This book focuses on Luis Frois, a 16th-century Portuguese Jesuit and chronicler, who recorded his impressions of Japanese gardens, cities and building practices, tea-drinking rituals, Japan’s unification efforts, cultural traditions, and the many differences between Europe and Japan in remarkable manuscripts almost lost to time. This research also draws on other Portuguese descriptions from contemporary sources spanning the years 1543 – 1597, later validated by Japanese history and iconography. Importantly, explorer Jorge Alvares recorded his experiences of discovery, prompting St. Francis Xavier to visit Japan in 1549, thus ushering in the “Christian Century” in Japan. During this long period of accord and reciprocal curiosity, the Portuguese wrote in excess of 1500 pages of letters to European Jesuits that detail their impressions of the island nation—not to mention their observations of powerful public figures such as Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Sen no Rikyu. In addition to examining these letters, the authors translated and researched early descriptions of 23 gardens in Kyoto and Nara and 9 important cities—later visited by the authors, sketched, photographed and compared with the imagery painted on 16th-century Japanese screens. However, the data gathered for this project was found mainly within five large volumes of Frois’ História do Japão (2500 pages) and his Treaty on Contradictions—two incomparable anthropological works that were unpublished until the mid-20th century for reasons detailed herein. His volumes continue to be explored for their insightful observations of places, cultural practices, and the formidable historical figures with whom he interacted. Thus, this book examines the world’s first globalization efforts that resulted in profitable commerce, the introduction of Portuguese firearms that changed Japan’s history, scientific advances, religious expansion, and many artistic exchanges that have endured the centuries.

Taking into account the destructive powers of globalization, Making Worlds considers the interconnectedness of the world in the early modern period. This collection examines the interdisciplinary phenomenon of making worlds, with essays from scholars of history, literary studies, theatre and performance, art history, and anthropology. The volume advances questions about the history of globalization by focusing on how the expansion of global transit offered possibilities for interactions that included the testing of local identities through inventive experimentation with new and various forms of culture. Case studies show how the imposition of European economic, religious, political, and military models on other parts of the world unleashed unprecedented forces of invention as institutionalized powers came up against the creativity of peoples, cultural practices, materials, and techniques of making. In doing so, Making Worlds offers an important rethinking of how early globalization inconsistently generated ongoing dynamics of making, unmaking, and remaking worlds.

In the aftermath of the religious crisis triggered by the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church set out to conquer faithful in new territories. The first missionaries to arrive in Japan were the Jesuits who were forced to adopt a different type of evangelization, with a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach. This volume shows that Japan turned out to be a land of experimentation and development of a global Catholicism, as well as an unprecedented laboratory of encounter between political, scientific and religious cultures in the age of the first globalization. It analyzes the different conversion strategies developed by the Jesuit fathers toward various groups, including samurai, Buddhist bonzes and Japanese peasants. A key step was the appropriation of sacred space by the missionaries: first in a violent way with the construction of large crosses and the destruction of temples, pagodas and pagan idols, then through strategies more flexible and accommodating of replacing pre-existing cultural practices. To be attractive, the Jesuit fathers had to compromise with local culture and spirituality, but they were also forced, in some way, to simplify and modify their very way of understanding and living Christianity. This book also reflects on the reasons for the failure of this ambitious Catholic conversion project: the hostility of the Japanese ruling class, the irreducibility of a different culture and spirituality, but also, if not above all, the rise of internal rivalries in Catholicism between Jesuits, Franciscans and Dominicans. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on the history of the Jesuits, Catholic missions and Christianity in Japan.

A COMPANION TO THE GLOBAL RENAISSANCE An innovative collection of original essays providing an expansive picture of globalization across the early modern world, now in its second edition A Companion to the Global Renaissance: Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion, 1500–1700, Second Edition provides readers with a deeper and more nuanced understanding of both macro and micro perspectives on the commercial and cross-cultural interactions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Covering a uniquely broad range of literary and cultural materials, historical contexts, and geographical regions, the Companion’s varied chapters offer interdisciplinary perspectives on the implications of early modern concepts of commerce, material and artistic culture, sexual and cross-racial encounters, conquest and enslavement, social, artistic, and religious cross-pollinations, geographical “discoveries,” and more. Building upon the success of its predecessor, this second edition of A Companion to the Global Renaissance radically extends its scope by moving beyond England and English culture. Newly-commissioned essays investigate intercultural and intra-cultural exchanges, transactions, and encounters involving England, European powers, Eastern kingdoms, Africa, Islamic empires, and the Americas, within cross-disciplinary frameworks. Offering a complex and multifaceted view of early modern globalization, this new edition: Demonstrates the continuing global “turn” in Early Modern Studies through original essays exploring interconnected exchanges, transactions, and encounters Provides significantly expanded coverage of global interactions involving England, European powers such as Portugal, Spain, and The Netherlands, Eastern empires such as Japan, and the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires Includes a Preface and Afterword, as well as a revised and expanded Introduction summarizing the evolving field of Global Early Modern Studies and describing the motifs and methodologies informing the essays within the volume Explores an array of new subjects, including an exceptional woman traveler in Eurasia, the Jesuit presence in Mughal India and sixteenth-century Japan, the influence of Mughal art on an Amsterdam painter-cum-poet, the cultural impact of Eastern trade on plays and entertainments in early modern London, Safavid cultural disseminations, English and Portuguese slaving practices, the global contexts of English pattern poetry, and global lyric transmissions across cultures A wide-ranging account of the global expansions and interactions of the period, A Companion to the Global Renaissance: Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion, 1500–1700, Second Edition remains essential reading for early modern scholars and students ranging from undergraduate and graduate students to more advanced scholars and specialists in the field.

This rich and enjoyable book by the acclaimed author of Japan Story explores the many ways in which Asia has influenced Europe and North America over centuries of tangled, dynamic encounters From the time of the ancient Greeks onwards the West's relationship with Asia consisted for the most part of outrageous tales of strange beasts and monsters, of silk and spices shipped over vast distances and an uneasy sense of unknowable empires fantastically far away. By the twentieth century much of Asia might have come under Western rule after centuries of warfare, but its intellectual, artistic and spiritual influence was fighting back. The Light of Asia is a wonderfully varied and entertaining history of the many ways in which Asia has shaped European and North American culture over centuries of tangled, dynamic encounters, and the central importance of this vexed, often confused relationship. From Marco Polo onwards Asia has been both a source of genuine fascination and equally genuine failures of comprehension. China, India and Japan were all acknowledged to be both great civilizations and in crude ways seen as superseded by the West. From Chicago to Calcutta, and from antiquity to the new millennium, this is a rich, involving story of misunderstandings and sincere connection, of inspiration and falsehood, of geniuses, adventurers and con-men. Christopher Harding's captivating gallery of people and places celebrates Asia's impact on the West in all its variety.

In 1585, Luis Frois, a 53 year old Jesuit who spent all of his adult life in Japan listed 611(!) ways Europeans and Japanese were contrary (completely opposite) to one another. Robin D. Gill, a 53 year old writer who spent most of his adulthood in Japan, translates these topsy-turvy claims - we sniff the top of our melons to see if they are ripe / they sniff the bottom of theirs (10% of the book), examines their validity (20% of the book), and plays with them (70% of the book). Readers with the intellectual horsepower to enjoy ideas will be grateful for pages discussing things like the significance of black and white clothing or large eyes vs. small ones, while others with a ken to collect quirky facts will be delighted to find, say, that the women in Kyoto were known to urinate standing up, or Japanese horses had their stale gathered by long-handled ladles, etc., and serious students of history and comparative culture will gain a better understanding of the nature of radical difference (exotic, by definition) and its relationship with the farsighted policy of accommodation pioneered by Valignano in the Far East.

Considering Castles and Tenshu -- Modern Castles on the Margins -- Overview: "from Feudalism to the Edge of Space" -- From Feudalism to Empire -- Castles and the Transition to the Imperial State -- Castles in the Global Early Modern World -- Castles and the Fall of the Tokugawa -- Useless Reminders of the Feudal Past -- Remilitarizing Castles in the Meiji Period -- Considering Heritage in Early Meiji -- Castles and the Imperial House -- The Discovery of Castles, 1877-1912 -- Making Space Public -- Civilian Castles and Daimyo Buyback -- Castles as Sites and Subjects of Exhibitions -- Civil Society and the Organized Preservation of Castles -- Castles, Civil Society, and the Paradoxes of "Taisho Militarism" -- Building an Urban Military -- Castles and Military Hard Power -- Castles as Military Soft Power -- Challenging the Military -- The military and Public in Osaka -- Castles in War and Peace: Celebrating Modernity, Empire, and War -- The Early Development of Castle Studies -- The Arrival of Castle Studies in Wartime -- Castles for town and country -- Castles for the empire -- From feudalism to the edge of space -- Castles in war and peace II: Kokura, Kanazawa, and the Rehabilitation of the -- Nation -- Desolate gravesites of fallen empire: what became of castles -- The imperial castle and the transformation of the center -- Kanazawa castle and the ideals of progressive education -- Losing our traditions: lamenting the fate of japanese heritage -- Kokura castle and the politics of japanese identity -- "Fukko": hiroshima castle rises from the ashes -- Hiroshima castle: from castle road to macarthur boulevard and back -- Prelude to the castle: rebuilding hiroshima gokoku shrine -- Reconstructions: celebrations of recovery in hiroshima -- Between modernity and tradition at the periphery and the world stage -- The weight of Meiji: the imperial general headquarters in hiroshima and the -- Meiji centenary -- Escape from the center: castles and the search for local identity -- Elephants and castles: odawara and the shadow of tokyo -- Victims of history I: Aizu-wakamatsu and the revival of grievances -- Victims of history II: Shimabara castle and the Enshrinement of loss -- Southern Barbarians at the gates: Kokura castle's struggle with authenticity -- Japan's new castle builders: recapturing tradition and culture -- Rebuilding the Meijo: (re)building campaigns in Kumamoto and Nagoya -- No business like castle business: castle architects and construction companies -- Symbols of the people? conflict and accommodation in Kumamoto and Nagoya -- Conclusions.