Imagining Christian Japan

Using a range of European texts as well as Japanese texts in translation, this monograph argues that European constructions of Japan as a potentially Christian country shaped Western views from the early modern contact period through Japan’s Tokugawa-era isolation until the late nineteenth century.

Charles Boxer’s 1951 work The Christian Century in Japan established a narrative of Catholic missionary success cut short by Tokugawa fears of Spanish invasion and cultural erosion. Works by Liam Matthew Brockey, Johnathan Spencer, R. Po-chia Hsia, and others correct Boxer’s exaggerations, but still focus on the Jesuit order as the paramount example of premodern globalization linking Europe and Asia and end the narrative with the near-eradication of the Japanese Christian community and Japan drastically limiting foreign contact in the 1630s. By extending the chronological scope of the inquiry to include later Tokugawa-era European texts, I discuss global history across traditional periodization and argue for the ongoing impact of premodern views on modern perceptions. The book also integrates the role played by images and material culture in shaping European understandings of Japan.

Introduction
Converting “Cipangu”
"Wonderfully Increasing and Growing"
The Early Persecutions
"The Richest Gems the Orient Ever Sent Into Europe"
Looking Back Over a Closed Country
Missionaries in the Meiji Era
Conclusion

Jennifer L. Welsh is an Associate Professor of History at Lindenwood University-Belleville. Her first book, “The Cult of St. Anne in Medieval and Early Modern Europe,” was published by Routledge in 2017.

• By (author) Jennifer L. Welsh