The alarm subsided when the ships came at last into view. While some were of barbarian design, others were clearly junks, and all were flying a flag with a red sun disk, the hinomaru, on a field of white.
The Second Fleet had arrived.
* * *
First-to-Dance had persuaded some of her kinfolk to come to Kawa Machi for a Japanese celebration. It began with the Lord’s Prayer, led by Imamiro Yojiro and David Date, and joined in by all of the kirishitan of Kawa Machi, both the old California hands who had arrived a year earlier, and those who had just arrived on the Second Fleet.
Flanking the Christian altar, there were two daises, the kamiza for the Shinto deities, and the goza for the emperor of Japan. Date Masamune, in his capacity as a court noble of the Upper First Rank, made obeisance to the kami on the emperor’s behalf, arranging an offering of sake, rice porridge and steamed rice on a reed mat. The rice, of course, had come from the stores of the Second Fleet. Some of the newcomers looked unhappy about the coupling of this pagan ritual with the Christian rite, but they didn’t object openly.
The fact that the spectators nearest the front were all pagan samurai, several hundred of them, and of course wearing their swords, probably had something to do with this reticence.
“Please translate what I say for your friends,” Chiyo told First-to-Dance. “This ceremony is Niinamesai,” she told them. “Back home, we would celebrate this on the Day of the Rabbit of the Eleventh Month, the Dutch December. But here we have decided to hold it in the month that we arrived in Monterey Bay and met your people.
“The name means, ‘new-taste-ritual.’ Today we offer a taste of the harvest to Heaven, to thank it for providing the rain and sun so that our crops will grow, and protecting the crops from vermin of all kinds.”
In California, only the Indians of the southeast grew crops. First-to-Dance told her tribesmen that the Japanese had made a powerful magic which caused plants to multiply.
“We are sad that our favorite plants, our rice, would not grow here. But our kinfolk on the ships that have just arrived have brought rice to share with us, and in turn we are giving them, and you, fresh vegetables and fruit.”
There was sweet potato and white potato, brought to Japan by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, and initially deprecated as bareisho—“horse fodder.” They were grown in the uplands. There were artichokes, cucumbers, and melons, sown in the summer. There were deer, brought down by samurai archers, and rabbits, caught in farmers’ snares. There were wild birds, too. And fish of course.
The kirishitan of the Second Fleet tore greedily into this repast, such a refreshing change from their shipboard diet. And the Indians were amazed by all the strange new foods—but this didn’t stop them from eating them.
And so the Ohlone Indians of California enjoyed their first Japanese thanksgiving.
Autumn Wind
September to October 1635
The autumn wind:
for me there are no gods;
there are no buddhas.
—Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902)4
Late September 1635,
Andoryu (Monterey), California
“Red flag! Red flag!” Marina shouted. “Are you all blind, and deaf to boot?”
Her fellow kirishitan were neither, but those in her immediate vicinity were engrossed in a gambling game. She got the gamblers’ attention by kicking sand over the dice.
“Hey, what do you think—”
“Red flag, you fools!”
The gamblers stifled their protest, and looked up toward the lookout tower, perched precariously on the pine-covered point marking the southern end of Monterey Bay. There, two watchers were posted, and one of them was indeed was waving two red flags over his head.
Another was sending smoke signals into the air.
It was now the gamblers’ turn to yell. “Red flag!”
Hearing the commotion, and then seeing the red flags for himself, Sakai Kuroemon, the samurai in charge of the small battery that guarded Andoryu, ordered an ozutsu, a Japanese-made swivel gun, to be fired off.
* * *
On the beach to the east of Andoryu, First-to-Dance turned to her companion, the grand governor’s daughter, Chiyo-hime. “Are we under attack by the Southern Barbarians you told me about?”
Chiyo-hime stifled a laugh. She couldn’t help but wonder what the Spanish reaction would be if they knew that a scantily clothed and illiterate Ohlone Indian had characterized them as “barbarians.” She had never met a Spaniard herself—the Spanish had been banned from entering Japan in 1624, and she had not met any of the missionaries who sneaked in afterward—but Chinese traders had commented on the hauteur of the hidalgos in Manila.
“No, no. The signal gun would have been fired more than once if ships had been sighted. Even friendly ships. They must have sighted a school of sardines.”