The Voyage of Captain John Saris to Japan, 1613
Kotokuin is mentioned in The Voyage of Captain John Saris to Japan, 1613 (published in 1900 from Captain Saris’s journals). This travel account describes the visit of the British East India Company’s merchant ship Clove to Japan, the first English ship ever to make the voyage.
A passage from Saris’s work refers to a particularly famous “idol” known as the “Daibutsu.” Saris describes the statue as being made from copper, and, though hollow inside, being well constructed, with a surface of considerable thickness. Saris estimates the statue to be about 21.2 feet high, in the form of a robed man seated on the ground. The statue’s arms are said to be amazingly large, but the general effect of the figure is well balanced. Japanese visitors showed it the greatest veneration, Saris reports. One of the captain’s party is said to have ventured inside the statue, where he coughed and called out loudly, creating tremendous echoes.