Japan in the Early Modern World: Religion, Translation, and Transnational Relations [Paperback]

Early modern transnational relations and personal encounters were influenced by interactions between Japan and the regions that had become connected to it through expanding global trade and missionary networks. Translation activities linked to Christian missionary activities, overseas trade, and political upheaval in these places all contributed to shaping these interactions. Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, this volume explores religion, translation, and transnational relations in the context of the colonial and missionary enterprises involving Japan, between 1550 and 1800. It focuses on the early Catholic mission to Japan, discussing both Protestant and local religious reactions to it, and the publications of the Jesuit mission press in Japan. A survey of the subsequent centuries of scholarly involvement with translational materials in Asian languages further suggests that translation had a formative influence on the intellectual world in the Early Modern period.

Contributors.- Conventions.- 1 Introduction: Japan in the Early Modern World  Religion, Translation, and Transnational Relations.- I. Reconsidering Language and Materiality in Missionary Translation.- 2. Revisiting Native Agency: Cultural and Material Translations of Christianity in Early Modern Japan.- 3. From Nanbanjin to Kabukimono: Portraying Iberians in Early Modern Japan.- 4. Translating European Punctuation into Japanese: Investigating the Printing of the Sanctos no gosague? (Acts of the Saints).- 5. To Wish and to Pray in Jesuit Japanese Grammars.- II. Translocational Books and Their Histories.- 6. Translatio of the Sanctos no gosague? (Acts of the Saints, 1591) Published by the Jesuit Mission Press in Japan: An Overlooked Copy in the Biblioth?que Nationale de France.- 7. Bridging Religion, State, and Asian Trade in the Seventeenth CentlC