Bulletin of Portuguese - Japanese Studies ISSN: 0874-8438
[email protected] Universidade Nova de Lisboa Portugal Oliveira e Costa, João Paulo Bibliography Japan and the japanese in printed worksin europe in the sixteenth century Bulletin of Portuguese - Japanese Studies, núm. 14, june, 2007, pp. 43-107 Universidade Nova de Lisboa Lisboa, Portugal Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=36101403 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative BPJS, 2007, 14, 43-107 BIBLIOGRAPHY JAPAN AND THE JAPANESE IN PRINTED WORKS 1 IN EUROPE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY João Paulo Oliveira e Costa Centro de História de Além-Mar, New University of Lisbon Japan was practically isolated from the rest of the world when the first Portuguese disembarked there, in 1543. In Europe, it was only known that beyond China there was a huge island, Cipango, inhabited by heathens who had been capable of resisting the attacks of the Mongols, the conquerors of China. However, the location of Cipango did not coincide with that of Japan: the south of the archipelago lies roughly to the east of Korea and the extreme west of China, but European geographers placed Cipango opposite the southern provinces of the Middle Empire and in the middle of the ocean, rather than at a short distance from the mainland.2 Alongside this truthful yet imprecise information, other more fanciful information was circulating, which had been picked up by Marco Polo on the coast of the Celestial 1 The list of printed works presented here was published for the first time in an article with the same title, in my book O Japão e o Cristianismo no século XVI.