A GLIMPSE OF SOCIAL LIFE IN JAPAN 125 



journey on the 7th of August, and arrived at their destination 

 on the 6th of September. On the 8th they had an audience 

 of the Shogun, to whom they delivered the English King's 

 letter for the Emperor. They were graciously received, 

 and lyeyasu in return sent to King James five screens and 

 a letter for His Majesty, conveying a free licence to English 

 subjects to enter any of the ports of Japan for trade purposes. 

 Thus was established in the year 16 13 the first treaty of com- 

 merce between England and Japan. 



In the midst of all these things our hero had met with a 

 fair damsel in Japan with whom he mated, and who bore 

 him a son and a daughter — Joseph and Susanna. And, to 

 complete the romance, we are [told that there are to-day 

 Japanese who pride themselves on being able to trace their 

 descent from this Elizabethan mariner whom the greatest of 

 their Shoguns loved to honour.* 



In Japan, however, as in other countries into which the 

 Indian weed had been introduced, it was not allowed to take 

 root and flourish unopposed. Protests, strong and loud, were 

 got up by the old-fashioned folk against the new-fangled in- 

 dulgence from the ' Nanban ' — country of the southern bar- 

 barians. So strenuously did they proclaim it to be the ' fool's 

 plant,' the ' poverty weed,' the ' barbarian's herb,' that at 

 last they won over the Shogun to their side. In 161 2 he 

 issued an edict forbidding his subjects to either use tobacco 

 or to plant seeds of it. It is curious to notice how, in this 

 remote region, the witchery of the weed set good men and 

 true warring over its virtues or vices on exactly the same 

 lines as were being fought over at the same time in England, 

 and in each case with a precisely similar result. Like the 



* Adams died full of honours in 1620, and was buried on the 

 summit of a little hill at the end of an inlet called Goldsborough. 



