9 - A Spanish Utopian Island in Japan (1599)

Summary

Abstract

This chapter studies and partially translates a new Spanish–Japanese society devised by an anonymous Jesuit in 1599; a mestizo satellite city destined to be the new Spanish stronghold in Kyushu, Japan. The text highlights the concerns of strict vital survival of the missionaries stationed in the Japanese islands and the clear strategy of “Hispanization” deployed by the Jesuits, which, at least in part, incorporated certain values related to Christian doctrine: the spirit of social justice, the rejection of violence, and the brotherhood of all men, with an ultimate aim to establish a more coercive approach towards the Japanese.

Keywords: chronicles, East Asia, Hispanization, Jesuit, Spain, Japan

The manuscript Jap. Sin. 13 II, fols. 269–77, is held in the Archive of the Society of Jesus (ARSI) in Rome, Italy.2 Written in 1599 by an anonymous Jesuit and addressed to the superior general of the Society of Jesus, it illustrates the influence of the humanist tradition on Jesuit teaching in their promulgation of the Christian values of social justice, the rejection of violence, and the brotherhood of all men. The following extract from this letter, translated for the first time from the original Spanish into English, imagines a new Spanish–Japanese mestizo utopian society as a satellite island city destined to become a new Spanish stronghold off the coast of the southern Japanese island of Kyushu.3 The letter also reveals the concerns of the Jesuit missionaries for the survival of their mission, as well as their fear for their lives and those of their converts on the Japanese archipelago following the edicts issued by Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598) in 1587, seeking to expel all Christian missionaries and limit the spread of their “false teachings.”4 These edicts gave rise to a number of different responses aimed at providing the new Church in Japan with the stability it required to face numerous threats, including the physical threat to Jesuit lives, the economic threat of the Portuguese gaining the upper hand in trade with Japan, and the sociopolitical threat of strained relations between Europe and Japan.

There were several reasons that led the anonymous author of this manuscript— possibly the Italian Jesuit Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606),5 who as visitor to the province of India had oversight of all the Jesuit missions in Asia—to propose this Spanish–Japanese utopia that was envisaged as a “very rich and populous city” (fol. 275).