Japan and the Japanese

RIVALKT OF THE DUTCH AND ENGLISH. 17b
to a " tuffon" a violent storm, which did a good deal of damage,
(though the ship rode it out with five anchors down), and alarms of
conflagration, founded on oracles of the bonzes, and numerous festivals
and entertainments, at which Cocks had been called upon to
assist, one of which was a great feast, lasting three days and
three nights, to which the Japanese invited their dead kindred,
banqueting and making merry all night at their graves,* but little
progress had been made in trade. The cargo consisted largely of
broadcloths, which the Dutch had been selling, before the English
came, at seventeen dollars the yard. Captain Saris wished to
arrange with them to keep up the price, but the head of their fac-
tory immediately sent off to the principal places of sale large quantities,
which he disposed of at very low prices, in order to spoil the
market. The natives, also, were the more backward to buy, because
they saw that the English, though very forward to recommend their
cloth, did not much wear it themselves, the officers being clothed in
silks, and the men in fustians. So the goods were left in charge of
the factory, which was appointed to consist of eight English, in-
cluding Cocks and Adams (who was taken into the service of the
East India Company on a salary of one hundred pounds a year),
three Japanese interpreters, and two servants, with charge, against
the coming of the next ships, to search all the neighboring coasts
to see what trade might be had with any of them.
This matter arranged, and having supplied the place of those of
his crew who had died or deserted, by fifteen Japanese, and paid up
a good many boarding-house and liquor-shop claims against his men,
* Of another festival, on the 23d of October, Cocks gives the following
account : " The kings with' all the rest of the nobility, accompanied with
divers strangers, met together at a summer-house set up before the great
pagoda, to see a horse-race. Every nobleman went on horseback to the place,
accompanied with a rout of slaves, some with pikes, some with small shot,
and others with bows and arrows. The pikemen were placed on one side of
the street, and the shot and archers on the other, the niiddest of the street
being left void to run the race : and right before the summer-house, where
the king and nobles sat, was a round buckler of straw hanging against the
wall, at which the archers on horseback, running a full career, discharged
their arrows, both in the street and summer-house where the nobles sat."
This, from the date, would seem to be the festival of Tensio dai Sin. See p.
272, Caron, Relation du Japan, gives a similar description.
15*