The First European Description of Japan, 1585 (8 page)

62
  Frois devoted a whole section of his
Historia
to a detailed account of the ambassadors' trip to Europe. See J.A. Abranches Pinto, Yoshitomo Okamoto, and Henri Bernard, S.J., eds. La Premiere Ambassade du Japon en Europe.
Monumenta Nipponica Monographs
6. (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1942). See also: Guido Gualtieri,
Relationi della venuta de gli ambasciatori Giaponesi a Roma
; Luis de Guzman,
Historia de las Misiones de la Compañía de Jesus en La India Oriental, en la China y Japon desde 1540 hasta 1600
(Bilbao: El Mensajero del Corazon de Jesus, 1891[1601]), 422–458; Judith C. Brown, “Courtiers and Christians: The First Japanese Emissaries to Europe.”
Renaissance Quarterly
47 (1994): 872–906; Michael Cooper,
The Japanese Mission to Europe, 1582–1590
(Kent UK: Global Oriental, 2005), 169–170; Christina H. Lee, “The Perception of the Japanese in Early Modern Spain: Not Quite ‘The Best People Yet Discovered,”
eHumanista
11(2008):345–381. One or more of the Japanese teenagers purportedly kept diaries of their trip to Europe, which Valignano re-worked into the thirty-four dialogues that make up
De Missione Legatorum Iaponen
, trans. Duarte de Sande (Macao 1590).

63
  Schütte,
Valignano's Mission Principles
, I, Pt. II.

64
  Valignano,
Sumario de Las Cosas de Japon
, 242; see also Schütte,
Valignano's Mission Principles
, 1 Pt. II, 242–243.

65
  This offering of tea to a guest in a receiving room is different from the more formal “tea ceremony,” which usually entailed several men sharing tea (“ritually” prepared and served by the host) in a room or primitively-styled hut, set in a garden. The earliest definitive study of
chanoyu
remains Juan Rodriguez's
Arte del Cha
, ed. J.L. Alvarez-Taladriz.
Monumenta Nipponica Monographs
14 (Tokyo: Sophia University, [1620]1954).

66
  
Wind in the Pines
, 44.

67
  Antônio Houaiss, Mauro de Salles Villar, and Francisco Manoel de Mello Franco, eds.,
Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa
(Rio de Janiero: Objetiva, 2001), 2756–7.

68
  
Historia de Japam
, Vol. I.

69
  The thought-provoking use of contradiction is also characteristic of popular texts such as the
Libro de buen amor
(1330) and Chaucer's
The Canterbury Tales
(1380) (e.g. “The Wife of Bath” tale that articulates but then demolishes the case for gender equality).

70
  Constance Brittain Bouchard,
Every Valley Shall Be Exalted, The Discourse of Opposites in Twelfth-Century Opposites
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003); Catherine Brown,
Contrary Things, Exegesis, Dialectic, and the Poetics of Didacticism
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).

71
  Ronald E. Pepin,
An English Translation of Auctores Octo, a Medieval Reader
(Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999); “The Distichs of Cato, A Famous Medieval Textbook,” trans. Wayland Johnson Chase.
The University of Wisconsin Studies in the Social Sciences and History
, Number 7 (1922).

72
  Richard Hazelton, “Chaucer and Cato.”
Speculum
: 35 (1960): 357–380; Mário Martins, “Os ‘Di- sticos de Catão' na base da formação a o universita ria.”
Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia
24, Issue 1 (1968): 103–113.

73
  Pepin,
An English Translation of Auctores Octo
, 9. Note that while Frois may have drawn inspiration from Cato, Serena Connolly (personal communication) has noted a number of significant differences between the
Tratado
and Cato: for instance, the
Tratado
is not in verse and the text comprises observations or simple statements rather than gnomic reflections. Also, Cato does not regularly contrast one group in the first line with another in the second.

74
  James Clifford and George Marcus, eds.
Writing Culture, The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

75
  As we point out in our distich commentary, Frois could have mentioned popular Japanese names for women such as snow or chrysanthemum.

76
  Schütte,
Valignano's Mission Principles
, I, Pt.2, 109.

77
  See Sabine MacCormack,
Religion in the Andes
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 240.

78
  Such dangers are explored in Shusaku Endo's novel
Silence
.

79
  The concept of “Europe” was first used by the ancient Greeks as a referent for the Greek archipelago, and in contradistinction to the other side of the Mediterranean (meaning Africa and the Middle East). Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks,
Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 9.

80
  Frois seemingly retained notions of a medieval Europe, united by Christianity (Christendom); he ignored the fact that Europe has always evidenced conflict and division. Egar Morin,
Penser L'Europe
(Paris: Gallimard, 1990).

81
  Portuguese superiors in Lisbon were shocked at Valignano and his “recruiting class,” but they could do little to oppose Valignano, given the latter's support from the Father General of the Society. Ross,
A Vision Betrayed
, 36–40.

82
  Ignatius Loyola also consciously strove to make the Jesuits an “international order,” even if the Jesuits themselves struggled with incipient nationalism. It is interesting to note in this regard that the
anuas
for Japan often distinguished Italians. See for example
Cartas … de Iapáo & China
, I, 152, 444, 454.

83
  Portuguese openness to ideas emanating from outside Portugal, particularly northern Europe, diminished appreciably after ca. 1550, when conservative forces in Portugal, including the Jesuits and the Inquisition, ushered in an era of censorship and hostility toward Erasmian humanism. Disney,
A History of Portugal
, 190–192.

84
  Van Lincschoten is a good example of such an adventurer. Saldanha, “The Itineraries of Geography: Jan Huygen van Linschoten's
Itinerario
.”

85
  Pedro Dias,
The Manueline: Portuguese Art During the Great Discoveries
(Lisbon: Programa de Incremento do Turismo Cultural, 2002), 18–19.

86
  Frank Pierce, ed.,
Luís De Camões, Os Lusiadas
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), xvi–xvii.

87
  Joaquim de Carvalho,
Estudos sobre a Cultura Portuguesa do século XVI
, Volume II (Coimbra: University of Coimbra, 1948), 7.

88
  Andrew Pettegree,
The Book in the Renaissance
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 66, 114, 260–261.

89
  See Ross,
A Vision Betrayed
, for perhaps the most forceful discussion of Valignano's “progressive” vision and cultural relativism with respect to Japan and China (although Ross seems unduly forgiving of Valignano's attitudes toward people of color).

90
  As recently as June, 2011, the Mi'kmaq of Nova Scotia asked the Jesuits for help preserving their language.

91
  See for example, Sabine Hyland,
Gods of the Andes: An Early Jesuit Account of Incan Religion and Andean Christianity
(University Park: Penn State Press, 2011). Jesuit cultural relativism took various “textual” forms, including Mateo Ricci's
mappamondo
that placed China near the center and the Holy Land in a western quadrant. See Jensen,
Manufacturing Confucianism
, 37.

92
  Beatriz Helena Dominguez,
Tão Longe, Tão Perto
(Rio de Janiero: Editora Museu da Republica, 2007), 41–71; Nicholas P. Cushner,
Why Have You Come Here
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Daniel T. Reff, “The Jesuit Mission Frontier in Comparative Perspective, The Reductions of the Rio de la Plata and the Missions of Northwestern New Spain, 1588–1700.”
In Contested Ground
, eds. Thomas Sheridan and Donna Guy (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998), 16–32.

93
  From 1581–1610, ninety-eight Japanese were admitted to the Jesuit order. Isabela Pina, “Cultural Adaptation and the Assimilation of Natives.”
Bulletin of Portuguese Japanese Studies
2 (2001): 59–76, 68.

94
  O'Malley,
The First Jesuits
, 1993. See also James T. Moore,
Indian and Jesuit
(Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1982); Sangkeun Kim,
Strange Names of God, The Missionary Translation of the Divine Name and the Chinese Responses to Matteo Ricci's Shangti in Late Ming China, 1583–1644
(New York: Peter Lang, 2004), 33–70.

95
  Blaise Pascal,
The Mind on Fire
, ed. J.M Houston (Vancouver: Regent College, 2003), 245–246. Jensen,
Manufacturing Confucianism
, 33. For a recent Jesuit expression of this view of grace, see Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator,
Theology Brewed in an Africa Pot
(New York: Maryknoll, 2008), 52–65, 130–137.

96
  In both America and Asia, the Jesuits found indigenous traditions worth celebrating. See Hyland,
Gods of the Andes
; Jensen,
Manufacturing Confucianism
, 54–59; Ines G. Zupanov,
Disputed Mission
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 3–4.

97
  Reff,
Plagues, Priests, and Demons
, 174–206.

98
  Thus, one of Frois' briefest chapters (9) deals with disease.

99
  Greenblatt,
Marvelous Possessions
, 71.

100
  Nancy Ettlinger, “Governmentality as Epistemology.”
Annals of the Association of American Geographers
, 101(3) 2011: 537–560, provides an excellent synthesis of Foucault's ideas, which were articulated over years and in various lectures; Michel Foucault, “Governmentality.” In
The Foucault Effect, Studies in Governmentality
, eds. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 87–107;
Security, Territory, Population
(London: Macmillan, 2007);
The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978–1979
(London: Palgrave, 2008). See also Nikolas Rose,
Governing the Soul, The Shaping of the Private Self
(London: Routledge, 1989); Terry Eagleton,
The Idea of Culture
(London: Blackwell, 2000), 26.

101
  For example, the Duke of Savoy forbade the sons of the nobility from leaving his domain to be educated without his permission.

102
  Stephen Greenblatt,
Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).

103
  Larry F. Norman, “The Theatrical Baroque.” In
The Theatrical Baroque
, ed. Larry Norman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 1–13.

104
  Foucault,
Security, Territory, Population
, 88.

105
  Giorgio Agamben,
The Highest Poverty
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013), 45–47.

106
  For instance, it was common practice for Jesuit novices to conclude dinner with readings from Jesuit missionary letters and published volumes of the same, or to stage theatrical re-enactments of the heroic battles of pioneer Jesuit missionaries and saints such as Francis Xavier. See Joseph de Guibert,
The Jesuits: Their Spiritual Doctrine and Pratice; A Historical Study
(Chicago: Loyola University Press 1964), 217; Liam M. Brockey,
Journey to the East, The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724
(Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2007), 207–208.

107
  
Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

108
  Although Foucault and others have cast the modern state of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the earliest expression of “bio-power” (societies that are conceived and managed on the basis of censuses and statistically-defined social realities), the Jesuit mission enterprise from the preceding centuries entailed very sophisticated “catalogues” of population and property that were part and parcel of the Jesuit “state” or mission. See Daniel T. Reff,
Disease, Depopulation, and Culture Change in Northwestern New Spain, 1518–1764
(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1991), 181–193.

109
  Ana Fernandes Pinto, “Japanese Elites As Seen By Jesuit Missionaries.” In
Bulletin of Portuguese Japanese Studies
1(2001): 29–43, 30; See also Pérez de Ribas,
History of the Triumphs of Our Holy Faith
, 101.

110
  Murdoch,
A History of Japan
, II. P. I, 119; Hubert Cieslik, “The Training of a Japanese Clergy in Seventeenth Century.” In
Studies of Japanese Culture
, ed. J. Roggendorf, 41–78 (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1963); Proust,
Europe Through the Prism of Japan
, 9–10; Francesco C. Cesareo, “Quest for Identity: The Ideals of Jesuit Education in the Sixteenth Century.” In
The Jesuit Tradition in Education and Missions, A 450-Year Perspective
, ed. Christopher Chapple (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 1993), 17–34.

111
  Quoted in Brockey,
Journey to the East
, 44.

112
  Jensen,
Manufacturing Confucianism
, 42.

113
  Surprisingly, Foucault never acknowledged the applicability of his concept of governmentality to colonial contexts.

114
  In his essay on customs (ca. 1572), Montaigne observed “It is very doubtful whether there can be such evident profit in changing an accepted law, of whatever sort it may be, as there is harm in disturbing it; inasmuch as government is like a structure of different parts joined together in such a relation that it is impossible to budge one without the whole body feeling it.” Michel de Montaigne,
Essays
, tran. J. M. Cohen (London: Penguin, 1958), 79.