Full Description
When did the first Latin texts describing Japan emerge? When, how and why did some Japanese people began to actively communicate in the Latin language as early as the 1580s? How did Latin, the language of the ancient Romans and a hallmark of the West (the 'European sign'), change through contact with a region and culture so remote from its home? This monograph addresses these and other questions while looking at European-authored travelogues, missionary reports, plays, a Vergilian epic and even haiku as well as Japanese-authored Latin prose and verse. Transcriptions of several never-before published Latin texts composed by the Japanese from the 1610s to 2024s are appended.
Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction - Setting the Stage
2 Earliest Rumours and Myths: from Paul the Venetian to Horace the Hagiographer
3 Rival Authorities: the Jesuits and Dominicans on Japan
4 The First Japanese Latinists: Rise and Fall of the Jesuit Educational Mission
5 Dying Echo: Mythical Japan in Baroque Catholic Neo-Latin
6 Dutch Monopoly: from Varen to von Siebold
7 Re-openings: Neo-Latin and Japan from the Mid-Nineteenth to the Early Twenty-First Century
8 Conclusion
Appendices
Bibliography
