[研究ノート] 都の南蛮寺（被昇天の聖母教会）跡出土の石製硯（すずり）裏面の線刻の解釈について

Around the time that Oda Nobunaga built Azuchi Castle overlooking Lake Biwa and set out to unite all Japan under his banner, the Jesuit missionaries who had been propagating Christianity in the country since Francis Xavier's arrival in 1549, resolved to build a chapel in Kyoto. Although the building was not fully complete, on August 15, 1576 (twenty-first day of the seventh month, Tenshō 4) a dedication ceremony was held. It was timed with the Assumption of Mary feast celebrated on that day. With a cross at the top of its roof, the church became a landmark in the city and even the people who had opposed its construction flocked to see it. We can get some idea of the exterior view of this church, which was known as Nanbanji or Nanbandō ( "Foreigner's Hall") from a painting by Kanō Sōshū (1731–1781; younger brother of Kanō Eitoku) Miyako no Nanbanji zu (Nanbanji Temple, Christian Church in Kyoto; Kobe City Museum). However, after Toyotomi Hideyoshi had second thoughts about Christianity and issued the order in 1587 expelling the Jesuits, the church was closed and later demolished. It was in use for only 11 years. In 1973, part of the Nanbanji site was excavated by Doshisha University and many artifacts of the church were unearthed. The findings of the excavation were published in Ubayanagicho iseki (Nanbanji ato) chōsa gaihō (Report of the Survey of the Ubayanagi cho (Nanbanji) Site Excavation). The report touches especially on the picture incised onto the back of the inkstone, which has been interpreted as depicting a mass conducted by one of the Portuguese priests. In June 2022, when I had the opportunity to view this inkstone first-hand, I immediately doubted the veracity of that interpretation. The figure wearing eyeglasses on the right is said to be a priest conducting a mass and the figure holding a long-handled candle snuffer on the left an assistant friar. But the first time I saw it I was convinced that it shows a foreigner (probably Portuguese) holding a pipe; the length of the pipe's stem is greatly exaggerated. My reason for thinking so is that there appears to be a bundle of tobacco leaves at the upper right, and below them a basket holding the bundle, and dried tobacco leaves stacked in a pile. At the bottom we can see a knife for cutting the leaves and at left what can be guessed to be two dried tobacco leaves. To begin with, it seems to me quite unlikely that anyone associated with the church would be so impious as to scribble a caricature of the priest performing a mass on the back of an inkstone. The record of a priest named Pedro de Burguillos that in 1601 (Keichō) the Franciscan friar Jerónimo de Jesús presented Tokugawa Ieyasu with "medicinal tobacco ointment and tobacco seeds" is currently the oldest known documentary record of the introduction of tobacco to Japan. The use of the inkstone excavated from the Nanbanji church means that the introduction can be traced even further back to the Tenshō era. In other words, this inkstone is the oldest pictorial document of smoking in Japan.