there is no solid proof yet that Nobunaga doesn’t wear European clothes. 

My point still stands in the sense that nobody so far has produced the proper documentation of him wearing them. Maybe somewhere in the European accounts or diaries that are harder to find, the account actually exist, but I just haven’t been able to see it. 

What I wanted to correct was my claim that “he only received one cloak from Frois”. I was wrong, and I have fixed the original post. I just thought I’d post a longer detailed post too, rather than bloating the old post with more text. 

In the Historia de Japam, Frois wrote that in 1569, the Kyoto upper class heard that Nobunaga had interest in European articles and presented him with:

“clothing from Europe, carmine cloaks, caps and velvet hats with feathers, gold medals with the image of Our Lady (Virgin Mary), pieces of cordovan, timepieces, luxurious kidskins, brilliant crystalline Venetian glass, damasks, satins, and various other articles from India, with which they filled many large crates”

(From Historia de Japam vol 2, published by Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa)

I’m inclined to believe that he kept the clothes, since it would have been rude to refuse them. Nobunaga would have needed to maintain a good relationship with the upper crust of Kyoto, this early in his career.

I’d love to be able to clarify if the timepieces were watches (which did exist in the 16th century), or if they were clocks. There was another Frois account that said he presented Nobunaga with an alarm clock, but Nobunaga rejected it on the grounds of “it would be difficult to regulate” (per the English translation in “They Came to Japan” book). I’m assuming it just didn’t make sense for Japanese people, because their way of counting the hours is completely different. The Japanese translation, though, interpreted this as meaning that “they won’t be able to fix it if it broke”.

One of the less-talked about theory about the political environment that led to Honnouji is the theory of how the European priests and missionaries were “Trojan horses” that are being used to facilitate colonisation.

Japanese fiction and media tend to focus on domestic conspiracies (shogunate revival, Hideyoshi/Ieyasu/some other person being the mastermind, etc). There have been some manga I saw that did use this European interference theory (e.g Nobunaga no Chef), but I don’t believe this theory is used very frequently. I also didn’t know what was the reasoning/source for it until recently.

Getting the details on this will probably require a lot of reading into the European paperwork (such as Frois’s Historia and other Vatican letters), which is even less easy to access, so I don’t have much on me right now. Just some brief claims from an article written by a writer/independent researcher.

In 1582, Alessandro Valignano wrote a letter that alluded that King Felipe of Spain had interest of conquering China. Valignano also wrote that the Japan is worthless to conquer, but their people can be “useful” for the purpose of the China conquest. 

The article also quotes from Frois’s Historia, saying that Hideyoshi promised the Europeans that when he conquers China, he would order all the Chinese to convert to Christianity.

With these “proofs”, the writer theorizes that maybe Nobunaga refused to be involved in this conquest of China, so the Europeans plotted to overthrow him and install Hideyoshi as the new ruler.

This theory is interesting, and probably worth looking into. European material have information that you don’t really find anywhere else in the Japanese accounts, and they do need to be taken into consideration. However, this theory specifically has some problems because it seem to contradict other existing texts.

The writer here, for example, said that Nobunaga “broke ties” with the Europeans. He quoted no source, so it’s a bit questionable why he thinks so. 

From what resource I have of Frois’s writings, I don’t see any problems between Nobunaga and Frois or the other priests even after Nobunaga met with Valignano. Frois wrote scathing comments about Nobunaga or his son being involved in “devil worship” around 1582, but he does that all the time when he talks about Shinto and Buddhist practices. It is not really any indication of souring relationship.

This outside interference theory also contradicts the claims that Frois recorded, either in his Historia or in his letters, that Nobunaga himself said he wanted to conquer China. I’ve not yet found a timestamp for when Nobunaga supposedly said this, but either way, this record destroys the theory. If Nobunaga wanted this out of his own volition, then the Europeans didn’t manipulate him for their colonisation purposes. If he said this because the Europeans had egged him on, that means he didn’t refuse them. 

In the digital edition provided by the National Library of Portugal,  chapter 83, page 240, Frois wrote about how the arrogant Nobunaga couldn't tolerate that his older brother had priority over their deceased father's inheritance, so he pretended to be ill and complained to his mother for days that his brother didn't  pay him a visit. When his older brother finally came to see him, and got distracted checking his left hand pulse at his request, Nobunaga killed him on the spot with a concealed dagger. 

After that he took control of the household and won a war against another feudal lord that had possession of one third of Owari's territory, finally becoming the absolute Lord of Owari. 

The weird thing about Frois's account is that the briefly mentioned "another lord with possession of one third of the territory" refers to Kanjuuro, while "Nobunaga's older brother" for whom he feigned illness refers to Nobuhiro. However, as a concubine's child, Nobuhiro had no priority over the legitimate Nobunaga, nor was he executed by Nobunaga, actually dying in the Battle of Nagashima many years later (It's also pointed out in the book's footnotes). One can only conclude that since Father Luis Frois had no familiarity with local political affairs, he unintentionally mixed up real information with rumors he misheard here and there.

I don't know if it will be of help for you, and the only version of Historia de Japam I have access to is Google Books' sample of the Portuguese edition, but those two anecdotes hold many similarities. Maybe Mr. Lamer was referring to this record in his book and misquoted it as Shinchoukouki's?

Thank you very much for the info! This is very helpful!

Lamers does reference Luis Frois's writing a lot in his book too, so maybe he has been reading two text together and forgot which one came from where when writing his book. I sometimes do that too here, like referencing wrong source or getting dates wrong.

The rest of the story that Lamers narrated about Shibata Katsuie reporting of Kanjuurou's rebellion is correctly attributed to Shinchoukouki. It's just that one short segment about Nobunaga complaining to his mother that was out of place/wrong.

You also solved another mystery I have been wondering about. In one of Stephen Turnbull's books (or, at least I think it is, since I don’t remember which book it was anymore), he had written something along the lines of Nobuhiro being the prioritized heir over Nobunaga due to being older, and I could not for the life of me figure out where is this story coming from. So it's the Historia de Japam after all.

Though, I think “another lord with possession of one third of the territory" is actually the more higher-ranked Oda branches. It’s possibly the Yamato no Kami branch who originally owned Kiyosu Castle, the deputy-governors of Owari, not Kanjuurou. The story seems to be a bit mixed up too here, since Nobunaga conquered the Kiyosu clan before he killed his brother, but he didn’t take control of Owari until after Kanjuurou’s death. 

Writings from Luis Frois and the other Europeans is a resource that I wish I have. Even if they're flawed, it's still useful to some degree. I was aware that the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal has them, but I don't speak or read Portuguese.

I can't answer much for sure right now. I imagine the record would be among the European letters, or mentioned in books written by people who read them. These are hard to access materials. I've not been able to find where to read copies of the transcripts.

To my knowledge, the only Europeans Nobunaga actually personally talked to are missionaries. The long-time staying priests mostly can speak Japanese, and dignitaries like Valignano (who only came as a visitor) probably would have been assigned some local Japanese interpreters to help them.

For example, Luis Frois often wrote of a "Brother Lorenzo" accompanying him to meet with Nobunaga or his sons. This man is a Japanese Catholic convert, so he might be their interpreter/speaker when they talk about complex subjects.

When it comes to trade, I've not looked this up in detail, but to my understanding Nobunaga used Sakai to do the Nanban trade and does not have his own vassals handle it directly. He has other go-betweens among the Sakai folks to do his business. For example Sen no Rikyuu, Imai Sokyu, and other tea masters are actually also Nobunaga's merchant intermediaries and not just there for art and tea. I could be wrong, but I've not yet found any stories of some European tradesman having to come talk to Nobunaga or his vassals directly for business.

Now, when it comes to just learning foreign languages not for the purpose of trade or business... Some artifacts of the Hidden Christians show that they prayed in "Japanized" Latin, so it seemed that when the European priests were still around, they taught the original converts some Latin for the various ordinances and prayers they need to follow. In which case maybe someone like Kuroda Kanbei would know those Latin prayers, when he converted.

There is a strange story floating around on the internet that says something like this: “In 1567 or 1568, Nobunaga and Matsunaga Hisahide were locked in battle. However, on Christmas they agreed to have a truce, and their vassals attended a Mass led by Luis Frois.”

This was also repeated in some English articles, claiming that the commander leading the Oda army was Shibata Katsuie.

After looking into this, it looks like this might be a story that got distorted through “game of telephone”. The quote from Frois’s Historia that I can find mentions no names (perhaps he was not familiar with them), but Japanese experts identified this as something happening around 1565-1566, and was between Matsunaga and the Miyoshi clan. 

I had originally thought that there were two Christmas incidents, but that’s not the case. In 1565-1566 Nobunaga is still tied up fighting the Saitou of Mino, and in 1567-1568 Nobunaga was cooperating with Matsunaga in supporting Ashikaga Yoshiaki’s ascension as shogun. Something got messed up somewhere, and I’m not even sure how the English-speaking writer got ahold of the wrong narrative. Perhaps it was an erroneous narrative from older English text such as James Murdoch’s Japanese History texts.

Translation from the Japanese translation (thus, take it with a grain of salt):

At the time of the Nativity, there were two armies which were hostile to each other in Sakai. There were a large number of Christian warriors among them. As it were, the Christians desired to show the pagans how close they were and how much they loved each other [as fellow believers]. Because the church was very small, they requested the people of the town to rent a large room, which was used by the locals as a meeting place. The room was decorated for the Nativity and the whole community gathered there on Holy Night.

Here they confessed their sins, celebrated Mass, heard the sermon, and those who were already baptized received the Eucharist. Among them were 70 warriors, who supported each other with great affection and courtesy, as if they were vassals of the same lord, even though they came from opposing troops. They brought many dishes from their own homes and invited one another, all in order, clean and marvelous.

The men who served them, the sons of these warriors, spent the whole afternoon talking about God and singing. The pagans of the city who came to see the altar and all its decorations were so numerous that they seemed ready to break down the doors to enter it.

Original Japanese, taken from a church flyer that quoted from the Japanese translation of Frois’s Historia:

降誕祭になった時、折から堺の市（まち）には敵 対する２つの軍勢がおり、その中には大勢のキリシ タンの武士たちが見受けられた。ところでキリシタ ン達は自分達がどれほど中が良く愛し合っているか を異教徒たちによりよくしめそうとして、司祭館は 非常に小さかったので、そこの町内の人々に、住民 が会合所に充てていた大広間を賃借りしたいともう しでた。その部屋は降誕祭にふさわしく飾られ、聖 夜には一同がそこに参集した。 そこでかれらは告白し、ミサに与かり、説教を聞 き、準備が出来ていた人々は聖体を拝領し正午には 一同は正装して戻ってきた。その中には７０名の武 士がおり、互いに敵対する軍勢から来ていたにもか かわらず、あたかも同一の国守の家臣であるかのよ うに、お互いに大いなる愛情と礼節をもって応援し た。彼らは自分自身の家から多くの料理を持参させ て違いに招きあったが、すべては生前としており、 清潔であって、驚嘆に値した。その際給仕したのは、 それらの武士の子息で、デウスのことについて、よ き会話を交えたり、歌を歌ってその日の午後を通じ て過ごした。