"Their way of writing is very
different from ours because they write from the
top of the page down to the
bottom. I asked Paul (Anjiro) why they did not write in our way and he asked me why we did not write in their way? He explained that as the
head of a man is at the top and his
feet are at the bottom, so too a man should write from top to bottom."
St. Francis Xavier (1506-1552)
source: Cooper, They Came to Japan, pg. 180