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II. Curiosité et géographie en Orient et en Occident, XVIe – XVIIIe siècles‎

Geographical Curiosities and Transformative Exchange in the Nanban Century (c. 1549-c. 1647)

Angelo Cattaneo

Résumés

Cette étude s’intéresse aux diverses formes de formation et de transformation des savoirs à l’époque de la présence jésuite en Asie. Au-delà des affirmations concernant une prétendue supériorité européenne en matière de connaissances géographiques, les concepts d’« Europe », d’« Inde », de « Chine », de « Japon », ainsi que leurs localisations, étaient loin d’être évidents à la fin du XVIe siècle et encore au début du XVIIe siècle pour les élites et les érudits tant européens que chinois et japonais : ces derniers tentèrent d’associer ces termes à des notions géographiques et culturelles intelligibles, dans le contexte des savoirs accumulés localement, en Europe et en Asie, au cours des siècles. Ces concepts furent ensuite disséminés et intégrés, principalement mais pas exclusivement, dans des contextes missionnaires, en particulier jésuites.
Cet article interroge les diverses formes d’actes de localisation réciproque culturelle de ce type, au moment où les premiers acteurs européens et japonais étaient en contact ; il tente également de saisir les différentes stratégies et les formes de curiosité et de communication géographiques qui se développèrent au Japon et en Chine entre 1550 et 1650. L’analyse simultanée des formes de construction culturelle de l’espace dans le cadre des missions jésuites en Asie et de la cartographie japonaise nanban sur paravents démontre l’inadéquation des modèles euro-centristes et linéaires de circulation des savoirs, des individus et des idées pour expliquer la complexité des espaces d’échanges et de circulation des savoirs dans l’Asie des XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Ces phénomènes se développèrent selon un vaste système de routes maritimes et terrestres qui reliaient l’Europe à d’autres royaumes et cités d’Asie. Bien plus qu’un modèle pendulaire linéaire fondé sur une circulation Ouest-Est, notre analyse met en relief l’existence d’un système radial de vecteurs extrêmement complexes au sein d’un espace de communications intra-asiatiques, qui transitait systématiquement par Macao. Cette ville portuaire accueillait des communautés marchandes portugaises, malaisiennes, chinoises et japonaises, ainsi que des missionnaires européens, et jouait un rôle d’épicentre rayonnant sur un vaste territoire qui allait de Goa à Nagasaki et Manille. Bien que l’Europe fût représentée dans ce tableau d’ensemble, elle n’y occupait qu’une place réduite.

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Notes de la rédaction

This text presents research developed for the project Interactions between Rivals: The Christian Mission and Buddhist Sects in Japan (c. 1549-c. 1647), financed by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (PTDC/HIS-HIS/118404/2010) as well as in the framework of the author’s current individual research project Spaces that Turned Global. The European Discovery of Asian Religions and Languages beyond the Space of the Bible (1500-1750) developed as Investigador FCT (Researcher FCT). It also benefited from the support of a Japan Foundation Fellowship.

Texte intégral

‘Where is there a picture of Japan?’

  • 1 For a multifaceted study on Valignano see Adolfo Tamburello, Antoni J. Üçerler, Marisa Di Russo (ed (...)

1In 1582, at the end of his first mission to Japan, Alessandro Valignano S. J. (1539-1606),1 the visitor or general inspector of all Jesuit missions in Asia – from Ethiopia to Japan – sent four Japanese boys to visit the Pope and several Catholic courts in Europe. Two of the boys, Itō Mancio (1570-1612) and Chijiwa Seizaemon Miguel (1569?-1633) represented Ōtomo Sōrin (1530-1587, baptized in 1578), Ōmura Sumitada (1532-1587, baptized in 1563), and Arima Harunobu (1567-1612, baptized in 1579), three important Christian daimyō of Kyūshū, in southern Japan.

  • 2 Very little is known about these Japanese Brothers, whom we know only by their Portuguese Christian (...)
  • 3 Still valid the path-breaking book by Charles Ralph Boxer, The Great Ship from Amacon. Annals of Ma (...)

2The four boys, accompanied for the whole journey by a tutor and interpreter, the Jesuit Diego de Mesquita (1553-1614), two Japanese Jesuit Brothers, Jorge de Loyola (1562-1589) and Constantino Dourado (1567?-1620),2 and as far as Goa, also by Valignano, left Nagasaki on 20 February 1582. After sailing via Macao, Melaka (Malaca, in what is present-day Malaysia), and Goa, they disembarked in Lisbon on 11 August 1584 and travelled through Portugal, Spain and Italy finally to reach Rome, the highpoint of their journey, in March 1585. During the twenty-one months spent in Europe, Chijiwa Miguel, Nakaura Julião, Hara Martinho, and Itō Mansho were brought to visit several Catholic courts, in Lisbon, Vila Viçosa, Madrid, Florence, Ferrara, Milan, Venice among others, and were even received by Philip II, Pope Gregory XIII and his successor Sixtus V. After returning to Lisbon, on 13 April 1586 they began the long voyage back to Japan. Valignano was in Macao when the four boys and Diego de Mesquita disembarked in 1588 and together they all waited nearly two years for the ship that linked Macao and Nagasaki – the so called nau do trato or kurofune (black ship) in Portuguese and Japanese respectively.3

  • 4 Rome, ARSI, Iap.-Sin.2, fols 35r-39v: [Alessandro Valignano], Regimento que se ha de guardar nos se (...)

3While in Lisbon, following Valignano’s written instructions, Diego de Mesquita had acquired the full equipment to organize and run a printing press with both Latin and Japanese movable types and brought it to Macao and then to Kyūshū. While in Portugal, Jorge de Loyola and Constantino Dourado learned the technique for casting and using matrices with metal type Japanese syllabary, the katakana. The success of the Jesuit press in the Jesuit seminary in Rachol, near Goa, led Valignano to believe that the introduction of Latin and Japanese moveable-type printing could be essential to the effective development of the Jesuit missionary enterprise in Japan, making it possible to produce textbooks for the newly established Jesuit seminaries and helping to create and disseminate a new Japanese Christian literature.4

  • 5 De Missione Legatorum Iaponensium ad Romanam curiam, rebusque in Europa, ac toto itinere animadvers (...)
  • 6 An English translation of the Colloquium XXXIII of the De missione was published under the title ‘A (...)
  • 7 Dictionarium Latino Lusitanicum, ac Iaponicum, ex Ambrosii Calepini volumine depromptum, Amakusa, C (...)

4During their forced stay in Macao, having at his disposal the press, Valignano resolved to prepare a detailed account of the boys’ long journey to Europe in the form of a fictional dialogue, originally to be published in both Latin and Japanese. According to Valignano a publication that celebrated the Japanese legates’ experiences could be a strategic tool for advancing the Jesuit mission in Japan from two main interrelated perspectives: on the one hand, there was the wish to impress the Japanese readers with the splendor of Christian Europe to oppose what Valignano believed were the negative impressions left by Portuguese merchants in Japan; on the other hand, once received in Europe, the work could contribute to raise awareness amongst the clerical and secular European elites about the importance of investing resources in the Japanese mission, a landmark in the early modern global process of evangelization carried out by the Society of Jesus. Composed in Spanish by Valignano in the form of a continuous story, the work was transformed into a dialogue and translated into Latin by Duarte de Sande S. J. (1531-1600) under the title De missione legatorum Iaponensium ad Romanam curiam, rebusque in Europa, ac toto itinere animadversis dialogus ex ephemeride ipsorum Legatorum collectus (A dialogue concerning the sending of the Japanese legates to the Roman Curia, on the things of Europe and the whole itinerary they observed, composed from the notes of the Legates) and was published in Macao by the Jesuit press between 1589 and 1590 under the direct supervision of Valignano.5 The De missione was also echoed in numerous European publications.6 In contrast to Valignano’s initial project, the De missione was not translated into Japanese: the Japanese Brother Jorge de Loyola, in charge of the translation, suddenly died in Macao in 1589; in later years, the preparation of a monumental and archetypal Latin-Portuguese-Japanese dictionary, published in Amakusa by the Jesuit press in 1595, almost absorbed all available resources.7

  • 8 Ronnie Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540-1770, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005 (...)

5In the context of this essay it is relevant to highlight that at the very time in which the unity of Christian Europe had collapsed under the pressure and violence of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations8 – an aspect carefully kept hidden to the four legati – Valignano structured the De missione around the trope that an (alleged) unified, peaceful, and prosperous (Catholic) Europe could disclose the whole world to all civilizations, through its refined culture and the composite agency of its scholars, merchants, missionaries, cartographers, and publishers. Trade and evangelization provided the impulse and were the pillars for such enterprise. The De missione created a literary imago mundi through which a fully fictional orbis terrarum was displayed to the Japanese. At the same time, through the eyes of the Japanese and by an inevitable dialectic process of self-identification through the internal and external comparison of the self with the other, the same orbis terrarum was displayed to Catholic Europeans themselves.

6It is worth reporting the initial parts of the first and of the last of the thirty-four colloquia. Leo, introduced in the De missione as ‘the brother of the king of Arima,’ a fictional character, together with his fellow Linus, plays the role of the young Japanese who has never been out of Japan. Right at the beginning of the first colloquium Leo asks Miguel (Chijiwa), the main speaker of the dialogue:

Leo: [...] to help us understand it [Europe], could you please explain what region is meant by the name Europe?

Miguel: This is a very good question [...] Let me put before you briefly the principal parts of the world: the world is divided, according to the most learned of scientists, into five principal parts, namely Europe, Africa, Asia, America, and lastly, that land which learned writers call terra incognita. [...]

  • 9 De missione, op. cit., p. 46−47. For the original version in Latin: De missione (1590), p. 4-5.

Miguel: [...] for the moment, then, it is enough to have spoken of these five parts of the world, though I shall have something to say later on about the form, so to speak, of the world as a whole.9

7In the final colloquium, entitled ‘A summary description of the whole world, and a statement as to which is its principal and noblest part,’ Leo reminds Miguel to speak more about the ‘world as a whole’:

Leo: Up till now, Miguel, you have told us, in the colloquia so far, about the different parts of the world. Today, however, we have come together to hear you speak about the world as a whole […] Now that with your arrival here all the difficulties of your journey are at an end, it remains for you to put before our eyes the picture of the whole of the world [orbis terrarum] which we were promised in the first colloquium, and to tell us about the difference between its principal parts.

Miguel: That is why I had the Theatrum orbis [Ortelius’ Theatrum orbis terrarum] brought. You will find it a great pleasure to study the various maps in it. First of all, then, take a look at this picture, which contains a representation of the whole of the world […].

  • 10 Ibid., p. 440. For the original version in Latin: De missione (1590), p. 400-402.

Linus: I am delighted to see this picture of the world, but tell me, where is there a picture of Japan?10

8Beyond the official goals that Valignano assigned to the De missione and his indulgence in the implicit assertion of the European predestination and superiority in disclosing the orbis terrarum to the Japanese, the meaning of concepts such as ‘Europe’, ‘India’, ‘China’, ‘Japan’ and their whereabouts was by no means obvious for European, Chinese and Japanese cultural elites and scholars. In the 16th and 17th centuries they were all trying to relate these terms to intelligible geographic concepts, using knowledge that had been accumulated locally over many centuries and mutually disseminated and integrated mainly, but not exclusively, in the contexts of the missions, in particular those of the Jesuits. In the next paragraphs we will discuss the way in which this mutual act of emplacement developed at the time of the first encounter between European and Japanese agents, trying to understand the different strategies, forms of curiosity, and communication that were implicit in Linus’ question: ‘where is there a picture of Japan?’

9This essay focuses on various forms of information and communication promoted within the space of the Portuguese expansion in Asia and will show that linear Eurocentric models of circulation of knowledge, people, and ideas – such as West-East relationships – are ill-adapted to articulate the complexities of the agencies, and also the places of exchange and transformation of material culture, forms, and ideas in the long and multifaceted system of maritime and terrestrial routes that linked Europe to several kingdoms and cities in Asia. Particular attention will be paid to local contexts of interaction in China and Japan, avoiding the pitfalls of the notion of Westernization and challenging the old idea of Europe’s ‘discovery of the world’ as well as traditional definitions of the role of European cultural brokerage as an agent of innovation tout-court.

Ouverture: from Zipangu to Iapam

  • 11Zipangu is an island in the eastern ocean, situated about fifteen hundred miles from the mainland, (...)
  • 12 The most spectacular and complete of these maps is the so-called Atlas Catalan, held in the Bibliot (...)
  • 13 Pierre d'Ailly (1350–ca.1420) Ymago mundi, 3 vols, edited by Edmond Buron, Paris, Maisonneuve frère (...)
  • 14 See the exhaustive essays in Cristoforo Colombo e l’apertura degli spazi, 2 vols., Rome, Istituto p (...)

10Around 1300 Marco Polo alerted Christian Europe about the existence of Zipangu, a distant, idolatrous, unconquerable kingdom rich in gold, pearls and precious stones situated to the east of Cathay.11 For over 150 years, the description by the Venetian traveller remained submerged in the mare magnum of Marco Polo’s book. From the first decades of the 14th century, with the multiple versions of the Milione spreading throughout Christendom, some of Marco Polo’s information on Asia made its way into medieval cartography, at first in the form of a few toponyms (the most important being “Cathay”), as in the case of the mappae mundi by Pietro Visconte (1320) and, towards the end of the century, with a more systematic cartographic and visual representation that embraced the entire silk road, especially in Catalan cartography.12 Zipangu however was not represented. It was only from the mid-15th century that Zipangu began to resurface. On the basis of Marco Polo, Fra Mauro (Venice, c. 1450), Henricus Martellus Germanus (Florence, c. 1490), Martin Behaim (Nuremberg, 1492), Cristoforo Colombo (1492), among others, attempted to place Zipangu in the European imago mundi of the 15th century. Following Marco Polo to the letter, Fra Mauro placed Cimpagu on the eastern margin of the orbis terrarum; just a couple of decades later, on the basis of Pierre d’Ailly’s multifaced Ymago mundi (c. 1415, printed in 148013) Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, Columbus, Henricus Martellus Germanus and Martin Behaim, moved Marco Polo’s remote island to the centre of the cosmographic debate. Zipangu became – at least until the intuition of the mundus novus by Amerigo Vespucci – one of the cardinal points of world cartography and cosmography in the late 15th century when the idea developed that it would be possible to reach the East by sailing west (buscar el levante por el poniente) and thus Zipangu could be strategically placed mid-way in the alleged western route to arrive at the Indies.14

  • 15 Gerard R. Tibbetts, Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean before the Coming of the Portuguese. Being (...)
  • 16 ‘A Ilha de Jampom segundo todos os chijs dizem que he mõor que a dos lequíos & o Rey mais poderoso (...)

11Only twenty years after the fleet commanded by Vasco da Gama and guided by the Muslim pilot and astronomer Ahmad Ibn Mājid of Yemeni origins reached Calicut on the southwest coast of India in 1498,15 between 1515−1520 a new geography of the eastern maritime spaces of the Indian Ocean – new with respect to those inherited from Antiquity and Medieval Christian and Muslim travelers like Marco Polo, Niccolò dei Conti, and Ibn Battuta – came into being on the basis of information the Portuguese acquired directly in Asia from local agents. In this context, the Portuguese apothecary Tomé Pires (c. 1465-c. 1540), who was responsible for the selection and acquisition of spices for the ships of the Carreira da Índia, composed a work, Suma Oriental, a summary of the things of the Orient in which was figured for the first time Ilha Jampom (or its equivalents Japon, Iapam). Pires composed the Suma in Melaka, while awaiting a ship traveling to China with the goal of reaching Beijing and the court of the Emperor in what turned out to be an unsuccessful and dramatic diplomatic mission. In one brief reference, Pires described how the Ilha de Jampom was situated a few days’ sail from the islands of Ryūkyū (Lequíos), a chain of islands that stretch northwest from Taiwan to Kyūshū, nevertheless some distance from China. As the Japanese were not accustomed to maritime navigation – Pires wrote – the inhabitants of the Lequíos managed a lucrative commerce in which Japanese gold and copper were exchanged for precious Chinese textiles.16 Pires’ Jampom was distinct from Marco Polo’s Zipangu and its medieval literary and cartographic tradition and marks the first appearance of Japan within an imago mundi described by a European.

  • 17 On the information given to Xavier by Captain Jorge Alvarez: Juan Ruiz-de-Medina S.J. (ed.), Docume (...)
  • 18 The historiography is becoming very vast. See at least: Monumenta historica Japoniae editionem crit (...)

12Some twenty years after Pires gathered this initial fragmentary still realistic information on Japan in Melaka, the shipwreck around 1542-1543 of a Chinese junk on the island of Tanegashima, south of Kyūshū, led the first Portuguese merchants to land on the Japanese soil. Among them, there was the captain Jorge Alvarez who, after returning to Melaka, informed the Spanish Jesuit Francisco Xavier (1505-1552) – one the founders of the Society of Jesus and among the first and most active Jesuit missionaries in the Indian Ocean – of the existence of the rich Japanese kingdom.17 Just a few years later, in the summer of 1549, Xavier landed another Chinese junk at Kagoshima, a port city at the extreme south-west of Kyūshū. This event marked the beginning of the Jesuit mission in Japan, which within a few decades achieved – together with the one to India – the highest number of baptisms in Asia.18

  • 19 Adriana Boscaro, ‘L’Altro visto attraverso le immagini’, in Tanaka Kuniko (ed.), Geografia e cosmog (...)

13As Adriana Boscaro eloquently writes: ‘From that moment the foreigners (whether Portuguese, Spanish or Italian) were characterized as nanbanjin, i.e. as barbarous (ban) people (jin) from the south (nan), in accordance with the Chinese practice of regarding all foreigners as “barbarians;” they were southerners in as much as their vessels came from the south, that is from the Kyūshū. The term nanban developed a wider application: nanban bijutsu (nanban art), nanban bunka (nanban culture), nanban bungaku (nanban literature), nanban bōeki (nanban commerce).’19

  • 20 The Beginning of Heaven and Earth. The Sacred Book of Japan’s Hidden Christians, translated and ann (...)

14The nanban century lasted until around 1650. Its end came via a gradual but ever increasing series of restrictions: the expulsion of the Jesuits (1614), the first Sakoku edict which severely limited Japanese commerce and overseas navigation and prohibited the return of the Japanese who had lived abroad (1633), the expulsion of the Portuguese (1639), and the unsuccessful Portuguese attempts at diplomatic reconciliation (1647), ended in the breakdown of all contacts and interaction, so that there was no longer any official Catholic European presence on Japanese soil. Catholicism was definitively banned from Japan and survived only as a hidden sect, that of the so-called Kakure Kirishitan, or ‘Hidden Christians.’20 The Dutch, whom the Japanese called kōmōjin, ‘red-haired men,’ were instead allowed from 1641 to stay on the artificial island of Dejima, at Nagasaki, for purely commercial purposes.

  • 21 Grace Vlam, Western-Style Secular Painting in Momoyama Japan, 2 vols. PhD Dissertation, Ann Arbor, (...)

15Despite these abrupt and violent events that put an end to a very intricate encounter, one relevant consequence of the presence of the nanbanjin and of the complex interactions that developed in the context of the encounter with the Japanese political, religious, and military elites, was a new mise en carte of Japan and Europe in both European representations – which integrated knowledge developed within the rich Japanese cartographic tradition – and in Japanese ones, in parallel with the process of Japanese political unification brought about by Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598) and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616). This process of mutual emplacement found a relevant catalyst in the itinerant schola pictorum (school of the painters), also known as ‘The Academy of St. Luke,’ founded to teach Western painting on the initiative of Alessandro Valignano. The schola was founded in 1583 by the Jesuit painter Giovanni Niccolo (1560-1626) and operated in various cities and islands, especially in Kyūshū, until 1614, the year the Society was expelled from Japan, mostly with Japanese students.21

Breaking the Eurocentric Paradigm

  • 22 Cortesão and Teixeira da Mota identified seven types of representations: first, the ‘Cipango type’ (...)
  • 23 Erik Wilhelm Dahlgren, Les débuts de la cartographie du Japon, Upsal, K. W. Appelberg, 1911.

16In 1960 Armando Cortesão and Avelino Teixeira da Mota traced a brief diachronic, ‘evolutionist,’ and quite influential history of the European cartographic representations of Japan, from Martin Behaim, a merchant from Nuremberg who, in circa 1492 placed Marco Polo’s Zipangu on a globe for the first time, to the maps drawn by the Portuguese cartographer João Teixeira Albernaz I in 1649, with accurate longitude and latitude measurements.22 The study of Cortesão and Teixeira, based on a previous classificatory exercise by E. W. Dahlgren,23 marked an advance in historiography. Yet, while creating the illusion of an encyclopedic system, their way of ordering maps of Japan according to the cartographic shape of an archipelago, mostly focusing on Portuguese maps, is ill adapted both to the richness of the documentary corpus and also to the complexities of the historical process involved in the mutual mise en carte of Japan and Europe during the nanban century.

  • 24 Walter Lutz (ed.), Japan. A Cartographic Vision: European Printed Maps from the Early 16th to the 1 (...)
  • 25 Alfredo Pinheiro Marques, A cartografia portuguesa do Japão (seculos XVI-XVII), Lisbon, Imprensa Na (...)

17More recently, several research projects have been focusing on specific typologies of the early modern cartography of Japan, such as printed European maps,24 rather than Japanese ones or Portuguese manuscript cartography,25 studying their evolution, from the earliest documents to more recent manifestations. All these approaches convey the illusion of precision and orderliness – which in part explains why they have been quite fashionable over the past years – however, their methodological approach, based on the isolation of specific typologies of maps and mapping, imposes artificial linearity – usually the Eurocentric trope of the ‘European discovery of the world’ – which fail to take into account the multiplicity, exchange, brokerage, mediation, and interdependence of the principal agents, processes and practices involved in the mutual emplacement of Japan and Europe in both European and Japanese maps that resulted from the complex encounters between European and Japanese agents during the nanban century.

18In contrast to these approaches, the synoptic analysis of both European and Japanese literary as well as cartographic sources highlights three main interconnected and interdependent cartographic genres through which the emplacement of Japan in the European imago mundi and, vice versa, the incorporation of the European imago mundi into Japanese cosmography, developed between 1550 and 1650.

19First, Portuguese mapmakers and pilots, in collaboration with Asiatic merchants and pilots as well as the first Jesuits who reached Japan from 1549 on, produced manuscript cartography. Sent to Lisbon or Seville, these maps and literary accounts, in the forms of treatises or letters, were often re-elaborated and circulated in manuscript form in many European courts. Eventually, a few of them were also printed in northern Europe, especially in Antwerp, Cologne and Amsterdam, but also in Venice. Second, there is Jesuit cartography produced in the context of the Japanese mission, often on the basis of Japanese maps and forms of mapping; sent to Europe, it was copied, re-elaborated and printed mainly in Italy, especially in Rome, Florence and Naples. Lastly, there is Japanese manuscript cartography – of Japan as well as of the world – on folding screens (nanban byōbu), which re-elaborated Portuguese and Dutch cartography, as well as printed cartography produced in China by Matteo Ricci S. J. in collaboration with several Chinese literati and engravers. Developed originally in the context of the schola pictorum organized by Giovanni Niccolo S. J., nanban cartography on folding screens continued to be produced after the expulsion of the Jesuits from Japan in 1614, giving rise to renovated, printed cartography of the unified Japan in the form of woodcuts. It is important to highlight that these three genres developed interdependently in the nanban period. In the context of this essay, we focus on the latter two genres, drawing attention to some characteristic features and to their interdependence.

The Jesuits and the Construction of a Catholic Geography of Japan

20The Portuguese who lived in port cities in the Indian Ocean basin were mostly, if not exclusively, interested in trade. Those who settled on the eastern margins of the China Sea, beyond Melaka, were no exceptions. In addition to a plethora of exotic merchandise (Indian fabrics, porcelain, carpets, African and Indian animals, European-style pieces of furniture, as shown on the screens known as nanban byōbu), the Portuguese nau do trato which made the annual voyage from Macao to Nagasaki, transported Chinese silk bought in the fairs of Canton, in exchange for Japanese silver and copper, in turn re-sold in China. By this means, by the mid-16th century the Portuguese had achieved a dominant position in the China Sea trade, thereby justifying a stable presence in the port city of Macao in 1557, strategically located very close to Canton, in the Pearl River Delta. This commercial activity necessitated only a very limited knowledge of Chinese and Japanese territories –restricted to a few coastal areas and islands around Canton, in China, and the Kyūshū island, in Japan – as well as Chinese and Japanese culture. Contacts were established through the employment of poorly educated Chinese, Japanese and Malayan intermediaries. What spoke most clearly was the universal language of money and the exchange of capital.

  • 26 Alessandro Valignano S. J., Il cerimoniale per i missionari del Giappone: Advertimentos e avisos a (...)
  • 27 Antoni Üçerler, ‘Valignano come storico della missione: la sua ultima parola nel Principio y progre (...)
  • 28 Claudio Acquaviva (1543-1615), General of the Society of Jesus, brilliantly summarized Valignano’s (...)

21However, the requirements of the Jesuits, in the context of their missions throughout Asia, were very different. There is no doubt that the presence of the Society of Jesus promoted a deeper understanding of the Japanese territory, the prerequisite for, but also the consequence of, an increased interest in Japan as a civilization, with the goal of making evangelization possible. Over the course of about four decades, Cosme de Torres (c. 1510-1570), Juan Fernandez (1526-1576), Balthasar Gago (d. 1583), Gaspar Vilela (1525-1572), Luís Fróis (1532-1597), Pedro Gomez (1535-1600), Organtino Gnecchi-Soldo (1530-1609), Alessandro Valignano (1539-1606), and João Rodrigues (1561-1633) – to mention only the most active Jesuits involved in the missions in Japan – through the crucial brokerage of Kyōzen Paulo (d. 1557), Yohōken Paulo (1509?-1596) and his son, (Tōin) Vincente, among the first Japanese to have entered the Society of Jesus, as well as Sebastião Kimura (1563-1622) and Luís Niabara (1566-1618), the first Japanese to be ordained to the priesthood, in Nagasaki in 1601, carried out the complex process of recognizing Japan as one of the most advanced and developed civilizations in the world, studying its geography, language, systems of beliefs and religions, etiquette, customs and ceremonies (catangues, as Valignano called them, from the Japanese term katagi).26 Valignano – who did not dissimulate his ambition to follow in the steps of St. Paul, who had evangelized the Greeks and the Romans27 – thought that if Christianity was to be truly acculturated in Japan – as a religion that would be run by the Japanese and for Japanese – it was necessary to acclimate oneself to Japanese culture.28

  • 29 Cartas qve os padres e irmãos da Companhia de Iesus escreverão dos Reynos de Iapão & China aos da m (...)
  • 30 Urs App highlights and gives several examples of the hazards of cultural translation in the form of (...)

22Acclimating oneself – according to Valignano – implies a form of profound empathy with those who belonged to another civilization (quelle genti), but not so much in order to grasp otherness and respect the other’s identity (as some historians, not always in good faith, continue to repeat with hagiographic and anachronistic rhetoric), but to cause the ‘we’ that is concealed in the Other to emerge. However, in order to accommodate oneself and ‘come out with our (faith)’ – uscir poi con la nostra (fede) – it was necessary to understand the other deeply. This meant studying the language, the religions, the customs, the rituals, and the ceremonies di quelle genti, ‘of those people’. Between about 1555 and 1614, the annual letters from Japan,29 the pantagruelic histories of Japan and of the missions (the História do Japão and the Tratado [das] algumas contradições e diferenças de costumes entre a gente de Europa e esta província de Japão by Fróis, the Advertimentos e avisos acerca dos costumes e catangues de Japão and El sumario de las cosas de Japón by Valignano, the História da Igreja do Japão by Rodrigues, just to mention a few of them) as well as at least two other fundamental works by Rodrigues, the Arte da Lingoa de Japam, published in Nagasaki in 1604, and the Arte breve da lingoa Iapoa, published in Macao in 1620, that codified grammar, syntax, pronunciation and teaching of the Japanese language, reveal in all their complexity the effort to listen, observe, understand, as well as the great misunderstandings that could arise.30

23These texts also speak to a progressive understanding of Japan’s territory, of its sixty-six provinces, locating the territories of the daimyō, the territorial lords in pre-modern Japan. In tracing and promoting the history of the missions, justifying the criteria adopted, answering the criticisms of the Franciscans, the Jesuit texts construct a complex cultural geography of Japanese civilization, making extensive use of Japanese intermediaries and sources. The understanding of the geography of Japan represented a foundational knowledge, relevant, but not confined, to the territorial organization of the missions.

  • 31 Japan. A Cartographic Vision, pls. 29, 30, 31, respectively.

24For the purposes of this essay, let us briefly consider a manuscript map of Japan, written in Portuguese, a precious unicum drawn around 1580-1585, derived from, and adapting, Japanese cartography, now in the State Archive in Florence, and a series of printed maps derived either directly or indirectly from those produced by the Portuguese Inácio Moreira in Japan between 1590 and 1598, from the one printed in Rome by Christophorus Blancus in 1617, to the later ones by Bernardino Ginnaro S. J., António Cardim S. J., and Sir Robert Dudley.31 They all provide a different sense of geographical curiosity that converged on Japan through the Jesuit agency. (See Plate 1)

Plate 1. Iapam, gyōki map of Japan, oriented to the south, pen and ink on Italian paper, legend and toponyms in Portuguese, 27.6×60 cm, c. 1585.

Plate 1. Iapam, gyōki map of Japan, oriented to the south, pen and ink on Italian paper, legend and toponyms in Portuguese, 27.6×60 cm, c. 1585.

Florence, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Miscellanea Medicea 97 ins. 91, ff. 2−4.

© Archivio di Stato di Firenze.

  • 32 Florence, Archivio di Stato, Misc. Med. 97, ins. 88, Relazione anonima sul commercio portoghese in (...)
  • 33 Florence, Archivio di Stato, Misc. Med. 97, ins. 91,1, Corografia del Giappone, ff. 1-4, manuscript (...)
  • 34 This analysis should finally contradict the hypothesis advanced by several historians that the map (...)

25The map drawn in pen and ink on paper, was discovered in 1931 in an archive file which also contained a manuscript account of Portuguese trade in Asia and a copy of the ‘Privileges granted to the Japanese ambassadors in Rome’.32 The map is accompanied by an insert in which an anonymous European copyist transcribed some of the toponyms and other information given in the map.33 A material analysis of this map reveals that the paper is undoubtedly European: chain lines (4.9 cm apart), laid lines and the watermark of a goose show that it cannot be Japanese or Chinese paper. Comparison with the watermarks classified by Briquet indicates a central Italian provenance, in the late 16th or early 17th centuries, likely to be Lucchese, Florentine or Roman paper. In the light of this analysis, it is safe to assume that the map was copied in Pisa or Florence from a lost prototype drawn in Japan in the context of the Jesuit mission, and later brought to Europe on the occasion of the missio legatorum japonensium organized by Alessandro Valignano.34 As already mentioned, in February 1585, on their way to Rome, the four Japanese boys, accompanied by their Jesuit tutors, were received in Pisa by Granduke of Tuscany, Francesco I. It was probably on this occasion that the map held today in the State Archive of Florence was copied from another map, brought by the Jesuits that accompanied the legates.

  • 35 Unno, art. cit., p. 367-368.
  • 36 Kyoto, Ninna-ji, [Map of Japan of the gyōki type], oriented to the south, pen and ink on Japanese p (...)

26This representation of Japan with a legend and toponyms in Portuguese shows Japan in the manner of the so-called gyōki maps, a series of maps of Japan documented from 805, at the end of the Nara period, named after a Buddhist priest said to have invented this cartographic genre, to help with the celebration of the Tsuina rites held at the Imperial Court on the last day of the lunar year, to drive evil spirits out of the country.35 The earliest surviving gyōki maps, such as the one held at the Ninna-ji in Kyoto, of 1306, date from the late 13th or early 14th century and were copied and reproduced (albeit with modifications) until the 19th century.36 Oriented to the south, they show with characteristic rounded forms the sixty-six provinces of Japan and their respective frontiers (without Hokkaidō).

27The map of Japan in the Florentine State Archive, as well as being the earliest derived from a Japanese model to reach Europe – there is a copy at the Escorial, smaller in size and with a more rudimentary graphic style – shows in remarkable fashion the interaction between Jesuits and Japanese, especially with regard to the Buddhist clergy, who kept documents of this kind in their temples.37 The Jesuits probably communicated with them with the help of the dōjuku, Japanese assistants to the mission, whom Alessandro Valignano called ‘co-operators in the Gospel’.38

  • 39 London, British Library, Add. MS. 9857, ff. 12-16, ‘De la descripcion de Japon, y de su division, c (...)

28Another important development in the history of the mapping of Japan took place when the Portuguese Inácio Moreira, who was born in Lisbon around 1538 and lived for many years in Macao, accompanied the return to Nagasaki of the missio legatorum, with Valignano, in 1590. Valignano relates that Moreira began a geographical relief of Japan as far as Miyaco (Kyoto), that is to say across Kyūshū to the present-day region of Kyoto, integrating local information obtained from the Japanese, especially with respect to those provinces that he did not know directly. He also managed to determine the length of the Japanese league (ri) in terms of the Portuguese and Spanish measurements. The result was a map of Japan that for the first time integrated all this information into a graduated astronomical frame. Valignano intended to include Moreira’s map, accompanied by a lengthy written description, in his Libro primero del principio y progresso de la religión christiana en Jappón... en el anio 1601. While the map has been lost, the written description prepared in Latin by Valignano (Iaponicae tabulae explicatio) reports in great detail the contents of the map and is still extant.39 According to the explicatio, Moreira’s map displayed the 66 provinces (kuni) of Japan into a graduated frame; it recorded the distances between the principal Japanese cities in a double graduated scale with the equivalence between Portuguese and Japanese leagues and a very rich toponymy.

  • 40 Jason C. Hubbard, ‘The Map of Japan Engraved by Christopher Blancus, Rome, 1617’, Imago Mundi, 46, (...)
  • 41 Bernardino Ginnaro, Nuova descrittione del Giappone, engraving on paper, 26.5×41 cm, published in B (...)
  • 42 António Cardim, Japponiae Nova & accurata descriptio. Ad elogia Jappanica, Rome, 1646, engraving on (...)
  • 43 Robert Dudley, Asia carta di diciasete piu moderna. Gappone [sic], engraving on paper, in Dell’Arca (...)

29Valignano’s explicatio allowed Jason Hubbard to recognize in Christophorus Blancus’ Iaponia – a map displaying a graduated frame, a double scale detailing Portuguese and Japanese leagues, with legends in Latin, engraved on paper and published in Rome in 1617 – almost all the salient features of the lost Moreira’s map.40 Although only a copy of Blancus’ map is so far known to be extant, in the course of about twenty years after it was initially printed it circulated widely and the information embodied in it was used for the preparation of at least three other maps, two of which were produced and published in the context of the Jesuit press and propaganda: the Nuova descrittione del Giappone (New description of Japan) by Bernardino Ginnaro S. J. (1577–1644), published in the first volume of the Saverio Orientale ò vero Istorie de’ Cristiani illustri dell’Oriente, a letterbook detailing the vicissitudes and sufferings of the Christians in Asia, published in Rome in 164141; the Japponiae Nova & accurata descriptio. Ad elogia Jappanica (New and accurate description of Japan. In praise of Japan) by António Cardim S. J. (1596-1649 or 1659) – published in Rome in 1646 in the Fasciculus e Japponicis floribus, a book on the martyrs of Japan, illustrated by 86 plates42; and finally, the Asia carta di diciasete piu moderna. Gappone [sic] (Modern map of Japan, one of seventeen maps of Asia) which was included by Sir Robert Dudley (1574-1649), cosmographer to the Florentine Medicean navy, in the first volume of Dell’Arcano del mare... (On the secrets of the sea), a multi-volume nautical atlas that was published in Florence in 1646.43 It is worth analyzing, though briefly, Cardim’s use of the Moreira-Blancus map of Japan. (See Plate 2: http://ids.lib.harvard.edu/​ids/​view/​45238311?buttons=y, consulted 25 August 2014)

Plate 2. António Cardim, Japponiae Nova & accurata descriptio. Ad elogia Jappanica, Rome, 1646, engraving on paper, 26.5×40.5 cm.

Plate 2. António Cardim, Japponiae Nova & accurata descriptio. Ad elogia Jappanica, Rome, 1646, engraving on paper, 26.5×40.5 cm.

The map was published in António Cardim, Fasciculus e Japponicis floribus... , Rome, Typis Heredum Corbelletti, 1646, folded into the volume between the coversheet and the title page.

  • 44 Antonio Cardim, Relatione della provincia del Giappone, Rome, Stamperia di s.a.s. alla Condotta, 16 (...)

30After spending several years in the missions in Macao, Tonkin, Cambodia, and Siam, António Cardim S. J. returned to Rome in 1640 and represented the Province of Japan at the General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (1645−1646). While in Rome, before returning to Asia, he published several works with a focus on the mission of Japan,44 including the already mentioned book in Latin on the martyrs, under the eloquent and macabre title Fasciculus e Iapponicis floribus, suo adhuc madentibus sanguine… Qui legitis flores, hos legite, sic quoniam positi suaves miscentur odores (Bouquet of Japanese flowers still dripping with their blood… Who picks up these flowers, arranged in this order, can smell their mellifluous fragrance). The book begins with an important, extremely rare, and overlooked map of Japan, written in Latin: the already mentioned Japponiae Nova & accurata descriptio. Ad elogia Jappanica. The map shows Japan divided into the traditional sixty-six provinces, gives the locations and details the number of churches and colleges that the Society established there. Through Cardim’s map European readers could also locate the place of martyrdoms of the Jesuits who died in Japan. Some thirty years after the expulsion of the Jesuits from Japan (1614), in a moment in which Jesuit religious expansion in Asia became unstable, Cardim’s map still displayed to European readers a fully fictional Catholic geography of Japan, based on the contradictory presence of churches, colleges, and a great number of martyrs. In a radically different context and from an opposite perspective, Cardim was replicating Valignano’s cosmographic illusionary exercise of the De missione.

The cartographic nanban byōbu

  • 45 Il mappamondo cinese del p. Matteo Ricci S. I. conservato presso la Biblioteca Vaticana, commentato (...)
  • 46 Kumamoto (Kyūshū), Honmyō-ji (a Buddhist temple of the Nichiren sect, in which Katō Kiyomasa is bur (...)

31In conclusion, let us consider the so-called cartographic byōbu, a specific corpus of folding screens produced in Japan, in the Momoyama (1573-1615) and early Edo (1615–1868) periods, first in the context of the schola pictorum of Giovanni Niccolò S. J., and later, after the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1614, autonomously by the Japanese. In manuscript form, with huge dimensions and bright colors, these byōbu re-elaborate three main cartographic genres that reached Japan during the nanban century as part of the global circulation of material culture and knowledge, which resulted from the Iberian expansion in Asia, Jesuit missionary strategies, as well as unsuccessful attempts at Japanese expansion in Korea. These genres included Western maps of the world (in particular, Dutch printed planispheres and Portuguese manuscript ones); the planispheres written in Chinese and printed in numerous editions in the context of the mission in China by Matteo Ricci, in collaboration with several Chinese scholars and printers (c. 1585-1610)45; finally, Sino-Korean manuscript world cartography linked to the Honil kangni yŏktae kukto chi to (混一疆理历代国都之图 Map of the lands in a single block and of the capitals of the kingdoms of the past dynasties, c. 1479-1485), of which at least one copy was commissioned by, and brought to Japan by General Katō Kiyomasa (1562-1611), one of the three leading generals during the disastrous Japanese military campaign against the Korean dynasty of Chosŏn (1592-1598).46 (See Plate 3: http://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Kangnido#mediaviewer/​File:KangnidoMap.jpg, consulted 25 August 2014)

Plate 3. Kim Sa-hyeong, Yi Mu, Map of the lands in a single block and of the capitals of the kingdoms of the past dynasties, Ink and colors on silk, 160x140 cm, Seoul, c. 1479-1485, Kyoto, Ryūkoku University Library.

Plate 3. Kim Sa-hyeong, Yi Mu, Map of the lands in a single block and of the capitals of the kingdoms of the past dynasties, Ink and colors on silk, 160x140 cm, Seoul, c. 1479-1485, Kyoto, Ryūkoku University Library.
  • 47 For a still useful list of nanban cartographic byōbu see Unno, ‘Cartography in Japan’, art. cit., p (...)
  • 48 Fukui (Fukui Prefecture), Jōtoku-ji (浄徳寺), Pair of nanban screens, late 16th century (1595?), color (...)
  • 49 Tokyo, The Imperial Household Agency, Pair of eight-fold nanban screens, Momoyama to Edo period, ea (...)
  • 50 Tokyo, Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Pair of nanban screens, Momoyama to Edo period, early 17th century, (...)
  • 51 Kobe, Kosetsu Museum of Arts, Pair of nanban screens with the Battle of Lepanto, Momoyama to Edo pe (...)

32Beside the planispheres – derived from these three cartographic traditions – the thirty or so known and extant cartographic byōbu47generally display on the second screen either a large-scale map of Japan, in different shapes (from the gyōki type to more modern representations, as in the case of the byōbu in the Jōtoku-ji (浄徳寺) in Fukui Prefecture48), or else views of Western cities, with emperors and kings,49 or numerous people of the world,50 or scenes from Western history such as the battle of Lepanto (1571) in a famous byōbu held at the Kosetsu Museum of Arts.51 (See Plate 4: http://www.kosetsu-museum.or.jp/​en/​imgs/​top/​img_collection01_full.jpg, consulted 25 August 2014)

Plate 4. The Battle of Lepanto and the map of the World.

Plate 4. The Battle of Lepanto and the map of the World.

Pair of six-panel screens, ink, gold and colors on paper; each screen 153.5x370 cm, Momoyama to Edo period, early 17th century, Kobe, Kosetsu Museum of Arts.

  • 52 For an interesting analysis of the byōbu displaying the battle of Lepanto, see Jay A. Levenson and (...)
  • 53 Alexandra Curvelo, ‘Copy to convert. Jesuit Missionary Artistic Practice in Japan,’ in Rupert Cox ( (...)

33Regardless of iconographic contents, it is worth emphasizing that the Japanese painters of nanban byōbu did not reproduce European, Chinese, or Korean cartography and iconography passively. The artistic and cultural phenomenon which emerged from copying ‘foreign’ visual sources gave rise to a new typology of images, primarily of, but not exclusively, religious. It produced new images that assembled in a new synthesis – whether artistic, cartographic or iconographic – European, Japanese, Korean-Chinese themes.52 This is something which allows us to reconsider the entire corpus of nanban works, including the cartographic byōbu – easily and perhaps erroneously considered a sort of curiosity, whether in reference to either European or Japanese cartography – as an integral part of a complex practice of cultural acclimation and of the transmission of knowledge through images, which was also pursued through teaching art and cartography, and via the production and re-elaboration of copies.53

  • 54 Sakamoto Mitsuru, Nanban byōbu shūsei (A Catalogue Raisonné of the Nanban Screens), Tokyo, Chūōkōro (...)

34In this regard, it is worth presenting, though briefly, a byōbu held at Kanshin-ji, a Buddhist temple near Osaka, which was recently brought to scholarly attention by Sakamoto Mitsuru.54 This unique and extraordinary byōbu displays on the first screen the Asian continent whose cartographic shape and geographic contents derive, though in a simplified way, from Sino-Korean type of maps, with an enormous Korea, and without the representation of Central Asia, Europe, and Africa. The second screen displays instead the New World, two huge western ships (nau) of the type that are often represented in nanban byōbu, an astronomical diagram of the sub-lunar world and a second astronomical diagram that shows the sub-lunar world surrounded by the seven planetary spheres and the sphere of the fixed stars. In the first diagram, at the centre of the sub-lunar world, there is a representation of the terracqueous globe, surrounded by four ships, positioned at the four cardinal points. At the centre of the globe, the Eurasian oikumene can be made out. This set of cartographic, iconographic as well as astronomical images derive for sure from, as yet unidentified, European sources. (See Plate 5 and Plate 6)

Plate 5. Left side screen of a byōbu with the representation of China and Korea based on Korean and Chinese sources. Korea is still represented divided into the four kingdoms that predated the Chosŏn unification of the country in 1392.

Plate 5. Left side screen of a byōbu with the representation of China and Korea based on Korean and Chinese sources. Korea is still represented divided into the four kingdoms that predated the Chosŏn unification of the country in 1392.

Ink and colors on paper, 17th century, Kanshin-ji, Kawachinagano, Osaka.

Reproduced from Sakamoto Mitsuru, Nanban byōbu shūsei (A Catalogue Raisonné of the Nanban Screens), Tokyo, Chūōkōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2008, Pl. 91.

Plate 6. Right side screen of a byōbu with the representation of the New World, two European ships, and two diagrams of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic sublunary and celestial world, based on European visual sources.

Plate 6. Right side screen of a byōbu with the representation of the New World, two European ships, and two diagrams of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic sublunary and celestial world, based on European visual sources.

Ink and colors on paper, 17th century, Kanshin-ji, Kawachinagano, Osaka.

Reproduced from Sakamoto Mitsuru, Nanban byōbu shūsei (A Catalogue Raisonné of the Nanban Screens), Tokyo, Chūōkōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2008, Pl. 91.]

35The authors of this extraordinary synthesis put side by side two major world cosmographic traditions, therefore, selecting which tradition was more appropriate and developed for each part of the world they were representing, according to their judgment. At the same time, through the large astronomical diagrams they pointed out the spherical nature of the earth and its circumnavigability in the context of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic universe, composed of four elements: ideas which all contrasted with Confucian and Buddhist cosmographic ideas.

  • 55 H. Cieslik, ‘The Case of Christovão Ferreira’, Monumenta Nipponica, 29, 1974, p. 32-40.
  • 56 Hiraoka Ryuji, ‘The Transmission of Western Cosmology to Sixteenth-Century Japan,’ in Luís Saraiva (...)

36These were concepts that produced a great debate both during the period of the Jesuit presence as well as after their expulsion, as exemplified in a work such the Kenkon bensetsu (Treatise and Critic on Earth and Heavens), a treatise on Aristotelian cosmology and cosmography, translated into Japanese in 1643 by a former Portuguese Jesuit, Christovão Ferreira (1580-1650), who apostatized and took the Japanese name of Sawano Chūan.55 The Kenkon bensetsu, translated on the orders of Inoue Masashige (1584-1661), Inspector General against the Pagans, that is the Christians, was commented on by Mukai Genshō (1609-1677), a distinguished Confucian scholar of Nagasaki, who discussed and compared Aristotelian theory in the light of Confucianism.56

  • 57 For the most recent systematic catalogue of ninety-one nanban byōbu, with excellent reproductions i (...)
  • 58 Victoria Weston, ‘Unfolding the Screen: Depicting the Foreign in Japanese Nanban byōbu’, in Ibid., (...)

37The uses of the cartographic folding screens were varied. Given their eye-catching, if not flamboyant, aspect, this genre of byōbu was also undoubtedly intended as a decorative tool; as was the case of the more famous and celebrated nanban byōbu, or folding screens produced in the Momoyama (1573-1615) and early Edo (1615-1868) periods, some even depicted by painters of the Kanō school of painting.57 Nanban byōbu took as their main subject the departure from imaginary Chinese port cities and the arrival – in Nagasaki, according to Unno – and presence in Japan of Portuguese traders, their gigantic ships (naus), their multiethnic crews, and luxurious material culture, including exotic animals, brought to Japan from China and India, as well as members of the Catholic religious orders, with an emphasis on the Jesuits, and their interactions with Japanese. According to the Catalogue raisonné by Sakamoto Mitsuru, the core narratives of nanban folding screens were based on a spatial and geographical construction, detailing scenes of the departure of the nanban-jin on board the kurofune from foreign lands, their arrival and landing in Japan, and their daily life in Japanese society. The wealth of foreign material culture displayed in the screens, the huge Portuguese ships, the tall figures of the Jesuits and the merchants, their unusual and precious clothes, their black slaves and servants, their animals – Arabian horses, peacocks, elephants, monkeys, lions, European dogs – altogether, through the powerful lens of the indefatigable curiosity of Japanese painters, built a geography and cartography of nanban international trade, as highlighted by Victoria Weston.58

  • 59 See an extraordinary passage of Giulio Aleni’s biography of Matteo Ricci in Chinese: Giulio Aleni ( (...)
  • 60 Nakamura Hirosi, ‘The Japanese Portolanos of Portuguese Origin of the XVIth and XVIIth Centuries’, (...)
  • 61 Unno, art. cit., p. 393-394.

38At the same time, we should not overlook that cartographic folding screens also performed an intrinsic educational function with respect to cosmographical concepts, such as that of the spherical Earth, and the geographical mise en carte of Japan, and all the other regions of the world in the orbis terrarum. Today, the latter could be (perhaps) taken for granted, but as already mentioned, it was by no means obvious in the 16th and 17th centuries. We may reasonably assume that, as in the case of the numerous printed maps produced in the context of the Jesuit mission in China, the cartographic byōbu were also originally part of a range of instruments – clocks, astrolabes, scientific treatises – which assisted the process of evangelization by corroborating the truthfulness and credibility of the Christian message by demonstrating the superior achievements of Western culture and civilization.59 Yet nanban cartography was appreciated also for more worldly activities, of great importance in particular during the Tokugawa period, such as overseas maritime trade (shuin-sen). In this regard, the influence of Western marine charts and navigational techniques transmitted by the Portuguese was decisive, as shown by the Japanese nautical charts with lines and wind-roses, cartographic scales, and terminology that clearly derived from Iberian roteiros and charts.60 The Japanese historian Unno has shown that the technical vocabulary used in Japanese manuals of the 18th century – works based on the earlier tradition, such as the Hiden chiiki zuhō daizensho (Encyclopaedia of the secrets of measuring and design) by Hosoi Kōtaku (1658-1735), of 1717, or the book by Matsumiya Toshitsugu [Kanzan] (1686-1780), of 1728, Bundo yojutsu (The art of dividing degrees) – derives from Portuguese words: for example watarante or kuwadarante for quadrant; asutarabiyo, isutarabiyo or isutarahi for astrolabe; kompansu or kompasu for compass.61

  • 62 Ibid., p. 377-379.

39As a conclusion to this essay, we would like to discuss one major methodological issue that deals with the current system of classification and intellectual understanding of cartographic byōbu. The observations that follow aims at a critical re-consideration of a widely accepted classification of these folding screens according to their (alleged) cartographic projections, a system of classification proposed by Unno’s influential study in 1994. While Unno’s comprehensive list maintains its validity, his system of classification of the byōbu based on their alleged ‘cartographic projections’ seems anachronistic and ill adapted, if not misleading, to group this documentary corpus. Unno meticulously classified the byōbu ‘according to whether they are marine charts or made on an oval, equirectangular, or Mercator projection.’ And adds: ‘An interesting feature of those listed as charts and those designated as equirectangular type B maps is their attempt to place Japan near the center of the world, putting the Eastern Hemisphere to the left and the Western Hemisphere to the right.’62

  • 63 See this most interesting post-scriptum to a letter written by Father Laurenço Mexia S. J. (1582-15 (...)
  • 64 Berkeley, University of California, East Asian Library, call number: Byobu 1 SPEC-Map. Pair of six- (...)
  • 65 On the collaboration among Ricci, Li Zhizao, and Zhang Wentao, see Aleni, op. cit., p. 40, 55, 70-7 (...)

40The Japanese painters who – either in the context of the Jesuit seminario de pintura or independently from it – designed the cartographic byōbu were not reproducing maps according to their cartographic projections. They were re-copying and transforming images of the world available to them that had different shapes and different provenance. The sources of the cartographic byōbu either arrived in Macao from Europe – and were designed and/or printed mainly in the Netherlands and Portugal – or from the mission of China, where Matteo Ricci and several Chinese scholars, engravers and printers, designed several monumental printed planispheres.63 Through the nau do trato, both European maps and the so-called ‘Ricci’s planispheres’ reached Nagasaki and circulated in Japan, at first in the Jesuit missions, but later also independently from it. Cartographic nanban byōbu like those held at the Nanban Bunka kan in Osaka, or at the East Asian Library of the University of California at Berkeley – the only byōbu displaying maps that is not currently held in Japan64 – catalogued by Unno as ‘equirectangular type B maps’ and regarded very interesting in ‘their attempt to place Japan near the center of the world, putting the Eastern Hemisphere to the left and the Western Hemisphere to the right’ are simply byōbu in which the screen with the map of the world derives from the Kunyu wanguo quan tu (Map of the Ten Thousand Kingdoms of the Earth, Beijing, 1602) designed by Matteo Ricci and his Chinese fellows, Li Zhizao, and Zhang Wentao,65 or from other byōbu based on it. (See Plate 7: https://www.lib.umn.edu/​bell/​riccimap, Consulted 25 August 2014)

Plate 7. Matteo Ricci, Li Zhizao, Zhang Wentao, Kunyu wanguo quantu, or Map of the Ten Thousand Kingdoms of the Earth, xylograph on six panels of Chinese paper, 182x219 cm, Beijing, 1602, University of Minnesota, James Ford Bell Library.

Plate 7. Matteo Ricci, Li Zhizao, Zhang Wentao, Kunyu wanguo quantu, or Map of the Ten Thousand Kingdoms of the Earth, xylograph on six panels of Chinese paper, 182x219 cm, Beijing, 1602, University of Minnesota, James Ford Bell Library.

(See Plate 8: http://luna.davidrumsey.com:8380/​luna/​servlet/​detail/​RUMSEY~9~1~23273~50058:Sekaizu-narabini-Nihonzu-byobu-?sort=Pub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No&qvq=w4s:/where/​World;sort:Pub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No;lc:RUMSEY~9~1&mi=0&trs=69, Consulted 25 August 2014).

Plate 8. Manuscript map of the world derived from the Kunyu wanguo quantu, or Map of the Ten Thousand Kingdoms of the Earth.

Plate 8. Manuscript map of the world derived from the Kunyu wanguo quantu, or Map of the Ten Thousand Kingdoms of the Earth.

One of a pair of six-fold screens; the verso is also decorated with representations of the Tōkaidō (Eastern Sea Road). [1640]. Ink, color, gold and gold leaf on paper, 71x230 cm, Berkeley, University of California, East Asian Library, call number: Byobu 1 SPEC–Map.

  • 66 While Unno’s list of byōbu is crucial for advancing the research, his analysis considered exclusive (...)

41In other words, rather than reflecting specific scientific or technical features, the different cartographic shapes of the byōbu simply speak about the provenance of their sources.66 Once observed from this perspective, the graphic features of the byōbu become fundamental elements to trace the circulation of world images at the global scale in early modernity: from Antwerp, Rome, Lisbon to Goa, Melaka, Macao and Nagasaki; but also from Beijing, and other Chinese cities touched by the Jesuit Mission of China, to Macao and then to Nagasaki; finally, as already mentioned, also from Korea to Japan (either in Fukuoka or Nagasaki) at the time of Hideyoshi Toyotomi’s failed attempts to conquer Korea between 1592 and 1598.

  • 67 Charles Ralph Boxer, The Great Ship from Amacon. Annals of Macao and the Old Japan Trade 1555-1640, (...)

42There are two major implications that emerge from dismissing the classification of byōbu based on their alleged projections in favor of a classification that highlights the provenance and circulation of their (carto)graphic sources. The first is the breaking of linear Eurocentric models of circulation of knowledge, people, and ideas – such as West-East relationships – still very popular and fashionable, but ill-adapted to articulate the complex scenario, the complexities of the agencies, and also the places of exchange and transformation of material culture, forms, and ideas in the long and multifaceted system of maritime and terrestrial routes that linked Europe to Goa, Melaka, Macao, Canton (Guangzhou), Nanchang, Nanjing, Beijing, Nagasaki, in the Kyūshū, but also Manila, and through the latter, also New Spain.67 Instead of a linear, pendular model based on the West-East circulation, the analyses of the corpus of cartographic nanban byōbu highlights a more complex radial system of vectors that departed from and arrived to a major fulcrum: the port city of Macao. (See Plate 9)

Plate 9. The complex radial system of terrestrial and sea routes that departed from and arrived to the port city of Macao, a major fulcrum in early modern Asian and world exchange and communication.

Plate 9. The complex radial system of terrestrial and sea routes that departed from and arrived to the port city of Macao, a major fulcrum in early modern Asian and world exchange and communication.

43Since 1557, when the Portuguese were given permission by Chinese authorities to establish a stable settlement – the Portuguese had managed to run a lucrative trade by exchanging Japanese silver with Chinese silk, porcelain, and other luxury items sought by Japanese elites, acquired at the fairs in Canton – Macao received and combined the agency of Portuguese, Malayan, Chinese, and Japanese merchants, together with that of Jesuit missionaries, radiating its influence over a vast space, from Goa to Nagasaki and Manila. (See Plate 10)

Plate 10. Barreto de Resende, Macau, in Livro das Fortalezas da Índia Oriental do cronista António Bocarro, Goa, ms. 1635, Évora, Biblioteca Pública, Cód. CXV/2-1, pl. n.º 47.

Plate 10. Barreto de Resende, Macau, in Livro das Fortalezas da Índia Oriental do cronista António Bocarro, Goa, ms. 1635, Évora, Biblioteca Pública, Cód. CXV/2-1, pl. n.º 47.

Reproduced from http://www.ub.edu/​geocrit/​sn/​sn-218-53.htm.

  • 68 Alexandra Curvelo, ‘Introduction’, in Encomendas Namban. Os Portugueses no Japão na Idade Moderna / (...)
  • 69 ‘As Ilhas do Japão estão situadas naquella parte do Oceano que devide entre sy as duas [sic] contin (...)

44At the same time, the Kyūshū, through the Macao-Nagasaki route, became an integral part of one of the most articulated trade networks at the global scale.68 Despite its peripheral location with respect to both Japan and Asia, the Kyūshū became one of the few places in the world in which, around 1600, three major cosmographic visions of the world converged and, more significantly, interacted, as clearly shown by the byōbu held at Kanshin-ji. In this context, João Rodrigues Tçuzzu (the interpreter), one of the finest connoisseurs of Japan, its language and culture, in his História da Igreja do Japão, composed in Macao, after the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1614, wrote: ‘The islands of Japan are located in the Ocean between the two continents and great parts of the world, Asia, New Spain and America, or New World, and it looks as if nature placed it there purposely [to be in the middle of the Ocean].’69

  • 70 Yonemoto, op. cit., p. 5-6.

45As was rightly recognized by Yonemoto, the history of modern Japanese cartography begins with the transformation of the representations of Japan that occurred during and after the presence of the Europeans, as a result of the pictorial and cartographic innovations taught through the painting school of the Jesuits, and by an inevitable dialectic process of self-identification through the internal and external comparison of the self with the Other.70

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Notes

1 For a multifaceted study on Valignano see Adolfo Tamburello, Antoni J. Üçerler, Marisa Di Russo (eds.), Alessandro Valignano S. I. uomo del Rinascimento, ponte tra Oriente e Occidente, Rome, Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2008.

2 Very little is known about these Japanese Brothers, whom we know only by their Portuguese Christian names.

3 Still valid the path-breaking book by Charles Ralph Boxer, The Great Ship from Amacon. Annals of Macao and the Old Japan Trade 1555-1640, Lisbon, Centro de Estudos Históricos ultramarinos, 1959.

4 Rome, ARSI, Iap.-Sin.2, fols 35r-39v: [Alessandro Valignano], Regimento que se ha de guardar nos semynários. Quoted in Antoni J. Uçerler, Gutenberg Comes to Japan: The Jesuits & the First IT Revolution of the Sixteenth Century. Edited and Revised Transcript, San Francisco, The Ricci Institute Public Lecture Series, September 2005, www.ricci.usfca.edu/events/Ucerler.pdf (consulted 25 August 2014).

5 De Missione Legatorum Iaponensium ad Romanam curiam, rebusque in Europa, ac toto itinere animadversis dialogus ex ephemeride ipsorum Legatorum collectus, & in sermonem Latinum versus ab Eduardo de Sande Sacerdote Societatis Iesu. In Macaensi portu Sinici regni in domo Societatis Iesu cum facultate Ordinarii, & Superiorum. Anno 1590. For a digital reproduction: <http://purl.pt/15122> (consulted 25 August 2014). Facsimile reprint: Tokyo, Tōyō Bunko, 1935. For modern Portuguese and English translations: Américo da Costa Ramalho (ed.), Diálogo sobre a missão dos embaixadores japoneses à cúria romana, Macao, Comissão Territorial de Macau para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, Fundação Oriente, 1997 (republished with minor changes, Coimbra, Imprensa da Universidade − Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau, 2009); D. Massarella and J.F. Moran (eds.), De missione Legatorum Iaponensium ad Romanam curiam. Japanese travellers in sixteenth-century Europe: a dialogue concerning the mission of the Japanese ambassadors to the Roman Curia (1590), Farnham, Surrey, England, Burlington, Ashgate, 2012. For the history of the publication of the De missione: J. Laures, Kirishitan Bunko (3rd ed.) Tokyo, Sophia University, 1957, p. 32-35; De missione (ed. Massarella, Moran 2012), p. 1-31. On the Jesuit press in Asia see the Laures Rare Book Database, created by the Kirishitan Bunko of Sophia University: http://laures.cc.sophia.ac.jp/laures/start/sel=9−1/ (Consulted 25 August 2014).

6 An English translation of the Colloquium XXXIII of the De missione was published under the title ‘An excellent treatise of the kingdome of China, and of the estate and government thereof: Printed in Latine at Macao a citie of the Portugals in China, An. Dom. 1590 and written Dialogue-wise. The speakers are Linus, Leo, and Michael,’ in Richard Hakluyt, Principal Navigations VI, 1599, p. 348-377. See Adriana Boscaro, Sixteenth-Century European Printed Works on the First Japanese Mission to Europe. A Descriptive Bibliography, Leiden, Brill, 1973; Michael Cooper, The Japanese Mission to Europe, 1582-1590. The Journey of Four Samurai Boys through Portugal, Spain and Italy, Folkestone, Global Oriental, 2005, p. 193-202.

7 Dictionarium Latino Lusitanicum, ac Iaponicum, ex Ambrosii Calepini volumine depromptum, Amakusa, Collegio Iaponico Societatis Iesu, 1595. (Facsimile edition Tokyo, Benseisha, 1979). For the source quoted in the title: Ambrosii Calepini Dictionarium, quanta maxima fide ac diligencia fieri potuit accuratè emendatum, multísque partibus cumulatum. Lyons, Symphorien Berauld, 1570 (many other editions followed). Cf. Laures, op. cit., p. 50−51; E. Kishimoto, ‘The Adaptation of the European Polyglot Dictionary of Calepino in Japan: Dictionarium Latino Lusitanicum, ac Iaponicum (1595)’, in O. Zwartjes and C. Altman (eds.), Missionary Linguistics II / Lingüística misionera II, Amsterdam-Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2005, p. 205-223; E. Kishimoto, ‘The Process of Translation in Dictionarium Latino Lusitanicum, ac Iaponicum’, Journal of Asian and African Studies, 72, 2006, p. 17-26.

8 Ronnie Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540-1770, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005 (2nd ed.), in particular the chapters ‘The Iberian Church and Empires’ and ‘The Catholic missions in Asia’, p. 187-230.

9 De missione, op. cit., p. 46−47. For the original version in Latin: De missione (1590), p. 4-5.

10 Ibid., p. 440. For the original version in Latin: De missione (1590), p. 400-402.

11Zipangu is an island in the eastern ocean, situated about fifteen hundred miles from the mainland, or coast of Manji. It is of considerable size; its inhabitants have fair complexions, are well made, and are civilized in their manners. Their religion is the worship of idols. They are independent of every foreign power, and governed only by their own lords. They have gold in the greatest abundance, its sources being inexhaustible, but few merchants visit the country. The palace of the lord of the island is very large, and is covered with gold just as we cover our churches with lead […] There are many pearls, and they are red and round and big, and are more valuable than the white pearls. There are many precious stones; it is impossible to reckon the riches of this island. And the Great Khan who now reigns wanted to seize this island, on account of its great riches, and he sent two barons with many ships and many troops, both infantry and cavalry […] and they took the plain and many houses, but neither castle nor city; and there was a severe disaster’ (This is my translation of a quotation derived from Marco Polo, Milione. Edizione toscana del Trecento. Edizione critica a cura di Valeria Bertolucci Pizzorusso, indice ragionato di Giorgio R. Cardona, Milano, Adelphi, 2003, p. 234-236). Marco Polo’s book enjoyed an ample plurilingual manuscript transmission, articulated in various editions, with different titles: Livre des Merveilles, Del Gran Khan, Historia Tartarorum, De condicionibus et consuetudinibus orientalium regionum, Milione are amongst the most widely spread. In the multiple redactions of Marco Polo’s text, as well as in the maps incorporating Polo’s geography, the term Zipangu assumes various equivalent forms, such as Zinpagu, Zimpagrum, Cipango, Cimpagu, Cinpangu, Simpago, Sipango, Çipingu. Luigi. F. Benedetto, ‘Introduzione’, in Marco Polo, Il Milione, Florence, Olschki, 1928, i-ccxxi (English edition London, Routledge, 1931). Paul Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo, 3 vols. Paris, A. Maisonneuve, 1959-73, vol. 1, p. 609-610, s.v. ‘Çipingu’. There is a digital fully searchable edition made available by the National Institute of Informatics − Digital Silk Road Project − Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books: <http://dsr.nii.ac.jp/toyobunko/III−2−F−c−104/V−1/page/0001.html.en>.

12 The most spectacular and complete of these maps is the so-called Atlas Catalan, held in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (Espagne 30), authored by the Jewish Majorcan cartographers Abraham and Jehuda Cresques, and probably offered by Pedro IV of Aragon to Charles V of France. Painted on several sheets of parchment glued to six wooden panels which when spread out measure 300x65 cm, and probably completed around 1375, it represents one of the most crucial periods in the history of the Silk Road, during the Pax mongolica, when Franciscan missionaries and Christian travellers like Marco Polo, or Muslim ones like Ibn Battuta, travelled central Asian caravan roads and sailed across the Indian Ocean, reaching the centre of the Mongol Yuan Empire, as far as Beijing (called by Marco Polo and other medieval travellers Cambaluc, from the Turkish Khān bālīq, or ‘City of the Khān’).

13 Pierre d'Ailly (1350–ca.1420) Ymago mundi, 3 vols, edited by Edmond Buron, Paris, Maisonneuve frères, 1930.

14 See the exhaustive essays in Cristoforo Colombo e l’apertura degli spazi, 2 vols., Rome, Istituto poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1992; Nicolás Wey Gómez, The Tropics of Empire. Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2008 (in part. the chap. ‘Columbus and the open geography of the ancients’, p. 107-158).

15 Gerard R. Tibbetts, Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean before the Coming of the Portuguese. Being a Translation of Kitab al-Fawa'id fi usul al-bahr wa'l-qawa'id of Ahmad b. Majid al-Najid, London, The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1971.

16 ‘A Ilha de Jampom segundo todos os chijs dizem que he mõor que a dos lequíos & o Rey mais poderoso & maior & nom he dado a mercadoria nem seus naturães he rey gemtio vasallo do Rey da China tratam na Chijna poucas vezes por ser lomge & elles nom tere Juncos nem serem homes do maãr. Os lequjos em sete oito dias vam a Jampom & levam das ditas mercadorias he resgatam ouro & cobre todo o que vem dos Lequeos trazem os Leq[eo]s de Jampon he tratam os Lequeos com os de Jampon em panos lucoees & out[ra]s mercadorias’; see Armando Cortesão (ed.), A Suma Oriental de Tomé Pires e o Livro de Francisco Rodrigues, Coimbra, Universidade de Coimbra, 1978, p. 373-374.

17 On the information given to Xavier by Captain Jorge Alvarez: Juan Ruiz-de-Medina S.J. (ed.), Documentos del Japon 1547-1557, Rome, Institutum Historicum Societatis Jesu, 1990, p. 1-44 (docs 1-7).

18 The historiography is becoming very vast. See at least: Monumenta historica Japoniae editionem criticam, introductiones ad singula documenta, commentarios historicos proposuit Josef Franz Schütte, Rome, Monumenta historica Societatis Jesu, 1975- (1. Textus catalogorum Japoniae aliaeque de personis domibusque S. J. in Japonia informationes et relationes, 1549-1654. 2. Documentos del Japón, 1547-1557. Editados y anotados por Juan Ruiz-de-Medina S. J. (1990); 3. Documentos del Japón, 1558-1562. Editados y anotados por Juan Ruiz-de-Medina S. J. (1995). Léon Bourdon, La Compagnie de Jésus et le Japon 1547-1570. La Fondation de la mission japonaise par François Xavier (1547-1551) et les premiers résultats de la prédication chrétienne sous le supériorat de Cosme de Torres (1551-1570), Lisbon-Paris, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1993.

19 Adriana Boscaro, ‘L’Altro visto attraverso le immagini’, in Tanaka Kuniko (ed.), Geografia e cosmografia dell’altro fra Asia ed Europa, Rome, Bulzoni, 2011, p. 62. In the historiography we find also the term ‘Christian century’ or ‘Kirishitan century,’ from the Portuguese term ‘christão’ that is ‘Christian’; see Charles Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan 1549-1650, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1974. The term ‘Nanban’ is preferable to these because it ‘covers a larger [semantic] area in as much as it implies a relationship with the external in general (traffic, merchants, visitors and so on) whereas kirishitan is strictly connected [only] with the Christian religion,’ Boscaro, art. cit., p. 64, note 12.

20 The Beginning of Heaven and Earth. The Sacred Book of Japan’s Hidden Christians, translated and annotated by Christal Whelan, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1996; Stephen R. Turnbull, The Kakure Kirishitan of Japan. A Study of Their Development, Beliefs and Rituals to the Present Day, Richmond, Japan Library, Curzon Press, 1998; Martin Nogueira Ramos, Les persécutions contre le Christianisme sous Inoue Masashige (1640-1658) et la débâcle de Kōri (1657-1658), Mémoire de Master 2 sous la direction de Annick Horiuchi, Paris, Paris 7-Diderot, 2008.

21 Grace Vlam, Western-Style Secular Painting in Momoyama Japan, 2 vols. PhD Dissertation, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, 1976, I, p. 130-164. Unno Kazukata, ‘Cartography in Japan’, in John Brian Harley and David Woodward (eds.), The History of Cartography, Vol. 2, Book 2: Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1994, p. 346-477; Kawamura Hirotada, ‘Kuni-ezu (provincial maps) compiled by the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan’, Imago Mundi, 41, 1989, p. 70-75; Marcia Yonemoto, Mapping Early Modern Japan. Space, Place and Culture in the Tokugawa Period (1603-1868), Berkeley, University of California Press, 2003; Alexandra Curvelo, Nuvens douradas e paisagens habitadas. A arte nanban e a sua circulação entre a Ásia e a América: Japão, China e Nova–Espanha (c.1550-c.1700), Ph.D. Dissertation, Lisbon, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2008; Alexandra Curvelo and Angelo Cattaneo, ‘Le arti visuali e l’evangelizzazione del Giappone. L’apporto del seminario di pittura dei gesuiti’, in Tanaka Kuniko (ed.), op. cit., p. 31-60.

22 Cortesão and Teixeira da Mota identified seven types of representations: first, the ‘Cipango type’ (1492-1559), derived from Marco Polo; second, the ‘1550 type’ (c. 1550 and 1551-1561); third, the ‘Gastaldi type’ (1556-1574); fourth, the ‘Lopo Homem type’ (1554-1584); fifth, the ‘Bartolomeu Velho type’ (c. 1560-1568); sixth, the ‘[Lazaro] Luís-[Fernão] Vaz Dourado type’ (c. 1560-1568); finally, the seventh being what they called the ‘Luís Teixeira type’ which includes the maps drawn between 1581 and 1649. See Armando Cortesão and Avelino Teixeira da Mota (eds.), Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica, Lisbon, Imprensa Nacional Casa da Moeda, 1960, V, p. 170-177.

23 Erik Wilhelm Dahlgren, Les débuts de la cartographie du Japon, Upsal, K. W. Appelberg, 1911.

24 Walter Lutz (ed.), Japan. A Cartographic Vision: European Printed Maps from the Early 16th to the 19th Century, Munich and New York, Prestel-Verlag, 1994; Jason C. Hubbard, Japoniæ insulæ. The Mapping of Japan: Historical Introduction and Cartobibliography of European Printed Maps of Japan to 1800, Houten, HES & De Graaf Publishers BV, 2012. This book can be regarded as the definitive study of European printed maps of Japan. It also includes a very valuable section by Wolfgang Michel about Japanese names on early modern Western maps of Japan (p. 106-125).

25 Alfredo Pinheiro Marques, A cartografia portuguesa do Japão (seculos XVI-XVII), Lisbon, Imprensa Nacional Casa da Moeda, 1987.

26 Alessandro Valignano S. J., Il cerimoniale per i missionari del Giappone: Advertimentos e avisos acerca dos costumes e catangues de Japáo,’ Josef Franz Schütte (ed.), Rome, Edizioni di Storia e letteratura, 1946; reprinted, by Michela Catto (ed.), 2011; Urs App, The Cult of Emptiness. The Western Discovery of Buddhist Thought and the Invention of Oriental Philosophy, Rorschach and Kyoto, University Media, 2012, p. 34-60; Minako Debergh, ‘Les débuts des contacts linguistiques entre l’Occident et le Japon (premiers dictionnaires des missionnaires chrétiens au Japon au XVIe et au XVIIe siècles’, Langages, 16.68, 1982, p. 27-44.

27 Antoni Üçerler, ‘Valignano come storico della missione: la sua ultima parola nel Principio y progresso (1601-1603)’, in Adolfo Tamburello, Antoni J. Üçerler, Marisa Di Russo (eds.), op. cit., p. 261-277.

28 Claudio Acquaviva (1543-1615), General of the Society of Jesus, brilliantly summarized Valignano’s accomodatio in a letter dated 25 December 1585, a critical response to Valignano’s Cerimoniale (1582): ‘Since God Our Lord no longer attributes miracles, gifts or prophecies and this people cares so much for worldly things, we are obliged to accommodate ourselves to them and enter into (their spirit of things) in order to succeed with our (goal).’ (Dio Nostro Signore non concorre già con miracoli et doni di profetie, et quelle genti si muovono tanto con queste cose esteriori, è necessario accomodarsi loro et entrar con la loro per uscir poi con la nostra). Acquaviva’s letter is transcribed in Valignano, op. cit., p. 315-324. For an interesting analysis of Acquaviva and Valignano relationships: Roberto Sani, Unum ovile et unus pastor: la Compagnia di Gesù e lesperienza missionaria di padre Matteo Ricci in Cina tra reformatio Ecclesiae e inculturazione del Vangelo, Rome, Armando, 2010, p. 83-102. For a comparative study of the Jesuit strategies of ‘accomodation’, see Ana Carolina Hosne, The Jesuit Missions to China and Peru, 1570-1610. Expectations and Appraisals of Expansionism, New York, Routledge, 2013, in particular the chapter ‘The tricky concepts of “Hispanicization” in Peru and “accomodation” in China’, p. 71-94.

29 Cartas qve os padres e irmãos da Companhia de Iesus escreverão dos Reynos de Iapão & China aos da mesma Companhia da India, & Europa, des do anno de 1549. atè o de 1580... 2 vols., Evora, Manuel de Lyra, 1598; Josef Franz Schütte (ed.), Monumenta Historica Japoniae I. Textus Catalogorum Japoniae 1553-1654…, Rome, Institutum Historicum Societatis Jesu, 1975.

30 Urs App highlights and gives several examples of the hazards of cultural translation in the form of the mutual projection of the familiar into the realm of the unknown – referred to as the ‘Arlecchino mechanism’ – that occurred in, and often biased, the encounters between Catholic Europeans and the Japanese over the nanban century: ‘One of the striking proofs for this – App writes – is the oldest Chinese-character document to be published in Europe, the 1551 deed by the Duke of Yamaguchi confirming the donation of an abandoned Buddhist temple to the Jesuit missionaries […]: the Jesuits appear as representatives of Buddhism who inherit a Buddhist temple in order to promote the Buddhist religion […] By contrast […] the “great way of Buddhism” is transformed [by the Jesuits] into the “'Way of Heaven,” the Buddha dharma into the “law that produces saints,” and the “Buddhist bonzes” as the “Fathers of the Occident”...,’ App, op. cit., p. 16.

31 Japan. A Cartographic Vision, pls. 29, 30, 31, respectively.

32 Florence, Archivio di Stato, Misc. Med. 97, ins. 88, Relazione anonima sul commercio portoghese in Oriente, ff. 1-10; Florence, Archivio di Stato, Misc. Med. 97, ins. 90, Privilegi concessi agli ambasciatori giapponesi a Roma, 10 May 1585, ff. 1-6.

33 Florence, Archivio di Stato, Misc. Med. 97, ins. 91,1, Corografia del Giappone, ff. 1-4, manuscript on Italian paper, 21×29.4 cm. Florence, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Misc. Med. 97, ins. 91, Iapam, oriented to the south, pen and ink on Italian paper, legend and toponyms in Portuguese, ff. 2-4, 27.6×60 cm. For a detailed study see A. Cattaneo, ‘Iapam, 1585 circa (carta del Giappone con legende in portoghese),’ in Francesco Morena (ed.), Di linea e di colore. Il Giappone, le sue arti e l’incontro con l’Occidente, Ligourn, Sillabe, 2012, p. 320-321.

34 This analysis should finally contradict the hypothesis advanced by several historians that the map in the State Archive was authored by the Portuguese cartographer Inácio Moreira. Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica, II, p. 127-128.

35 Unno, art. cit., p. 367-368.

36 Kyoto, Ninna-ji, [Map of Japan of the gyōki type], oriented to the south, pen and ink on Japanese paper, 34.5x121.5 cm. See Unno, art. cit., p. 345-346 and Unno, ‘Maps of Japan Used in Prayer Rites or as Charms’, Imago Mundi, 46, 1994, p. 65-83.

37 Lucia Dolce, ‘Mapping the “Divine Country”: Sacred Geography and International Concerns in Mediaeval Japan,’ in Remco E. Breuker (ed.), Korea in the Middle. Korean Studies and Area Studies. Essays in Honour of Boudewijn Walraven, Leiden, CNWS Publications, 2007, p. 288-312.

38 Curvelo and Cattaneo, art. cit., p. 45. There were 29 dōjuku in 1584.

39 London, British Library, Add. MS. 9857, ff. 12-16, ‘De la descripcion de Japon, y de su division, capit. 2°’, Josef F. Schütte, ‘Ignacio Moreira of Lisbon, Cartographer in Japan 1590-1592’, Imago Mundi, 16, 1962, p. 116-128.

40 Jason C. Hubbard, ‘The Map of Japan Engraved by Christopher Blancus, Rome, 1617’, Imago Mundi, 46, 1994, p. 84-99.

41 Bernardino Ginnaro, Nuova descrittione del Giappone, engraving on paper, 26.5×41 cm, published in Bernardino Ginnaro, Saverio Orientale, ò vero, Istorie de’ Cristiani illustri dell’Oriente..., in Napoli per Francesco Sauio, 1641 (in 4 parts and 3 vols.), vol. I. (folded into the volume).

42 António Cardim, Japponiae Nova & accurata descriptio. Ad elogia Jappanica, Rome, 1646, engraving on paper, published in António Cardim, Fasciculus e Japponicis floribus... , Rome, Typis Heredum Corbelletti, 1646. The map measures 26.5×40.5 cm and is folded into the volume between the coversheet and the title page.

43 Robert Dudley, Asia carta di diciasete piu moderna. Gappone [sic], engraving on paper, in Dell’Arcano del mare..., Florence, 1646, vol I., 42.5×55.5 cm.

44 Antonio Cardim, Relatione della provincia del Giappone, Rome, Stamperia di s.a.s. alla Condotta, 1645; Catalogvs regvlarivm, et secvlarivm, qui in Iapponiæ Regnis vsque à fundata ibi a S. Francisco Xaverio gentis apostolo ecclesia ab ethnicis in odium Christianæ fidei sub quatuor tyrannis violenta morte sublati sunt collectus a P. Antonio Francisco Cardim è Societate Iesv, Prouinciæ Iapponiæ ad Urbem Procuratore, Rome, Typis Jeredum Corbelletti, 1646.

45 Il mappamondo cinese del p. Matteo Ricci S. I. conservato presso la Biblioteca Vaticana, commentato tradotto e annotato dal p. Pasquale M. dElia, S. I. ... Con XXX tavole geografiche e 16 illustrazioni fuori testo. (3. ed., Pechino, 1602). Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1938; John D. Day, ‘The Search for the Origins of the Chinese Manuscript of Matteo Ricci’s Maps’, Imago Mundi, 47, 1995, p. 94-117.

46 Kumamoto (Kyūshū), Honmyō-ji (a Buddhist temple of the Nichiren sect, in which Katō Kiyomasa is buried), [Tae Myŏng-guk chido] (Map of the Great Ming), manuscript on paper, late 16th century copy of the c.1479-1485 Sino-Korean Honil kangni yŏktae kukto chi to. On the so-called ‘Kangnido Maps’ see Sugiyama Masaaki 杉山正明, ‘Tōzai no sekaizu ga kataru jinrui saisho no daichihei 東西の世界図が語る人類最初の大地平’ (The first major horizon of humankind represented in the maps of the world of East and West), in Fujji Jōji, Sugiyama Masaaki, Kinda Asahiro (eds.), Daichi no shōzō: ezu, chizu ga kataru sekai (The portrait of the Earth: the world represented through images and maps), Kyoto, Kyoto daigaku gakujutsu shuppan kai, 2007, p. 54-83 and Miya Noriko 宮紀子, Mongoru teikoku ga unda sekaizu モンゴル帝国が生んだ世界図 (The map of the world conceived by the Mongol Empire), Tokyo, Nihon keizai shinbun shuppansha, 2007. Both Sugiyama and Miya significantly innovated and expanded the research on the ‘Kangnido maps’ in particular with respect to the main article available in English: Gari Ledyard, ‘Cartography in Korea’, in John Brian Harley and David Woodward (eds.), The History of Cartography, Vol. 2, Book 2: Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1994, p. 244-249, 265-267, 284, 289-291. See Silvio Vita, ‘La mappa del mondo dell’impero mongolo,’ in Francesco D'Arelli, Pierfrancesco Callieri (eds.), A Oriente: città, uomini e dei sulle vie della seta, Milan, Mondadori Electa, 2011, p. 94-95; see also Angelo Cattaneo, ‘Il lungo viaggio della cartografia universale attraverso il mondo islamico, la Cina, la Corea e il Giappone (sec. XIV-XVI). Studio della carta universale Honil kangni yŏktae kukto chi to (Corea, c. 1479-85) in una prospettiva comparata’, in Maria Angelillo (ed.), Culture, religioni e diritto nelle società dell'Asia Orientale, Rome, Bulzoni, 2010, p. 177-200. I am grateful to Sugiyama Masaaki, Miya Noriko and Silvio Vita for both sharing and discussing with me their research.

47 For a still useful list of nanban cartographic byōbu see Unno, ‘Cartography in Japan’, art. cit., p. 461-463.

48 Fukui (Fukui Prefecture), Jōtoku-ji (浄徳寺), Pair of nanban screens, late 16th century (1595?), color on paper, 148.5x364 cm.

49 Tokyo, The Imperial Household Agency, Pair of eight-fold nanban screens, Momoyama to Edo period, early 17th century, color on paper, 178.6×486.3. See http://www.kunaicho.go.jp/e–culture/sannomaru/syuzou–10.html.

50 Tokyo, Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Pair of nanban screens, Momoyama to Edo period, early 17th century, color on paper, 166.7x700 cm.

51 Kobe, Kosetsu Museum of Arts, Pair of nanban screens with the Battle of Lepanto, Momoyama to Edo period, early 17th century, color on paper, 153.5x370 cm.

52 For an interesting analysis of the byōbu displaying the battle of Lepanto, see Jay A. Levenson and Julian Raby, ‘A Papal Elephant in the East: Carthaginians and Ottomans, Jesuits and Japan,’ in New Studies on Old Masters. Essays in Renaissance Art in Honour of Colin Eisler, Toronto, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2011, p. 49-67.

53 Alexandra Curvelo, ‘Copy to convert. Jesuit Missionary Artistic Practice in Japan,’ in Rupert Cox (ed.), The Culture of Copying in Japan. Critical and Historical Perspectives, London, Routledge, 2008, p. 111-127.

54 Sakamoto Mitsuru, Nanban byōbu shūsei (A Catalogue Raisonné of the Nanban Screens), Tokyo, Chūōkōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2008, Pl. 91.

55 H. Cieslik, ‘The Case of Christovão Ferreira’, Monumenta Nipponica, 29, 1974, p. 32-40.

56 Hiraoka Ryuji, ‘The Transmission of Western Cosmology to Sixteenth-Century Japan,’ in Luís Saraiva and Catherine Jami (eds.), The Jesuits, The Padroado and East Asian Science (1552-1773), Singapore, World Scientific Publishing, 2008, p. 81-98. For the first translation into a European language of the Kenkon Bensetsu: José Miguel Pinto dos Santos, A Study in Cross-Cultural Transmission of Natural Philosophy: the Kenkon Bensetsu, Ph.D Dissertation, Lisbon, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2012.

57 For the most recent systematic catalogue of ninety-one nanban byōbu, with excellent reproductions in colors, see Sakamoto Mitsuru (ed.), Nanban byōbu shūsei (A Catalogue Raisonné of the Namban Screens), Tokyo, Chūōkōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2008 (In Japanese; summary and list of screens also in English). The Catalogue Raisonné of Nanban Screens establishes the total of known examples at ninety-one. This should not be taken as a definitive figure. For instance, a recent exhibition Portugal, Jesuits, and Japan: Spiritual Beliefs and Earthly Goods held at the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, in 2013, displayed a pair of nanban screens by Kanō Naizen unknown to Sakamoto, increasing his total by one. See Victoria Weston (ed.), Portugal, Jesuits and Japan: Spiritual Beliefs and Earthly Goods, Boston, McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College (Distributed by the University of Chicago Press), 2013, p. 92-93.

58 Victoria Weston, ‘Unfolding the Screen: Depicting the Foreign in Japanese Nanban byōbu’, in Ibid., p. 79-89, here p. 80.

59 See an extraordinary passage of Giulio Aleni’s biography of Matteo Ricci in Chinese: Giulio Aleni (1582-1649), Daxi Xitai Li Xiansheng Xingji / Vita del Maestro Ricci, Xitai del Grande Occidente; a cura di Gianni Criveller, Brescia, Fondazione Civiltà bresciana, Centro Giulio Aleni, 2010, p. 55. See also Pasquale D’Elia (ed.), Il mappamondo cinese del p. Matteo Ricci S. I. conservato presso la Biblioteca Vaticana Fonti ricciane…, 1938, and Margherita Radaelli, Il mappamondo con la Cina al centro. Fonti antiche e mediazione culturale nell’opera di Matteo Ricci S. J., Pisa, Edizioni ETS, 2007.

60 Nakamura Hirosi, ‘The Japanese Portolanos of Portuguese Origin of the XVIth and XVIIth Centuries’, Imago Mundi, 18, 1964, p. 24-44.

61 Unno, art. cit., p. 393-394.

62 Ibid., p. 377-379.

63 See this most interesting post-scriptum to a letter written by Father Laurenço Mexia S. J. (1582-1584) from Macao in December 1584: ‘Desta casa de Maquao de la Compañía de Jesus 8. de Deziembre de 1584. Despues desta scrita uino el padre francisco Cabral de Xanquin, y conto como le mostraron los Chinas amor, y el regidor de la tierra le embio una pieça de seda con dos mapas, que el padre Mattheus Riçio hizo estampar. Baptizo a 2. Personas principales, que ya auia meses que se catequizauan, espera se que per su medio ha nuestro sor de conuertir a otros,’ Rome, Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Jap.Sin 9-II, ff. 322-324v (f. 324v). Quoted in Curvelo, op. cit., p. 530. I am particularly grateful to Alexandra Curvelo for sharing with me this document and calling my attention to this passage. On Father Mexia see Pedro Lage Reis Correia, ‘Francisco Cabral and Lourenço Mexia in Macao (1582-1584): Two Different Perspectives of Evangelisation in Japan’, Bulletin of Portuguese-Japanese Studies, 15, 2007, p. 48-77.

64 Berkeley, University of California, East Asian Library, call number: Byobu 1 SPEC-Map. Pair of six-fold screens. First screen: map of Japan of the so-called ‘Jōtoku-ji type’; second screen: map of the world derived from Matteo Ricci’s 1602 planisphere. The verso are also decorated with representations of the Tōkaidō (Eastern Sea Road). [1640]. Ink, color, gold and gold leaf on paper 71x230 cm.

65 On the collaboration among Ricci, Li Zhizao, and Zhang Wentao, see Aleni, op. cit., p. 40, 55, 70-71.

66 While Unno’s list of byōbu is crucial for advancing the research, his analysis considered exclusively the geographic contents of the folding screens. Iconographic contents such as city views, representations of people, historical events, emperors, were not, or just superficially, considered. For this reason, the author of this essay is preparing a catalogue raisonné of cartographic nanban byōbu, under the auspices of the Japan Foundation. The goal is to reconsider this Japanese corpus of documents analyzing their textual and visual contents.

67 Charles Ralph Boxer, The Great Ship from Amacon. Annals of Macao and the Old Japan Trade 1555-1640, Lisbon, Centro de Estudos Históricos ultramarinos, 1959. More recently, see Rui de Ávila Lourido, A rota marítima da seda e da prata: Macau-Manila, das origens a 1640, Lisbon, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, MA Theses História dos Descobrimentos e da Expansão Portuguesa, 1995; Curvelo, op. cit., in particular the chapters ‘Macau e a missão da China’ and ‘O Vice- reinado da Nova-Espanha’, p. 351-493.

68 Alexandra Curvelo, ‘Introduction’, in Encomendas Namban. Os Portugueses no Japão na Idade Moderna / Namban Commissions. The Portuguese in Modern Age Japan, Lisbon, Fundação Oriente Museu, 2010, p. 11-27.

69 ‘As Ilhas do Japão estão situadas naquella parte do Oceano que devide entre sy as duas [sic] continentes e grandes partes do mundo, Asia, e Nova-Espanha, e a America, ou mundo novo, que parece as poz a natureza no meyo daquelle seyo do mar (...)’. João Rodrigues Tçuzzu, História da Igreja do Japão, Livro I, Capítulo 2: ‘Da descripção e Sitio, e nomes varios das Ilhas do Japão em geral’, p. 64-65. Quoted in Curvelo, op. cit., p. 438.

70 Yonemoto, op. cit., p. 5-6.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Plate 1. Iapam, gyōki map of Japan, oriented to the south, pen and ink on Italian paper, legend and toponyms in Portuguese, 27.6×60 cm, c. 1585.
Légende Florence, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Miscellanea Medicea 97 ins. 91, ff. 2−4.
Crédits © Archivio di Stato di Firenze.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/docannexe/image/329/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 928k
Titre Plate 2. António Cardim, Japponiae Nova & accurata descriptio. Ad elogia Jappanica, Rome, 1646, engraving on paper, 26.5×40.5 cm.
Légende The map was published in António Cardim, Fasciculus e Japponicis floribus... , Rome, Typis Heredum Corbelletti, 1646, folded into the volume between the coversheet and the title page.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/docannexe/image/329/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,0M
Titre Plate 3. Kim Sa-hyeong, Yi Mu, Map of the lands in a single block and of the capitals of the kingdoms of the past dynasties, Ink and colors on silk, 160x140 cm, Seoul, c. 1479-1485, Kyoto, Ryūkoku University Library.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/docannexe/image/329/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 84k
Titre Plate 4. The Battle of Lepanto and the map of the World.
Légende Pair of six-panel screens, ink, gold and colors on paper; each screen 153.5x370 cm, Momoyama to Edo period, early 17th century, Kobe, Kosetsu Museum of Arts.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/docannexe/image/329/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 192k
Titre Plate 5. Left side screen of a byōbu with the representation of China and Korea based on Korean and Chinese sources. Korea is still represented divided into the four kingdoms that predated the Chosŏn unification of the country in 1392.
Légende Ink and colors on paper, 17th century, Kanshin-ji, Kawachinagano, Osaka.
Crédits Reproduced from Sakamoto Mitsuru, Nanban byōbu shūsei (A Catalogue Raisonné of the Nanban Screens), Tokyo, Chūōkōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2008, Pl. 91.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/docannexe/image/329/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,2M
Titre Plate 6. Right side screen of a byōbu with the representation of the New World, two European ships, and two diagrams of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic sublunary and celestial world, based on European visual sources.
Légende Ink and colors on paper, 17th century, Kanshin-ji, Kawachinagano, Osaka.
Crédits Reproduced from Sakamoto Mitsuru, Nanban byōbu shūsei (A Catalogue Raisonné of the Nanban Screens), Tokyo, Chūōkōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2008, Pl. 91.]
URL http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/docannexe/image/329/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,0M
Titre Plate 7. Matteo Ricci, Li Zhizao, Zhang Wentao, Kunyu wanguo quantu, or Map of the Ten Thousand Kingdoms of the Earth, xylograph on six panels of Chinese paper, 182x219 cm, Beijing, 1602, University of Minnesota, James Ford Bell Library.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/docannexe/image/329/img-7.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 616k
Titre Plate 8. Manuscript map of the world derived from the Kunyu wanguo quantu, or Map of the Ten Thousand Kingdoms of the Earth.
Légende One of a pair of six-fold screens; the verso is also decorated with representations of the Tōkaidō (Eastern Sea Road). [1640]. Ink, color, gold and gold leaf on paper, 71x230 cm, Berkeley, University of California, East Asian Library, call number: Byobu 1 SPEC–Map.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/docannexe/image/329/img-8.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 156k
Titre Plate 9. The complex radial system of terrestrial and sea routes that departed from and arrived to the port city of Macao, a major fulcrum in early modern Asian and world exchange and communication.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/docannexe/image/329/img-9.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 152k
Titre Plate 10. Barreto de Resende, Macau, in Livro das Fortalezas da Índia Oriental do cronista António Bocarro, Goa, ms. 1635, Évora, Biblioteca Pública, Cód. CXV/2-1, pl. n.º 47.
Crédits Reproduced from http://www.ub.edu/​geocrit/​sn/​sn-218-53.htm.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/docannexe/image/329/img-10.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 161k
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Angelo Cattaneo, « Geographical Curiosities and Transformative Exchange in the Nanban Century (c. 1549-c. 1647)  »Études Épistémè [En ligne], 26 | 2014, mis en ligne le 01 décembre 2014, consulté le 18 avril 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/329 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/episteme.329

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Auteur

Angelo Cattaneo

Angelo Cattaneo est Docteur en Histoire de l’European University Institute de Florence. Il est actuellement chercheur (« Investigador FCT ») au sein de la Fondation Portugaise des Sciences et de la Technologie (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia - FCT) et rattaché à la Faculté des Sciences Sociales et Humaines de l’Université Nouvelle de Lisbonne (CHAM-FCSH-UNL). Ses recherches prennent en compte la construction culturelle de l’espace du XIIIe au XVIIe siècle à travers l’étude de la cosmographie, de la littérature de voyage, de la naissance de l’atlas et de la spatialité des langages et des religions. Depuis 2012, il est l’un des organisateurs du projet Interactions between rivals: the Christian Mission and Buddhist Sects in Japan (c.1549-c.1647), financé par la FCT. Il est l’auteur de plusieurs publications parmi lesquelles on peut citer l’ouvrage Fra Mauro’s Mappa mundi and Fifteenth-Century Venice (Brepols, 2011). De plus, il a co-édité les volumes The Making of European Cartography (Olschki, 2003) et Humanisme et découvertes géographiques (Médiévales 58, 2010). Ses recherches ont été aussi soutenues par des bourses de post-doctorat de la FCT et du C.N.R.S., par la I Tatti-Harvard University Fellowship et par la Japan Foundation Fellowship.

Angelo Cattaneo holds a Ph.D. in History from the European University Institute in Florence. Currently he is a researcher of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (« Investigador FCT ») based at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the New University of Lisbon (CHAM-FCSH-UNL). His research revolves around the cultural construction of space from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, by studying cosmography, cartography, travel literature, the birth of the atlas, and the spatiality of languages and religions. Since 2012 he has been one of the coordinators of the project Interactions between rivals: the Christian Mission and Buddhist Sects in Japan (c.1549-c.1647), financed by the FCT. He authored several publications including Fra Mauro’s Mappa mundi and Fifteenth-Century Venice (Brepols, 2011). He also co-edited the volumes The Making of European Cartography (Olschki, 2003) and Humanisme et découvertes géographiques (Médiévales 58, 2010). His research has been supported by numerous awards, such as the FCT and C.N.R.S. Postdoctoral Fellowships, the I Tatti-Harvard University Fellowship, and the Japan Foundation Fellowship.

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