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This annotation explores a newly developed font that allows users to input special characters (ligatures and logograms) found in texts produced by Jesuit missionaries to Japan and their followers. This new font allows users to create transcriptions that are more materially and typographically closer to the original sources, and the syntax used to input these special characters opens up the possibility for digital analysis of these transcriptions. The annotation contextualizes the discussion of the new font, it benefits, and limitations in relation to the current practices used by Japanologists to input these characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Samurai and The Cross: The Jesuit Enterprise in Early Modern Japan" by M. Antoni J. Ucerler is a comprehensive reassessment of the history of the Society of Jesus in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Japan. The book explores the challenges faced by Jesuit missionaries as they attempted to adapt Christianity to the unique cultural and political circumstances of Japan. Divided into three sections, the book examines topics such as the adaptation of Western teachings, the concept of accommodation, and the missionaries' response to civil unrest and growing anti-Jesuit sentiment. The author emphasizes the importance of law, theology, and Japanese primary sources in understanding the decision-making process of Jesuit leaders in Japan. Overall, the book provides valuable insights into the intellectual work of Jesuits in Japan and offers a fresh perspective on their efforts, decisions, and strategies. [Extracted from the article]

Since their very first entry into the Ming empire (Jesuits 1580s, Franciscans 1630s), Christian missionaries produced an extensive body of testimonies on this exotic and unknown territory, in which they described Chinese history, philosophy, nature, culture, religions, society, and people, including Chinese food, culinary practices, and habits. This extensive corpus of missionary documents not only discussed "things Chinese" but also interpreted this unknown country for their European readers in a process our current scholarship has deemed as "transcultural translation", during which the foreign culture is explained using familiar European terms. In my article, I focus on one particular aspect of food intake, or rather its voluntary absence: the practices of ecclesiastical fasting. I analyse how the first Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries understood fasting in the particular context of Chinese and Japanese culture and, more importantly, what obstacles and dilemmas they had to face in establishing it in their missionary work. I then relate these doubts and questions to contemporary missionary casuistry and moral theology. Finally, I explore ecclesiastical fasting as a compelling symbol of Christianity's encounter with the alien spiritual and cultural idioms of China (and Japan). I argue that it exemplifies the nature of the inter-cultural and inter-religious confrontation, displaying the inevitable difficulties inherent in rendering the Christian message. As far as the methodology is concerned, I explore some central assumptions of transculturality, transcultural translation, and Otherness, though I also point out the potential flaws and deficiencies of these perspectives when applied to this textual material. However, I do not aim at establishing an unambiguous methodology for dealing with these sources; my intention is rather to emphasize the absence of a reliable methodological approach for Early Modern missionary documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a few unpublished notes, included in two different Jesuit letters, which provide new details about the Jesuit Mission Press in late sixteenth-century Japan. Information about the problems that the Jesuits faced in the internal administration of the printing press and the tools that they employed to run it can be found in these notes, which may be useful for those interested in the Jesuit Mission Press, and in general, in the history of book-production in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first Christian missionaries arrived in Japan in the middle of the sixteenth century. They missionized quite a number of Japanese people but also angered many through their disrespectful behavior and destruction of temples and shrines. Less than 100 years later, Japan closed its borders, persecuted Christians, and banned Christianity in total. The reasons for this drastic step weren't solely political but also theological. Theological arguments concerning theism, eschatology, ethics, and theology of religion are found in official edicts, in "disputes" between Christian missionaries and Buddhist scholars, as well as in theological treatise. One of the reoccurring arguments against Christianity includes the description of the arrogant behavior of the missionaries. According to the documents, they displayed an attitude of knowing everything concerning the world next to the ignorant Buddhists. This exclusivist mindset wasn't compatible with the order of Japan and the three teachings. In the eyes of the authorities, this doctrine secured peace and ensured domestic stability. Especially the Japanese and former Christian Fabian Fucan, as well as the Buddhist monk Suzuki Shōsan, adduce various Buddhist, Confucian, and Daoist teachings against the charge of ignorance. Conversely, Fucan's writing, as well as the edicts, records of religious "disputes," and other treatises, include the accusation that Christianity does not contain any new doctrine advancing the local one. Moreover, it is stated that Christian salvation exclusivism suggests a powerless God, and the missionaries were described as hypocrites and liars, as they did not keep their commandments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1618 the Italian Jesuit Jerónimo de Angelis traveled to Ezo, now Hokkaidô, an island located north of Japan and which, at that time, was an uncharted territory for both, Europeans and Japanese. The objective of this journey was to assess the suitability of this land and its inhabitants, the Ainu ethnicity, to receive Christianity. This article analyzes the report that De Angelis wrote about his trip to inform the superiors of the Society of Jesus in Rome. This document, unpublished until now, contains detailed information about the livelihood, character and spirituality of the Ainu people, which, in addition to being of great value for the study of Japanese Christianity, can be considered as an early example of modern ethnographic analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using sources in both Japanese and Portuguese, this article examines how maritime connections on the island of Kyushu facilitated the spread of Christianity there during the Jesuit mission to Japan in the mid-sixteenth century. Part I builds upon recent Japanese-language scholarship on the prevalence of maritime activity and transportation on Kyushu and highlights the importance of so-called "sea peoples" for individual daimyo (regional lords) who ruled the island. Part II reveals how the first Jesuits, such as Francis Xavier, used preexisting maritime routes to missionize and founded new Christian communities along the coasts of Kyushu. Many Japanese Christians in these communities had expertise in maritime matters, which proved useful for transporting missionaries, going to church, fleeing persecution, and providing mutual assistance in times of need. In examining how local maritime networks and "sea peoples" facilitated missionization in Japan, we gain greater insight into how Christianity spread globally during the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Mirai. Estudios Japoneses is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The essay deals with the missionary experience of two Jesuits born in Ruffano, Lecce, Francesco Perez Mogavero (1551-1602) and Sabatino de Ursis (1575 -1620). Through their letters, but mainly on some extracts of the one that de Ursis sent from Macao on 21/01/1605 in Lecce, the historical events of the Catholic Church in Japan and China are reconstructed, contextualized within the process of unification in act in Japan between the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 18th century.The recipient of de Ursis's letter is Bernardino Realino (1530-1616), the holy founder of the Society of Jesus in Lecce (1574). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper explores the social lives of European timepieces as a particular set of objects in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Japan, when the archipelago first encountered the "Southern Barbarians" from Portugal and Spain. Rather than viewing them solely as instruments of time measurement or as decorative objects, I discuss clocks as actors that moved within networks of exchange primarily between Europe and Japan, but also, significantly, within East Asia and Japan itself. Along their trajectory, these devices assumed shifting and at times contradictory meanings for various actors; this is particularly true in view of the fundamental clash between European and Japanese systems of time-reckoning, which essentially rendered early European-style mechanical clocks 'timeless' in Japan, with its equinoctial system of variable hours. For Jesuit missionaries and foreign emissaries who brought these early devices to Japan, they were timekeepers, objects of ecclesiastical use, paragons of European ingenuity, and above all diplomatic tools that granted access and established connections with the Japanese ruling elite. For the Japanese, by contrast, these global objects assumed meaning within their highly developed local gift-culture as desirable novelty items, particularly within the socially volatile environment of the unification of the country under Tokugawa control. My contention is that these microhistories of exchange help us understand why mechanical clocks did not have the same 'revolutionary' effect on time-reckoning in Japan as they did in Europe; the social lives of these objects strikingly illustrate the power imbalances in diplomatic negotiations that made Japan impervious to coercion by the European powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1549 and 1650, Jesuits gained knowledge of rising Confucianism in Japan. They came to understand Confucian filial piety in their dealings with Japanese marriage laws, and from their converts they learned more about Confucianism. In 1605 Brother Fukan Fabian published "Myōtei mondō" ["Myōtei dialogue"], which provides the Jesuit theological assessment of Japanese religions. It is based on interreligious dialogues which women catechists practiced in the Jesuit mission, and it reveals various degrees of encounter, confrontation, and intersection of minds among the Jesuits, women catechists, and Confucian scholars. In 1606, Hayashi Razan, a Neo-Confucian politician, accused Fabian of promoting Christian insubordination to Japanese authorities and criticized women for expressing their religious opinions. Under his directive, the government expelled the Jesuits and a group of women catechists in 1614. In 1617 Fabian apostatized, but many Christians remained faithful despite persecution. By 1650, visible signs of the church were eliminated from the land and the Neo-Confucian patriarchal class society was firmly established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Searching for conceptual distinctions between religion and medicine is a promising avenue from which to reconstruct trajectories towards the appropriation of hegemonic Western concepts of secularism in Japan, such as the Meiji-period separation of religious and medical practice. Buddhism and medicine had already established a complex relationship for centuries when the Jesuits arrived in Japan. Mahāyāna Buddhist tenets, such as the practice of medicine as a "field of merit" (fukuden 福田), served lay Buddhists as well as monastics as a means to increase social capital through charitable projects. The article seeks to explore whether the Jesuits' distinction between religion and medicine, and by extension the notion of charity, had any significant impact on Japanese religious and medical culture. In making a distinction between religion and medicine, the Jesuits drew a particular boundary in a way that could be interpreted as a precursor of secularity. The analysis of late medieval and early modern sources in European languages and in Japanese supports the conclusion that the form of secularity emerging in the Edo period resulted from an increase in the popularization of Neo-Confucian concepts and not the influx of the Catholic notion of caritas in the Iberian phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the critique of Neo-Confucianism by the Japanese Jesuit Brother Fabian Fukansai (c. 1565–1621) in the Myōtei Dialogues (Myōtei Mondō 妙貞問答) (1605), as well as Fabian's later critique of Christianity. It clarifies the author's understanding of Neo-Confucian theory and his apology for Christianity by analyzing his explanation of the Great Ultimate (Tai'kyoku / Taiji 太極) and Principle (ri/li 理), which Fabian sees as nothing but an expression of Buddhist monistic mentalism. It also demonstrates that his explanations of the Great Ultimate and Principle have a crucial flaw: they do not sufficiently explain Zhu Xi's metaphysics, which tried to make the immanent and transcendental characteristics of the Great Ultimate and Principle compatible. This is because Fabian addresses only the elements of "local" religions including Neo-Confucianism with novel keywords that support the framework of Christian Creationism and the Anima Rationalis theory. However, his later work Deus Destroyed (Ha Daius 破提宇子), written after he had rejected Christianity, overturned his former claim by accepting the Neo-Confucian concept of Principle. Fabian's works are a historical example showing the potential limits of a confrontational approach toward other religions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The painting of the Church of the Gesù in Rome depicting the Great Martyrdom of 1622 in Nagasaki shows detailed representations of Japanese robes worn by Catholics who witness the execution. The present paper analyzes the depictions of kazuki garments worn by women, a type of kimono used as a cloak, to determine the familiarity of the anonymous artist with Japanese culture. During the analysis, the representations of these robes are compared with designs included in kimono pattern books and Japanese genre paintings of the period, as well as with descriptions of Japanese garments given by Europeans in the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century. This study sheds light on some issues regarding the production context and attribution of this painting, which remains unknown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1555, just six years after arriving in Japan, missionaries from the Society of Jesus founded a small medical clinic in the city of Funai (modern-day Ōita). This was the first European hospital in all of East Asia, and historians have often regarded it as the beginning of a scientific revolution, a revolution which would eventually see the official adoption of Western medicine in Japan along with the marginalization of Eastern techniques. This article seeks an alternative perspective. It argues that there is some misunderstanding as to the nature of the Jesuit hospital. The historical sources in fact indicate that it was largely designed by, directed by, and staffed by the local Japanese Christians. Because of this, it functioned much like a Buddhist temple sanatorium. It had buildings of a similar architectural style, and its patients were treated in a similar way, receiving both Chinese medicine and Western surgery. The primary goal of the Jesuit hospital was not to introduce exotic medical techniques, but rather to offer appropriate social and spiritual support to the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cuadernos de Filología Italiana is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The early modern period witnessed a revival of the cult of martyrs in Western Christendom due to the bloody struggles over religion within and beyond Europe. One of the most important sources for this renewal within Catholicism was the period of persecution of clergy and laity in Japan which began in 1597. Despite the horrors found in the accounts that circulated in Europe and its colonial empires, the profusion of texts and images inspired still other priests and friars to seek missionary assignments in Japan for the express purpose of obtaining martyrdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces three key themes in the encounter of Christianity with Japanese culture: namely, reception, incorporation and separation. It argues that these three can also be traced in the much longer engagement of Buddhism with Japan, and that their complex interaction is a helpful way of understanding the tension of inner and outer in Japanese Christian experience. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The early modern Japanese Church developed syncretistic practices in which Roman Catholicism came to function similarly to Buddhism and Shintō. This study examines the development of such practices, with particular focus on penitential rituals. It argues that certain of these rites were produced in the very early years of the mission through extensive discussions between European priests and Japanese Christians. They were compromises that were both hard-fought and intentional. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, the author proposes to make an approach to the time of increased contact and exchange between Catholic Europe and Japan in the Early Modern Age, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He arises to find the image of the other in written testimony of the european jesuits, with emphasis on the vision of the Nipponese rulers. The author also analyzes the characteristics of a particular source, the carta annua, and the mentality and background in the Far East of the most important leaders of the Society of Jesus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cauriensia: Revista Anual de Ciencias Eclesiásticas is the property of Instituto Teologico San Pedro de Alcantara de Caceres and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

What is often called the first Japanese embassy to Europe was actually a publicity stunt conceived in 1582 by Alexandro Valignano, the inspector of the Portuguese-sponsored Asian missions of the Society of Jesus. Four teenagers from Kyushu were paraded through Portugal, Spain, and Italy--performers and audience at the same time in a theatrical production designed to display the capabilities of the Japanese before influential circles of Catholic Europe while imbuing the Japanese with the idea of the superiority of European civilization under the aegis of the Catholic Church. After returning to their native country in 1590, all four joined the Jesuit order. Three served the cause of Christianity faithfully. The fourth, Miguel Chijiwa, apostatized and derided all that he had been taught to hold sacred. He is the narrator of the scurrilous piece of anti-Christian fiction Kirishitan kanagaki, a fantasy novel avant-la-lettre that deserves much greater attention than it has received. Its multifaceted deployment of European legendary materials makes it a challenge to students of comparative culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides an overview of articles about Jesuit mission, activity and experience in other country, including Japan and China during the Renaissance period.

This article examines accepted opinion regarding the persecution and demise of Christian/Catholic missions in 16th and 17th century Japan. Many of the key issues associated with the encounter of European missionaries and Japanese feudal systems of authority and power resonate with contemporary interest in transculturalism, semantic slippage, personal agency, and the intimate interplay between religion, politics, and economics. Burdened with rigid standards of belief, heresy, and race from European inquisitions as well as Mesoamerican conquests, the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries made numerous strategic blunders that contributed to their fates, both as recipients of expulsion orders and, finally, on the execution grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the granting of appointment to Jesuit priest Alessandro Valignano with the Japanese military dictator Taikoh Toyotomi Hideyoshi at the Juraku-no-tei, in Kyoto, Japan on March 3, 1591. It notes that four Jesuit missionaries, four Japanese youths, and twenty Portuguese were gathered by Valignano for his appointment with Hideyoshi. It mentions that Valignano's real mission was to convince the military dictator to overturn his decision on the expulsion of the Jesuits.

When the Jesuit missionaries first came to Japan in mid-16th century, they soon realized the effectiveness of utilizing European music, musical instruments, and paintings when propagating Christianity. Religious paintings served as a rudimentary way of explaining the Christian doctrines that had met with some difficulty in comprehension among the less educated classes because of the language barrier. Secular paintings were used as gifts to the non-Christian warlords who showed enormous interest in all aspects of European culture. The Jesuits trained converts to learn the European style of painting in order to resolve the lack of supplies; faithful copying of the imported paintings was the basic discipline. Religious paintings do not survive in great number because the persecution of the Christians in mid-seventeenth century strove to destroy all the Christian relics. Several secular paintings in the byobu-e (panel-screen painting) made around 1600 depict many kinds of music making and of European musical instruments such as viols, lutes, harps, and vihuelas de mano. The inaccuracies and discrepancies found in these paintings suggest that the Japanese painters had no first hand experience of the structures and performance practices of the instruments they depicted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]