NAU NEGRA nas palavras da época.

(texto para as últimas duas páginas)

Nau Negra é uma obra de ficção em banda desenhada e não uma tentativa de reconstituição histórica. É, contudo, sustentada por referências históricas concretas e procura dar uma ideia do ambiente da época, ainda que de modo ligeiro. Charles Ralph Boxer é, neste campo, a principal fonte de inspiração e, sobretudo, uma ampla fonte de informação. Os acontecimentos desta história foram tirados da sua obra “O Grande Navio de Amacau.” São eles o destino trágico da nau Madre de Deus capitaneada por André Pessoa e destruída à saída de Nagasaki, depois de três dias de luta em Janeiro de 1610, e as peripécias registadas por Richard Cocks, feitor inglês de Hirado, da nau Nossa Senhora da Vida, capitaneada por Lopo Sarmento de Carvalho, oito anos depois. Boxer, nas suas obras, dá-nos mais do que uma possível interpretação das informações que colheu. Para este enredo, criei mais uma. A ideia de um aventureiro japonês surgiu ao deparar com uma fugaz referência à presença de japoneses entre os corsários de Argel, nas primeiras décadas de 1600, escondida numa nota de rodapé em “O Mediterrâneo e o Mundo Mediterrânico” de Fernand Braudel. Não sabia eu, então, que a presença de japoneses nos mares dessa época era muito maior do que uma ideia enraizada, a do Japão-país-fechado, nos faz crer. Porém, a ideia do japonês aventureiro, o barqueiro da história, talvez tivesse sido esquecida ao fim de algum tempo se eu não transportasse comigo, na bagagem, uma antiga publicação sobre os biombos namban do Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga. Foram as imagens dos biombos que me mantiveram agarrado, durante anos, à ideia de fazer esta história.

OS BIOMBOS NAMBAN E AS PALAVRAS DA ÉPOCA

Os melhores biombos namban do Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, feitos no Japão no princípio do século XVII e que representam a chegada de navios portugueses, são um trabalho complexo e podem ser incluídos na lista das mais bem conseguidas narrativas gráficas que se conhecem. Não é um trabalho apenas decorativo, como se espera de um biombo, não é simples caricatura para entreter ou exclusivamente um relatório ou reportagem sobre um determinado acontecimento, são sobretudo várias histórias em torno de episódios de um acontecimento. Quando comparados com as detalhadas ilustrações que os artistas japoneses fizeram, uns séculos mais tarde, da chegada dos navios americanos, e que se aproximam muito claramente da informação militar, percebe-se que a intenção é mesmo fazer um filme que torne acessível ao observador japonês não só informação técnica e militar, como também comportamental. Para quem a saiba ler, cada um daqueles narizes compridos é uma bandeira espetada num pedaço de informação. Cada um conta uma história ligeiramente diferente, mas talvez mais humana e acessível, até caricatural, dentro de um conjunto que, por sua vez, é radicalmente diferente daquele a que é destinada a mensagem, pintado por convenções sociais e enquadramento técnico, por vezes interpretados ao pormenor.

Exceptuando o sermão do frade italiano, tirado de um texto de Frei Tomé de Jesus, de finais do século XVI, não fiz qualquer esforço para preservar o discurso da época, mas deixei bem visíveis as ansiedades de classe dos portugueses, através da manipulação um pouco arbitrária dos pronomes de tratamento. Convém, ainda, para compreender os europeus da época, lembrar que o banho era francamente impopular, que a crença nas relíquias de santos e mártires era uma febre mórbida e devoradora, que o martírio, por cruel que fosse, era tido em grande glória e mesmo provocado, que a tortura e a execução eram apreciados espetáculos públicos, que as chacinas cometidas nas guerras religiosas da época eram tidas como exemplos a emular, que foram tempos de escravatura desenfreada e brutal, defendida em nome do realismo económico, e que, no Oriente, escravos até os havia nas comitivas de guarda-costas e espadachins dos portugueses abastados.

Existem várias referências à presteza com que os japoneses lidavam com situações de perigo. Como este excerto duma carta de Diogo do Couto, referindo-se a um episódio em que os portugueses assistiam passivos ao roubo da sua fazenda pelos holandeses, datada de Goa, 23 de Dezembro de 1605: “(...) e andando os olandezes em terra tomando entrega della, e os nossos Portugueses da náo com maõs amarradas sem fazerem nada, enfundio deos nosso senhor Animo em quinze ou vinte Japõis Christãos, que aly estavao em huma soma, e aleuantando hum cruxifiçio Remeterão com suas catanas aos olandezes e mataraõ a mor parte delles, e daquelle caminho logo se forão embarcar em huma soma e se forão.”

A propósito de cortes de orelhas, antiga punição legal que criou a categoria de “desorelhados”, e com a mesma naturalidade com que fala de degolações e de cabeças empilhadas, narra António de Oliveira Cadornega na “História Geral das Guerras Angolanas”: “(...) dizião os Antigos Conquistadores fora tanta a matança em aquele basto gentio que mandára o nosso Conquistador a Portugal dous Barris de seis Almuzes de narizes e orelhas do gentio que se havia morto naquellas batalhas e recontros (...)”

Por seu lado, conta Frei Paulo da Trindade, na abundante descrição de martírios e milagres que são os três grossos volumes da “Conquista Espiritual do Oriente”, a propósito duma particular relíquia dos mártires do Japão, que podia muito bem ser semelhante à que o frade italiano trouxe discretamente para bordo: “(...) um italiano chamado João Baptista, colheu em um chapéu muito sangue do Comissário e dos bem-aventurados mártires (...) e depois o lançou em um bule de porcelana e o guardou, e nove meses depois do martírio (...) se quebrou a vasilha onde o sangue estava, o qual foi achado líquido e sem nenhum mau cheiro, como consta do testemunho que disto se tomou.”

Respeitou-se a informação contida nos biombos, em relação às naus. Há três tipos de naus representadas nos principais biombos namban, uma mais antiga, atribuída a Kano Domi, com dois castelos saindo sobre a proa e popa do navio, típico das naus do século anterior, mas que são tão cómicos que é duvidoso que o artista tenha chegado a ver alguma delas, e duas outras atribuídas a Kano Naizen, em que o castelo de proa, mais discreto, já vem na continuação do casco e prolonga-se pelo beque, e em que a superstrutura da popa ou é quadrada ou exibe uma tentativa de modernização, alta e com um final muito estreito. Escolhi esta para a nau mais recente, em que decorre a história, e aquela para a nau da batalha. Quanto ao perfil das galeotas, parece-me possível que variasse entre as linhas da galé e do pataxo. Escolhi dar à que aparece aqui uma forma de pequeno pataxo, tal como é referido em texto da época. Em qualquer dos casos, não se procurou tratar as embarcações em pormenor, ou com exagerado rigor.

A solução encontrada pelos passageiros da nau para escapar ao navio corsário holandês, ou seja, adiar a viagem por um ano, esperando que ele então já lá não esteja, não é de estranhar, pois era prática corrente não sair enquanto houvesse inimigo na costa. A atitude passiva dos portugueses, já comentada desfavoravelmente na carta de Diogo do Couto, justifica-se em parte pelas conhecidas capacidades náuticas dos navios norte-europeus, ao ponto de André Furtado de Mendonça, Capitão-Mor e Geral do Mar do Sul, em carta de Amboino, de 10 de Maio de 1602, comparar o seu próprio navio a um ponto de aguada em terra: “(...) e indolhe dando caça hum pedaço (...) e não ter outro velame para meter nas vergas, e as naus ingresas serem tão ligeiras que com o papafigo de proa sem outra nenhuma vella dado, hião desapareçendo de nos, surgi em paragem (...); visto estar desenganado que a mais ligeira nao de minha companhia em comparação da dos Ingreses fica sendo o morro d’Angediva; mas ao que Deus ordena não ha poder fugir (...)”

Devagar, devagarinho...

Fernando Relvas

Dezembro 2014

NAU NEGRA, THE STORY.

By the end of the year 1608 the crew of two Japanese shuinsen or vermillion seal ships, at dock in the port of Macau, got involved in a fight with the Portuguese.
Most probably not even then one could know for sure who started the fight, but the captain-general of Macau and owner of the annual trip to Japan – made by the large ship known as kurofune or black ship – surrounded and punished severely the Japanese crews.

The following year, the Daimyo owner of the vermillion ships complained to the Shogun and demanded that the black ship be seized on arrival at Nagasaki. The captain-general refused to be judged by the Shogun and fortified himself on the ship. On the first days of 1610 a samurai force of the Daimyo gave the assault.

Unable to leave the harbor from lack of wind, the ship became a fortress under siege. The Japanese population of Nagasaki and the foreign community, mainly Portuguese merchants with their families and priests who didn’t want to embark, gathered on the shore and watched the long and systematic night assaults led by one junk and a flotilla of small boats, repealed wave after wave by the extensive use of gunshot and firepots.
In meanwhile, the loaded ship was slowly and painfully being towed towards the exit of the harbor by her shallops, while the days were mostly spent in useless negotiations.

After three nights of fierce fight, when the ship had almost reach her goal, the explosion of the gunpowder magazine finally sank her and all the valuable cargo, killing most of the crew and part of the attacking samurai.

The increasing presence of Dutch and English ships in the area would soon lead to the demise of the Portuguese black ships, in favor of a sail and most probably oar ship known as galeota, of cheaper and quicker construction, smaller, faster and easier to maneuver.
In less than ten years another kurofune would be the last to make the trip between Nagasaki and Macau.

This time it was not a dramatic and heroic trip but an agonizing one. During the entire month of January and part of February of 1618, the big ship, loaded with riches, sailed close to shore hesitating whether to put to sea or to return to the safety of the port, under the threat of an invisible Dutch corsair.

The destiny of these two large and obsolete ships, looking like huge whales extravagantly adorned with sails and colorful banners, is not only linked by the commerce of silk and silver between Macau and Nagasaki, by the similarities and differences among several cultures present on board and by the shadow of corsairs and typhoons, but also by the scars in the body and in the memory of the boatman.

The Nau(s) Negra(s) in the Namban screens (2)

By the time the namban screens were made the Dutch shipbuilders had already surpassed the Portuguese and the Spanish and set trends that would be copied and developed by others. In meanwhile the big ships had lost that protruding forecastle we see in the naos of the beginning of the previous century. It became a castle of modest dimensions, extending up from the prow. That is what we see on the first and last pictures of the previous post, reproduced in astonishing detail, while the one in the middle looks as if it came out of the imagination of someone who never saw the ship in question.

While we may think that the namban screens were merely decorative, it is possible they were in fact an intelligence job, a film of the events that should include the maximum possible information. It includes attitudes, wardrobe, weaponry and technical details, using caricature as a means of conveying a more subtle type of information, what responses to expect from the foreigners, their weak points. But let's suppose the client wants to see something even more exquisite, something that doesn't exist anymore, a Black Ship like the first one that touched Japanese shores. And there goes the poor team of artists, digging information, comparing what they know, jumping of joy in the presence of a salvaged item (because there are accurate details in this picture) and finally producing this monster of the seas. If my supposition is correct it means that the black ships of the middle of the sixteenth century and perhaps later were the old style of nao.

What interests me most, on the other two drawings, is how the stern is represented, on the first one a quite common transom stern, in use for ages, on the third a fashionable tall and elegant aft superstructure, showing that the shipyards of Goa were making an effort modernizing their designs.

The Nau(s) Negra(s) in the Namban screens.

Look at these three black ships represented with detail on the namban screens. Compare them with the images of the two previous posts. I'll tell you what I think about it tomorrow. You have to take in account that the screens are from the beginning of the seventeenth century, roughly one hundred years separates them.

Old naus.

Some examples of the typical Portuguese nau from the first half of the sixteenth century. It would keep the same profile all along the century with the exception of the most extravagant fore and aft castles, that were reduced for practical reasons. The nau from the end of the century, although looking the same from afar, probably had significant improvements in hull construction. The black ships depicted in the namban screens show some more modern features that are too accurate to be from the artist's imagination.

Nau, or Nao, or just Ship.

Pick up a place and time that you dislike particularly. Seventeenth century Europe, for example. People don't wash, smell bad, are enthusiastic about massacres and torture, burn other people in public places, become hysterical on questions of religion and ethnicity, well it is almost like watching the evening news.

Collect information about that time and place and, before you collect too much and become overwhelmed by it, deconstruct what you already know and make with it different masks. Then put yourself behind those masks and speak aloud. There is an audience watching.

***

What is a nau (also written nao)? Considering we are still in the seventeenth century, the term is used by Portuguese and Spanish to describe the large armed transport vessels, now becoming outdated, that are distant relatives of the carrack, by now subjected to innovations in design but keeping the overall bulging shape. Any transport ship without specific characteristics may be called nau, or in case you are not sure what you are referring to, you may call it a nau, just a ship. It should be easy to distinguish the nao from the galleon, but it is not always easy to know which type the texts are referring to when using the term galleon. In the center of the image bellow, from a Portuguese roteiro of the middle of the sixteenth century, there is probably one of the first depictions of what was originally called a galleon, surrounded by galleys, a fuste, a mixed type caravel and two naus. Later on the word galleon took a wider meaning.

SHOWING SOME SHIP TYPES

This is just a hastily cooked melting pot of useful information (sometimes you can bet on its reliability, sometimes you will have to guess) coupled with pictures that are in these pages just for the ambiance, condensed in a single file that I can check quickly while I am drawing the page. When in doubt I can go back to more detailed files or make additional research, in case I want to complicate my story. But to have an idea of some of the ship types present in the seas around China and Japan in the 17th century, this is enough. Just to have a very general idea, because these examples are far from covering all the main ship types (or at least their denominations).

These pictures were taken from very different sources along several years, some were photocopied, most were scanned before I left Portugal, and some were more recently taken from the Internet. They are mostly pictures from books and magazines, some from old issues purchased on the flea market, but also contact proofs of pictures I took, and even postcards.
They were taken from so many different places, and some so long ago, that it will be a really very hard task, if not an impossible one, to track the origin of most of them, so I left all of them anonymous. If somebody feels to have the right to complain about it just contact me, I will remove the pictures in question.

WHAT DID THE SHIPS TRANSPORT?

The main cargo of the ships was by far silk and silver. The reason the trip existed was the commerce of Chinese silk to Japan, exchanged for silver. The profit was enormous and covered losses by bad weather, attacks by other ships, and all sorts of legal troubles with Japan. The Senate from Macau thought several times they would go bankrupt but every time they recovered with profit.
Human losses were also great, but that was an accepted fact, usually attributed to the will of God. When an embassy from Macau was condemned to be executed by Iemitsu (after repeated warnings and the prohibition that Portuguese set foot again in Japan), the people of Macau staged a religious feast claiming they were happy that so many of their people became martyrs. Considering this psychological frame it is easy to understand why the Portuguese could not stop proselytizing, despite the risks that they incurred.

But there were other things besides the profits of the silk trade and the joys of martyrdom. We can see, through the eyes of the author of the screens, people enjoying life. We also know that Portuguese merchants stayed in Nagasaki for long periods and even married there, and there was more to the cargo than just silk, like fine wines and dried fruits. Wine, olives and olive oil arrived in Macau almost at the same price as when they left Lisboa, the profit being reserved for the fabulous commerce of spices, silks and a few items more.

In this matter I follow my main written source for this story, the very detailed work of Charles Boxer (O Grande Navio De Amacau, ed. Fundação Oriente, translated from The Great Ship From Amacon, 1959) about the Black Ship from Macau. In the end of this post you will find the pages relative to a list of goods the Portuguese ships took to Japan in 1637 (by that time several smaller ships were being used instead of the big nau), made by a Dutch.
In this list, besides the great quantities of textiles that occupy four out of six pages you will find spices, precious woods and ivory, needles, fishing hooks, combs, padlocks, tobacco boxes, porcelain jars and even two live white mice.

There is also in this book a list of the goods sent by the Jesuits to Japan in 1618. As expected it is mainly occupied by detailed descriptions of huge quantities of silks and other textiles: 19 crates of textiles and 1 crate of “pao china” (the root of a plant of the genus Smilax).

This was the merchandise bought with the silver sent by the priests staying in Japan. Then, there is the list of the provisions for the priests, including a common cotton fabric (six hundred fifty seven pieces) in black or blue, a load of sugar, nineteen “buyões” of non specified preserves and fifteen boxes of “perada” (probably pickled fruits), eleven pairs of shoes of two different types (six “lay” and five “our way”, from here we may guess priests, or at least Jesuits, used a characteristic type of shoe) and twelve pairs of (my guess) slippers of two sorts (two “chinelas” and ten “servilhas”) along with three pieces of leather, needles, three recipients (“botijas”, probably a sort of amphora with a flat bottom widely used in all sizes and shapes by Portuguese and Spanish for transporting these type of goods) of olive oil and two of olives, one (“buyão”, probably smaller and rounder than the “botija”) of raisins from Ormuz and one of prunes, an amount (“fardinho”, which implies a medium size package) of almonds, two sorts of cheese (four “flamengos”, and one “de Alentejo”) two boxes (probably Chinese or Japanese) with a writing set, one with three partitions and one with four partitions, nine boxes for letters and six containing ink tablets for writing, towels and sheets, one thousand and forty strings of rosary beads and (whatever these are) one thousand nine hundred “nominas”, one hundred fifty “cordões”, two hundred sixty copper “veronicas” and five “emzes”, twenty four glass “nominas” and, inevitably, an additional small load of silk.

What is missing in these lists that we could find in case we were pirates and took one of those ships?
The booty would surely include weapons, some elaborately decorated, gold (like the large gold chains seen in the screens), pepper pots and mills, pets besides the two white mice and personal belongings the kind of porcelain and silverware.
Also not listed in there are the personal merchandise taken not only by associated merchants, but also by soldiers and sailors. Forbidden items wouldn’t make part of such lists, although they would be shamelessly smuggled, like Japanese weapons after a certain period, and even people. One of the most irritating things for the Japanese authorities was that Portuguese insisted on smuggling Catholic priests inside Japan after these were banished.

If we enlarge the area of commerce, we also increase the diversity of products. Not only the Barbarians roamed the far eastern seas, Japanese were installed a little here and there and had ships for trade and war sailing along the same routes. But that is a different story.

COLORS

“As alabardas esquinas para épocas pomposas, verde-negro, roxo-velho e granada o tom das roupagens (…)”, so writes Fernando Pessoa through the pen of Bernardo Soares in O Livro do Desassossego. These colors are not far from the ones worn by the Portuguese in the 17th century, shades of green tending to the dark ones, ecclesiastical purples and violets, the stately black, and the sepias that will become ever more present towards the middle of the century.

Although colors are all resolved in shades of gray in this story, their presence is important in understanding the people that wore them.
The Portuguese men of great or even not so great importance walked slowly their hands resting on their hips or on the hilts of their swords as a sign of distinction and (at least this is what they thought) to impose respect, used to send their servants with their own chairs ahead of them to the church, and when possible had another servant behind them with a parasol. If they could afford to sustain them they would be carried on a sedan chair and were followed by a troupe of swordsmen. Sometimes their slow-motion trip through importance would be interrupted by a rival brandishing a lethal weapon. It could be one of those swords with complicate guards depict in the screens, or even a Japanese sword (Japanese weapons were much appreciated and were smuggled out of Japan in great quantities), or it could be a pistol fired from a window. Their women, if they wanted to be considered deign of respect, would also walk slowly along or behind them with their women servants, their heads covered by a long shawl, and when at home would sit on cushions, not on chairs, behind shadowed windows, weaving in the company of other women. Or at least this is what they were supposed to do. They could have had a stronger role to play in these parts than the one that was traditionally assigned to them, and there are some indications they did.
These people wore black and dark greens or sepias, occasionally red, on stately occasions, which means, for some of them, all occasions they were out of home without wearing an armor suit. Long trips on board an overcrowded ship must have been an ordeal for them.
But as life on hot climates away from the etiquette of the court can be slightly more relaxed, they sometimes wore brighter shirts showing from under their vests and even indulge, in private meetings, in rolling their stockings and dip their feet in water to appreciate a large cup of wine on a fresh corner of their gardens (different ways of drinking are also important, it seems Japanese considered the Portuguese to be arrogant, unreliable and drunkard, the English also arrogant, more reliable but even more drunkard, and the Dutch the most boring type of arrogant because they didn’t drink).

Other people were not so constrained by etiquette, although there must have been a limited amount of fashion options and some more or less intricate boundaries had to be carefully respected (or disrespected).
Servants dressed at the expense of their masters, merchants and swordsmen show, on the namban screens, the same colors as above and a more generous amount of red, light or grayish green, dark and light brown (possibly a buff leather or padded jerkin here and there), ocher and yellow, and a great variety of striped or patterned cloth. At the bottom of the scale are the tartan patterns that seem to be very popular for servants, sailors and slaves, a light green or light brown fabric that must have been cheap to produce and commissioned in great quantities.
The striped or patterned cloth appears also in the paintings of S. Roque, worn by children or by local people from Goa, where the dominant colors are red with white and brown, and white and red stripes. Also the sort of large loose trousers made of a rainbow type of vertically striped cloth appear already in the tapestries of D. João de Castro, dated from the end of the first half of the 16th century.

It would be interesting to know the provenience of those fabrics. The tartan could originate in a number of places in Europe, including Portugal, while the patterned and stripped cloth could be made in India and some in China. I am just guessing. Both cotton and silk must have been used, because similar patterns are worn by characters of very different social standings.

As for the cloth, striped blue and white, very common in latter Japanese prints, it doesn’t appear on the screens. Japanese taste for colors looks in there very much like the Portuguese one (black, brown and green mostly) with a particular tendency for gray, blue and red (or pink) with flower patterns for women and children.
But naturally the colors are similar, since they have been done with the same palette.

THE PAINTINGS ON THE CHURCH OF S. ROQUE

Although I decided that the Namban screens should be the primary iconography source for this story, it has little value if it can’t be compared with other contemporary sources.
The screens have some details difficult to interpret, like decoration in clothing and armament, although, as I wrote before, in general things fit where they should, so we may assume they are the fruit of direct observation and not some fashionable fancy of the artist.

The second source I chose to confront the screens with is a series of paintings about the life of S. Francisco Xavier in the church of S. Roque, in Lisboa (I found, besides the entry on Wikipedia about this church, the official site of the museum and an interesting blog with a post on the subject where you can see the paintings in color – the images in this blog are exclusively black and white).

Both are usually dated from the first two decades of the 17th century (although the paintings are probably more recent than the screens, but this is just a guess). The screens are a much richer source of information than the paintings, since these are more conventional when representing the Portuguese.
The artist (the main artist, at least) of the paintings took the trouble of documenting himself about the time and places of the events it represents, some 60 to 80 years before his time. He possibly had access to pieces of wardrobe still extant in his own time, and tried to compose a plausible reconstruction of the events, so we must be very careful when dating them.
Some, like the suits of the sailors in two of the saint’s most represented miracles, are typically first half of the 16th century (compare one of the paintings and the notes I took from them, bellow), in some paintings the elements don’t seem to fit well and look more like a compromise between the fashions of both epochs, and others (like the painting representing the saint lying dead, which looks like a detailed account of fashionable devout Portuguese from the time of the artist, rich and not so rich) simply drop the chronological concerns.

Comparing details from those paintings with ones from the screens and with some more pieces of information may take us to interesting conclusions in future posts.