Thus, to chime in for a moment as the resident Japanese historian in the department, I want to make clear that the word "tobacco" does indeed date back to the late sixteenth/early seventeenth centuries in terms of its usage in Japan. It is not found among the words listed in the first major Japanese-Portuguese dictionary published around 1600, the Vocabulario Da Lingoa De Iapam, probably because it was not a "foreign" word to the Jesuit missionaries who compiled this text. But the word "tobacco" is attested to elsewhere.
One good example comes from an early seventeenth-century law code issued by the Uesugi family (上杉氏), the daimyo in charge of Yonezawa domain (米沢藩). The code, promulgated in the eighth month of 1612, contains an article that states the following:
"It is strictly prohibited for those serving under a lord to smoke tobacco in the courtyard of his residence." (たばこ．．．主人の供仕、門庭において飲候事、一切停止之事)
A couple of points about this passage and the larger code:
1) "Tobacco" is written in hiragana.
2) The verb that is used together with tobacco here is nomu (飲む).
3) The remainder of the law code also makes clear that one is additionally to refrain from smoking around both the sick (病者) and the elderly (老人).
It therefore seems likely that it was indeed the sound of the word "tabaco" in Spanish and Portuguese that was first converted into hiragana before various ateji (当て字), or variants, using kanji were assigned/invented thereafter.
It is also probably worth noting that, back in 1612, there were already lawmakers who realized that tobacco is bad for your health...
7 comments:
Thanks for the definitive answer. Hiragana first makes a little more sense I suppose.
"It is also probably worth noting that, back in 1612, there were already lawmakers who realized that tobacco is bad for your health..." - that's the kicker though. LOL, good stuff. Almost 400 years later and big tobacco companies are still arguing against it!
Well, we have to be careful about the regulations being based on a health concern. As much as I myself am a non-smoker, one must keep in mind that there was not medical concern in the 16th century about tobacco. Back then, frankly, lots of other things tended to kill people before tobacco use. Moreover, tobacco was a North American import to Europe (and Japan), and there certainly was not a medical history established by the time that the legal codes that Prof. Eason cites were established.
Here is a musing: was the smell of tobacco unpleasant for those used to incense contests? I'll let Prof. Eason comment, because my impression is that incense as an aesthetic was passe by the Kamakura, but who knows?
Thank you both for the comments. Professor Fessler is right, of course, that, to be fair, health concerns would not have been a factor likely considered by the local authorities who issued this law. But, in this particular case, I could not resist making the anachronistic suggestion anyhow...
The point about tobacco's unpleasant smell offending people is certainly far more plausible. But, if we want to be historically accurate about this, there is an even more immediate reason that smoking tobacco was banned at this particular point in time, particularly in front of the residences of those of high status.
Namely, authorities in the early seventeenth century associated smoking tobacco with the disruptive and often violent activities of groups of low-ranking and masterless warriors known collectively as "kabukimono." Seen as dangerous delinquents, kabukimono were also referred to in many contemporary sources as tobacco smokers who "carried around large pipes" (大烟管にさし) in addition to sporting outlandish hairstyles, "leather pants" (皮袴), and oversized swords. Thus, in actuality smoking was banned not for health reasons or even primarily because of the smell, but rather because it was seen as one in a series of disruptive behaviors common among this particular group of threatening social misfits.
Now, as far as the ever-popular vice of drinking is concerned, however, there are in fact a number of late sixteenth-century Japanese texts which warn that consuming large quantities of alcohol will shorten your life if not kill you outright. And in this case, imprecise as medical knowledge was at the time, such an observation does not appear to be all that far off the mark...
Sorekara, one might wonder why smoking in the presence of the sick was explicitly mentioned. If not because tobacco was recognized as unhealthy, perhaps then because the authorities thought that exposure to low-life kabukimono and their dastardly leather pants represented some kind of health risk. Or maybe they thought unpleasant smells in general were unhealthy!
The motivation to invest in time travel technology has never been stronger.
One cannot but help envisioning the outlandish hairstyles, "leather pants" (皮袴), and oversized swords, and suddenly finding oneself in Harajuku in the late 1980s or early 1990s.
Wow I miss school...we learn such interesting things.
Does 'kabukimono' have anything whatsoever to do with kabuki theatre, or 'kabukicho', the modern day district of undesireables in Shinjuku?
I think the there may be a slight correlation with Kabuki 歌舞伎 the theater. As it was back in those days a theater that was deeply entrenched in Prostitution (as seen when they used 妓 which has correlations to prostitution itself) and other public immoralities that came with it.
Kabuki was at that time low-brow theater, usually causing public disturbances.
Whereas Kabuki-cho originally got it's name from plans for a Kabuki theater to be built there, due to financial problems the theater never happened. Whereas in it's place Cabarets and the such took over.
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