A well-preserved letter from one of the most fascinating samurai in Japanese history, Hosokawa Tadaoki (1563–1646), presented superbly as a finely mounted kakejiku hanging scroll. This letter is distinguished by the presence of Hosokawa’s famous Roman alphabet stamp, which was extremely unusual at the time.
About Hosokawa Tadaoki
Hosokawa Tadaoki was born in Kyoto (the capital of Japan at the time) in 1563, to a powerful family of noble rulers. His father was Hosokawa Fujitaka (1534-1610), who acted as a retainer to the Ashikaga shogun, before aligning with Oda Nobunaga (1535–1582) when he came to power in 1568. Tadaoki, being the eldest son in a samurai family, was quickly absorbed into service and fought his first battle at the tender age of 15. The following year he married Akechi Tama (1563–1600), a member of the highly prestigious Akechi clan. Strongly influenced by Catholic missionaries in Japan, Tama was baptised as Gracia in 1587 – and so she is more widely known as Hosokawa Gracia.
Tadaoki and Gracia’s story is one of the most captivating samurai tales. It begins with the wider context of factional feuds pre-Edo; after the death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (dubbed the ‘great unifier’ of Japan) in 1598, a dangerous power vacuum was created. Tadaoki was engaged in a political and military struggle due to his opposition to Ishida Mitsunari (1559–1600). This tense rivalry between a group of feudal leaders (including Tadaoki) and Mitsunari is thought to be the origins of the Battle of Sekigahara. With the intervention of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the initial attempt to assassinate Mitsunari was avoided. Still alive and unquelled, Mitsunari ordered his men to seize Osaka Castle and take noble family members hostage.
Tadaoki was fighting alongside Tokugawa Ieyasu in the East, and was not able to protect Gracia. She refused to turn herself over and decided to remain in the Hosokawa residence (within Osaka Castle). This left her in a morally difficult position – accepting execution would be a betrayal to her husband and could ruin his name, but suicide would go against her strong Catholic faith. Instead, she ordered a servant to kill her (what would now be considered an assisted suicide) to protect both her husband and her faith.
Ieyasu’s success at the Battle of Sekigahara marked a new era, with the long rule of the Tokugawa shogunate. Tadaoki was rewarded for his allegiance with a new fief in Kokura, in the Buzen province (present-day Kyushu).
Roma-ji stamps & Tadaoki’s letter
It is well known that Tadaoki had a personal stamp with his name written in Roman letters – reading ‘TADA UOQUI’. Though other examples of Roman letter stamps exist from this period, it was still highly unusual, and surviving examples remain important relics of the early interactions between Japan and the West.
More broadly, they come under the category of Nanban Bunka (Western Culture) that gained interest in elite circles in the mid sixteenth-century onwards. With the arrival of Portuguese Missionaries, as well as Spanish and Dutch traders came the introduction of Christian ideology and various technologies that had not existed in Japan prior, including firearms. The Kumamoto Prefectural Museum hosted an exhibition on this theme in 2015 titled Nanban Culture and the Hosokawa Family (Oct.–Dec.) The exhibition featured objects owned by the Hosokawa family that were brought to them by Western traders, as well as original letters written by Gracia and by Tadaoki with his distinctive stamp. His son, Tadatoshi, also had a Roman-letter stamp, and examples of his letters were also on display.
Other famous examples of Roman-letter stamps include those belonging to Otomo Sorin (1530-1587) and Kuroda Yoshitaka (1546-1604). Sorin’s reads ‘FRCO’ for Francisco and Yoshitaka’s reads ‘Simeon Josui’ – both were Catholic converts and their stamps reflect their Christian names. Tadaoki is unusual as, despite his wife Gracia’s conversion, he himself never converted to Catholicism. It is likely that through his high rank and connection to Gracia that a special stamp was created for him. It is particularly interesting that Tadaoki continued to use this stamp during the persecution of Christian in Japan that started in 1614 – clearly for him it was a secular stamp.
Some of his letters are stamped in blue ink, and there is much debate as to whether he had a different seal or simply changed his ink pad to blue. Additionally, scholars suggest that Tadaoki’s stamp was primarily used for official business while he was the daimyo in Buzen. Though the present letter is dated 5th September, there is no year stated, which is not unusual for the time. As such, we have dated the letter to ca.1602–1620, when Tadaoki was in Buzen.
The letter itself is a short note of thanks to someone named Maki Samanosuke (dates unknown). Tadaoki thanks him receiving a box containing 150 bonito fish. The level of formality and the low placement of Samanosuke’s name on the page indicates that he was a man of inferior rank, possibly one of Tadaoki’s servicemen (please enquire for a full transcription of the letter).
There is one mention of a figure by the same name in an article on the Nagaoka City website. In the 1990s, to commemorate the opening of Shoryuji Park, the City of Nagaoka created a new annual festival named the ‘Garasha Matsuri’ (after Hosokawa Gracia), which features a recreation of Gracia’s wedding procession. In the article, they cite the ninth volume of the Menko-shuroku – a book of the Hosokawa family history compiled in the 18th century – which notes that Tadaoki had made arrangements for Maki Samanosuke’s wedding and compared the number of palanquins sent to his own wedding with Gracia. (see: https://www.city.nagaokakyo.lg.jp/0000013608.html)
The present scroll
In Japan there is a longstanding practice of preserving letters from famous figures either in sumptuous albums or lavish hanging scrolls (kakejiku). Such documents are extremely scarce, especially since many were historically destroyed in fires caused by earthquakes, and so albums and scrolls were a way to protect ephemera and transform it into a luxury object.
The present scroll appears to have been made in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. The letter has been beautifully mounted with two varieties of antique sarasa chintz fabric. This is a very tasteful choice – sarasa fabrics were imported into Japan during the Edo period by Dutch traders and were considered extremely luxurious. Owing to their scarcity, small fragments were made into tobacco pouches and inro and carried by the fashionable elite. Additionally, the desirability of sarasa brought about Japanese interpretations of these patterns known as wa-sarasa (Japanese chintz). The choice of this fabric in this scroll is highly considered, as it nods to the early interactions between Japan and the West symbolised by Hosokawa and his Roman-letter stamp.
Additionally, Tadaoki himself was a cultured man who studied under the famous tea master Sen no Rikyu (1522-1591) and took an early interest in Nanban culture, and so the choice of mount is a tasteful nod to his aesthetic sensibilities.
We have found two other examples of manuscripts by Tadaoki, with the Roman-letter stamp, mounted as hanging scrolls. One example is a letter by Tadaoki (similarly dated, but with no year) held in the Seinan Gakuin collection (object no. N-b-030). The other lives in the collection of the Kyushu National Museum and is not a letter, but a memorandum stamped by Tadaoki (see: https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/577775).
Provenance: from a private collection in Japan. The scroll is accompanied by three pages of manuscript notes by a previous owner, detailing Tadaoki and Gracia’s lives.
