Scuola Dottorale di Ateneo Graduate School Dottorato di ricerca in Lingue e Civiltà dell'Asia e dell'Africa Mediterranea Ciclo XXIV Anno di discussione 2013 Self through the Other. Production, circulation and reception in Europe of written sources on Japan in the "Christian century" SETTORE SCIENTIFICO DISCIPLINARE DI AFFERENZA: L-OR/23 Tesi di Dottorato di Sonia Favi, matricola 955632 Coordinatore del Dottorato Tutore del Dottorando Prof. Attilio Andreini Prof. Aldo Tollini INDEX _________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………….p.1 1. MYTH AND REALITY – EUROPEAN REPRESENTATIONS OF ASIA BEFORE THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY………………...p.8 1.1. THE GREEK, LATIN AND MEDIEVAL LITERARY TRADITIONS ON ASIA…………………………………………………………………………..p.8 1.2. THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES: TRAVEL NARRATIVES AND THE “REDISCOVERY” OF EAST ASIA…………..p.22 1.3. THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY: THE DECLINE OF THE LAND ROUTES AND THE PORTUGUESE NAVAL EXPLORATIONS LEADING UP TO THE ERA OF THE “GREAT DISCOVERIES”……………………p.47 2. EXPANDING TRADE – IBERIAN MERCHANTS AND IBERIAN LAY WRITINGS ON ASIA AND JAPAN IN THE ERA OF THE “GREAT DISCOVERIES”…………………………………..p.63 2.1. PORTUGUESE NAVAL EXPANSION AND TRADE IN THE ASIAN SEAS………………………………………………………………………………p.63 2.1.1. The Estado da India…………………………………………………….p.63 2.1.2. Trade and piracy in the China Seas…………………………………..p.72 2.1.3. The Portuguese encounter with Japan……………………………….p.80 i 2.2. PORTUGUESE COMMERCIAL EXPANSION AND CIRCULATION OF INFORMATION ON JAPAN IN EUROPE…………………………….p.92 2.2.1. Portuguese discoveries and developments in cartography………..p.92 2.2.2. Portuguese first-hand merchant reports and lay histories………p.107 2.3. THE SPANISH COMPETITION………………………………………p.119 2.3.1. The Spanish settlement in Manila…………………………………..p.119 2.3.2. Spanish sources on Japan…………………………………………….p.124 3. CHRISTIAN MISSIONS AND SOURCES ON JAPAN……..p.128 3.1. THE CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN ASIA AND JAPAN……………..p.128 3.1.1. Francis Xavier and the establishment of the Jesuit mission in Japan…………………………………………………………………………….p.131 3.1.2. The growth of the mission…………………………………………….p.135 3.1.3. Alessandro Valignano’s influence and the shaping of the mission…………………………………………………………………………..p.139 3.1.4. Rivalling Christian orders and the persecutions against Christianity……………………………………………………………………..p.148 3.2. THE MISSIONARY SOURCES ON JAPAN…………………………p.153 3.2.1. Jesuit letter-writing in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: the institutionalized Jesuit system for correspondence………………………p.157 3.2.2. Unpublished histories and general accounts: an overview………p.161 3.2.3. Francis Xavier’s reports: laying the foundations of the mission.......................................................................................................p.166 ii 3.2.4. The published Jesuit letter-books: shaping an imaginary of Japan…………………………………………………………………………….p.176 3.2.5. The impact of the reports in Europe: Italian editions in the sixteenth century ………………………………………………………………………….p.196 4. NORTHERN EUROPEAN COMPETITORS TO THE IBERIAN TRADE WITH JAPAN: CIRCULATION OF ENGLISH AND DUTCH SOURCES IN EUROPE UP TO THE ENFORCEMENT OF THE SAKOKU POLICY…………………………………………..p.212 4.1. DUTCH AND ENGLISH COMMERCIAL INTERCOURSE WITH JAPAN…………………………………………………………………………..p.213 4.1.1. The Dutch factory……………………………………………………....p.213 4.1.2. The English factory…………………………………………………….p.221 4.2. DUTCH AND ENGLISH SOURCES………………………………….p.225 4.2.1. The Itinerario by Linschoten…………………...…………………….p.225 4.2.2. Early English and Dutch indirect sources: Willes, Hakluyt, de Bry………………………………………………………………………………..p.231 4.2.3. Early first-hand accounts: Noort and the factory merchants……p.236 4.2.4. Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas his pilgrims……………………p.239 CONCLUSIVE REMARKS…………………………………….……..p.267 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………..P.270 iii INTRODUCTION _________________________________________________ The one hundred year period between the earliest recorded landing of European travellers in Japan, in 1543, and the final expulsion of the Portuguese after the events of the Shimabara rebellion, in 1639, was a most crucial one in the history of the Japanese archipelago. The unifying process, initiated by Oda Nobunaga, continued by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and completed by Tokugawa Ieyasu, didn’t simply restore the integrity of the Japanese State: it pushed Japan, as a political entity, into a whole new stage. The centralized polity of the Tokugawa paved the way to a newfound political and economical assimilation. The establishment of the bakuhan 幕藩 system didn’t, of course, automatically erase regional differences that predated the political disruption brought by the rise of the sengoku daimyō. 1 It, however, contributed to the creation of the conditions – the birth of regional (and even national) markets, reliable transport, urbanization, schooling – for a new, albeit still relative, level of cultural integration within Japan.2 The enforcement, between 1633 and 1639, of what is commonly known as the sakoku 鎖国 policy, 3 was, moreover, one step 1 As observed by Amino Yoshihiko, who underlines, for example, how the diffusion of the kokudaka 石高 system for the distribution of rural territories happened far more slowly and reluctantly in Eastern Japan than in the Western regions of the archipelago. Amino Yoshihiko, Higashi to nishi no kataru Nihon no rekishi (History of Japan narrated from the East and the West), Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1998. 2 Mary Elizabeth Berry, “Was Early Modern Japan Culturally Integrated?”, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 31 No. 3 (Special Issue: “The Eurasian Context of the Early Modern History of Mainland South East Asia, 1400-1800”), 1997, pp. 547-581. 3 And which could maybe more properly defined, as suggested by Hamashita Takeshi, sentakuteki kaikoku, a “selective opening”, obtained through the application of sea 1 towards the definition of stabile borders for the Japanese State. The demarcation was, granted, still more cultural and ethnical than territorial (in the modern sense of the term). However, by “bracketing the Japanese in place within the archipelago”, 4 it laid the foundations for the development, in the long run, of a proto-national identity. The interconnections between such processes of state (and identity) formation and the confrontation with the European natives living, preaching and commercing on the Japanese archipelago have long been a matter of fascination and discussion among scholars. Past historians are known to have attributed a strong weight to the European influence, not only in terms of culture and economy, but also as far as religion and politics are concerned. Emblematic is Charles Ralph Boxer’s statement in the preface of the first edition (1951) of his well-known work, The Christian Century in Japan: “but for the introduction, growth and forcible suppression of militant Christianity in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, it seems probable that Tokugawa would have not retired into its isolationist shell”.5 Most contemporary critics, on the other hand, while not completely disregarding the weight of European cultural influences, have worked to debunk such assumptions, minimizing the consequences of the foreign presence in Japan, in the face of endogenous developments predating the arrival of the Portuguese. Derek Massarella, in particular, has underlined how the very label “Christian century”, which has commonly come to be associated, at least in non-Japanese bans that weren’t completely new to the political tradition of the Greater China Seas area. Hamashita Takeshi, Kindai Chūgoku no kokusaiteki keiki: chōkō bōeki shisutemu to kindai Ajia (Modern China's international opportunity: the tributary trade system and modern Asia). Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppan Kai, 1990, p. 44. 4 David L. Howell, Geographies of identities in nineteenth century Japan, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005, p. 198. 5 Charles Ralph Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan: 1549-1650, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951, p. ix. 2 literature, with this phase of Japanese history, is in itself problematic, as it implies that “Christianity was quite central to the formation of the early modern Japanese polity”, while “in reality, the role of Europeans in early modern Japanese state-building is secondary.”6 Not quite as explored is, however, the other side of the medal: what legacy did the encounter between the Europeans and the Japanese leave for Europe? The opening of the so-called era of the “Great discoveries”, in the aftermath of Da Gama’s pioneering expedition around the Cape of Good Hope (paralleled by Columbus’ voyage to the New World), surely had game-changing consequences for Europe, in more than one respect. Through Portuguese merchants first, and then through the Spanish, the Ducth and the English, European economy entered into direct connection with the huge and prosperous maritime economical systems of the Indian Ocean and of the Greater China Seas areas. The balance of European trade, as a consequence, slowly shifted away from the Mediterranean and toward the oceans. The amount of Asian products flowing to Europe increased sensibly, and Europeans progressively became involved into Asian inter-port trades. At the same time, new political structures were born – starting with the Portuguese Estado da India – specifically created to exert control over the newly discovered maritime trade routes. The treaties of Alcáçovas and of Tordesillas – which sanctioned the Portuguese expansion in the Atlantic Ocean – worked in this sense as fundamental landmarks