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Envoys and Illusions: the Japanese embassy to Europe, 1582–90, De Missione Legatorvm Iaponensium,1 and the Portuguese viceregal embassy to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, 1591

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2005

Derek Massarella
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Abstract

On 20 February 1582 when Alessandro Valignano, Visitor to the Jesuit missions in the East Indies (the geographical area from Goa eastwards, to Japan, and southwards, to the Indonesian archipelago) left Japan, the country had been in a state of civil war, (the sengoku jidai) for more than a century. That was about to change. Oda Nobunaga had succeeded in uniting the central and western parts of Honshu under his rule and was intent on imposing his rule over the rest of the country. The Jesuits considered him if not quite a patron, then certainly someone sympathetic to Christianity and their mission in Japan. Yet on 22 June Nobunaga died, the victim of an attack by an ambitious rival, and ironically, considering the previous esteem in which he had been held, unlamented by the Jesuits who believed that during the final months of his life he had transformed himself into a megalomanic tyrant, a Nebuchadnezzar.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , November 2005 , pp. 329 - 350
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2005

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Footnotes

1

De Missione Legatorvm Iaponensium ad Romanum curiam, rebusq; in Europa, ac toto itinere animuduersis DIALOGVS EX EPHEMERIDE IPSORVM LEGATORVM COLLECTVS, & IN SERMONEM LATINVM VERSVS, was published in Macao in 1590, facsimile repr. (Tokyo, 1935). A modern Portuguese translation appeared in 1997, Américo da Costa Ramalho (tr), Díalogo sobre a missão dos embaixadores Japoneses à cúria Romana (Macao, 1997). In this article all citations from De Missione are from this edition, in my translation, followed by page references in square brackets to the original Latin edition.

References

1 De Missione Legatorvm Iaponensium ad Romanum curiam, rebusq; in Europa, ac toto itinere animuduersis DIALOGVS EX EPHEMERIDE IPSORVM LEGATORVM COLLECTVS, & IN SERMONEM LATINVM VERSVS, was published in Macao in 1590, facsimile repr. (Tokyo, 1935). A modern Portuguese translation appeared in 1997, Américo da Costa Ramalho (tr), Díalogo sobre a missão dos embaixadores Japoneses à cúria Romana (Macao, 1997). In this article all citations from De Missione are from this edition, in my translation, followed by page references in square brackets to the original Latin edition.