SOUTHERNMOST JAPAN 169 



The next year the foreign merchants came back to Kumano. . . . Fortu- 

 nately there was a blacksmith among them. Tokiaki thought that to be a gift 

 from heaven and ordered Kimbioe Kiyosada to learn the way to close the end. 

 After awhile he learned how to do it by means of a screw. Thus in the course 

 of a year they were able to make several tens, and after that they made the 

 wooden parts and the other decorations. 



This completes the main portion of the " Teppoki/' but the family 

 record of the smith Kimbioe Kiyosada which is also preserved forms an 

 interesting addition. Here is a translation of part of this contempo- 

 raneous account: 



Kiyosada brought about the relation of teacher and pupil between one of 

 the strangers and himself with the purpose of learning the way to make the 

 teppo. He thought that the barbarian would never tell the truth and that it 

 would be better to give his daughter to him and let him marry her. Though he 

 learned how to shape the teppo he did not imderstand how to close the end. 

 After several months the ship went away, with the daughter, and many presents 

 were left. 



The record goes on in more detail and tells us the outcome. The 

 daughter was seventeen years old and her name was Wakasa. After a 

 year's time the ship returned, as the other records tell also, and 

 Kiyosada found out how to complete the making of the firearms. 

 Wakasa returned to her parents, and the family in order to keep her 

 pretended to the strangers that she was dead and that the burial cere- 

 mony had taken place. The family of Kiyosada still lives on Tane- 

 gashima and is in possession of some porcelain ware presented at the 

 time by the merchants. 



The foregoing narrative is a history of the discovery of Japan by 

 Europeans from the standpoint of the Japanese themselves. It is 

 interesting to compare with this the story as written by one of the 

 discoverers. The Portuguese navigator, Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, 

 after returning home, described his many experiences in his book 

 " Peregrinagao," and among them, his arrival at the island Tane- 

 gashima, or, as he called it, Tanixumaa. 



He set out from Cochin China for a journey in the China seas, and 

 after various wanderings through the Liu Kiu islands and elsewhere 

 came by chance upon Tanegashima. This was the first time that any 

 portion of Japan had been seen by Europeans. He was accompanied 

 at this time by two other Portuguese, Diego Zeimoto and Christovano 

 Borralho.^* Later he went to other parts of Japan farther north. The 



" The names in the Japanese account were Murashusha and KirisMta 

 Demoto. As one Japanese writer says, foreign names are to their people " like 

 cold water to the sleeping ear." The names must have been ill understood and 

 imperfectly represented in the Japanese syllables and there may have been a 

 still further departure from the original in the present retranslation. The 

 former may stand for Mendez Pinto. The first name of the second doubtless 

 stands for Christovano (Bolero), (the Japanese now say Kirish for Christ), 



VOL. LXXIV. — 12. 



