Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T10:34:00.716Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Courtiers and Christians: The First Japanese Emissaries to Europe*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Judith C. Brown*
Affiliation:
Stanford University

Extract

On 10 August 1584 Four Japanese emissaries arrived in Lisbon. Strictly speaking, they were not the first Japanese to arrive in Europe, but they were the first official delegates sent by Japanese feudal lords. And they were the first to return to Japan after a European sojourn.’ Some historians have argued that “no Japanese emissaries, before or since, aroused comparable interest or enthusiasm” among Europeans.

Much has been written about this visit, both in the sixteenth century and closer to our own, but while there is no doubt about the warmth of the welcome, judgments about its meaning and importance have differed sharply. In the late nineteenth century, Guglielmo Berchet reluctantly concluded that despite European enthusiasm and the triumph of the travelers over enormous obstacles during the journey, the embassy was of no consequence because by the time it returned to Japan in 1587, it encountered a hardening of attitudes against Europeans.

Type
Studies
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Berchet, Guglielmo. “Le antiche ambasciate Giapponesi in Italia.” Archivio Veneto 13 (1877): 245-85.Google Scholar
Berchet, Guglielmo. “Documenti del saggio storico sulle antiche ambasciate giapponesi in Italia.“ Archivio Veneto 14 (1877): 149203.Google Scholar
Berti, Luciano. Il Principe dello Studiolo: Francesco I dei Medici e la fine del Rinascimento fiorentino. Florence, 1967.Google Scholar
Boscaro, Adriana. “La visita a Venezia della prima ambasceria giapponese in Europa.“ Il Giappone 5. Rome, 1965.Google Scholar
Boscaro, Adriana. Sixteenth-Century European Printed Works on the First Japanese Mission to Europe. Leiden, 1973.Google Scholar
C. R., Boxer The Christian Century in Japan 1549-1650. Berkeley, 1967.Google Scholar
Carnesecchi, Baccio. “Storia di Firenze dal 1526al 1529.“Ed. U. Dorini. Rivista Storica degli Archivi Toscani 3 (1931): 100-12.Google Scholar
Cintio, Giovanbattista Giraldi. Hecatommithi. Venice, 1574.Google Scholar
Cooper, Michael S.J. Rodrigues the Interpreter: An Early Jesuit in Japan and China. New York, 1974.Google Scholar
D'Elia, Pasquale, S.J. “Bernardo, il primo giapponese venuto a Roma (1555)“ Civilta cattolicà 102 (1951): 527-35.Google Scholar
Elison, George. Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan. Cambridge, MA, 1973.Google Scholar
Frois, Luis. Tratado dos emhaixadores Iapaes queforao de Iapao à Roma no anno de 1582. In La prèmiere ambassade du Japon en Europe 1582-92, ed. Pinto, J. A., Okamoto, Y., and Bernard, H.. Tokyo, 1942.Google Scholar
Gualtieri, G. Relation! delta venuta degli ambasciatori giaponesi a Roma fino alia partita diLisbona. Rome, 1586; rpt. Tokyo, 1972.Google Scholar
Gunji, Yasunori. DallTsola del Giapan: La prima ambasceria giapponese in Occidente. Milan, 1985.Google Scholar
Gutierrez, Beniamino. La Prima ambascieria giapponese in Italia: DalV ignorata cronaca di un diarista e cosmografo milanese della fine del xvisecolo. Milan, 1938.Google Scholar
Jones, Eldred. Othello's Countrymen: The African in English Renaissance Drama. London, 1965.Google Scholar
Jordan, Winthrop D. White Over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550- 1812. Williamsburg, 1968.Google Scholar
Kehler, Dorothea. “Othello and Racism.“ Zcitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 36 (1988): 124-32.Google Scholar
Kenseth, Joy. The Age of the Marvelous. Hanover, NH, 1991.Google Scholar
Lach, Donald. Asia in the Making of Europe. Chicago, 1965.Google Scholar
Muratori, L. A. Antiali d'Italia dal principio dell’ era pelgare sino all'anno 1750 10:2. Rome, 1754.Google Scholar
Nuñez Ortega, Angel. Relacioties Poli'ticas y Comerciales entre México y eljapo'n, Durante el Siglo XVII. Mexico, 1923.Google Scholar
Pieterse, Jan Nederveen. White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture. New Haven, 1992.Google Scholar
Politi, G. et al., Timcrc e carità: I povcri ttel- Vltalia Moderna. Cremona, 1982.Google Scholar
Regond-Bohat, A. “Les cabinets de curiosites au XVIe siècle.” In La curiosité a la Renaissance, ed. Jean Céard, 65-70. Paris, 1986.Google Scholar
Rivadeneira, Pedro de. Obras Escogidas. Madrid, 1868.Google Scholar
Sande, Duarte de. De missione legatorum lapoiicnsium ad Romanam curiam, rebiisq; in Europa, ac loto itinereanimadversis: Dialogus ex cphemcride ipsorum legatorum collectus & in sermonem Latinum versus. Macao, 1590; rpt. Tokyo, 1935.Google Scholar
Sanese, G. “I Principi Giapponesi a Siena nel 1585.” Bulletino Senesc di Storia Patria 1 (1894): 124-30.Google Scholar
Valignano, Alessandro. “Les Instructions du Pere Valignano pour l'ambassade japonaise en Europe.” Ed. J. A. Abranches, J. A. Pinto, and Henri Bernard, Monumenta Nipponica 6 (1943): 391-403.Google Scholar
J. A., Pinto. Historia del Principio y Progresso de la Compaiiia de Jestis en las Indias Orientates, 1542-1564. Ed. J. Wicki. Rome, 1944.Google Scholar
Vecellio, Cesare. Habiti antichi el moderni di tutto il mondo. Venice, 1598; rpt. Paris, 1859-60.Google Scholar
Ventura, Angelo, ed. Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato, Vol. 2, Rome, 1976.Google Scholar
Villari, Rosario. La rivolta antispagtwla a Napoli. Rome, 1973.Google Scholar
Wright, A. D. Catholicism and Spanish Society Under the Reign of Philip II, 1555-1598, and Philip III, 1598-1621. Lewiston, NY, 1991.Google Scholar
Xavier, Francis. EpistolaeS. FrancisciXaverii. Monunicnta Historica Socictatis Iesu 68:2. Rome, 1945.Google Scholar