Buch, Englisch, Band 151, 240 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 548 g
A New Interpretation in the Light of the Earlier Jesuit Experience in Japan
Buch, Englisch, Band 151, 240 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 548 g
Reihe: Studies in the History of Christian Traditions
ISBN: 978-90-04-19285-0
Verlag: Brill
Society of Jesus Jesuits Franciscans Roman Catholic missions intercultural communicaton New France Japan Paraguay Réductions
Autoren/Hrsg.
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Introduction: Iberian and French Jesuits from an International Perspective
I. Review of Literature on the Jesuit Missions to Japan and New France
A. Historiography of the Jesuit Mission to Japan
B. Historiography of the Jesuit Mission to New France
C. Towards a Synthesis of Historiographies
II. Interpreting Non-Christian Cultures: Jesuit Biases
A. The Jesuit Interpretation of Japanese Culture
B. The French Jesuit Interpretation of Native Culture
C. Jesuit Biases in Interpreting Non-Christian Cultures
III. Preaching, Winning Converts and Educating Them: Evolving Multifaceted Strategies
A. Japan
B. New France
C. A New Paradigm for the Missionary Strategy in New France
IV. Organising a Mission for a Christian Community: Missionary Réductions Reconsidered
A. Prototypes for Amerindian Réductions
B. Comparison between Japan and Paraguay
C. The Réductions in New France in Comparison with the Paraguayan and Japanese Models
D. The International Evolution of Missionary Réductions
V. Accepting and Comprehending Christianity: Non-European Practice of the Religion
A. Problems of Historical Epistemology
B. The Japanese Acceptance and Comprehension of Christianity
C. The Amerindian Acceptance and Comprehension of Christianity
Conclusion: The French Jesuit Mission Revisited
APPENDICES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INTRODUCTION:
Iberian and French Jesuits from an International Perspective
If interpreted in a broader international framework beyond North America rather than just within the regional history of New France, will the existing historical paradigms of the Jesuit missionary activity to Amerindians remain intact? This is the thematic issue that underlies this cross-cultural study. The Jesuit mission in seventeenth-century New France will be analysed as a series of incidents that developed, not simply as a domestic occurrence of North America, but out of the earlier mission of Father Francisco de Xavier in Japan. In this analysis, the Christian mission in Japan will be used as a tool to revise the currently accepted historical interpretations of the French Jesuit mission. Through a diachronic global comparison encompassing the period from the mid-sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century, this investigation attempts to add a new revisionist perspective to the conventional understanding of the New France mission.
More than half a century before French missionaries landed in North America in the early seventeenth century, another Jesuit group had already arrived in Japan. In 1549, the party of Father Xavier arrived at Kagoshima, on the southern tip of Japan. Among his accomplishments, French-educated Xavier had helped to establish the Society of Jesus [SJ] in Paris in 1534. Father Xavier’s contact with Japan was but the first of many such visits. Iberian Jesuits from Portugal, Spain and Italy, under the patronage of the king of Portugal, followed. Although the Jesuit mission to Japan experienced some success during the second half of the sixteenth century, strict legislation promulgated by the Japanese central authorities eliminated the Christian missions in the early seventeenth century. Meanwhile, as the Iberian mission was ending in Japan, the French Jesuits were beginning their own mission to New France.
To understand the mission in New France, it must be discussed within both colonial North American and international contexts. Similarly the mission in Japan must be considered within the context of Iberian colonialism in this Asian country as well as within an international framework. Yet this international context has rarely, until now, been thoroughly investigated by a single historian, either in Japan or in the West. Apparently those researching the history of Japan and those studying that of New France have been unaware of each other’s research. General histories of the Society of Jesus often deal with both missions in separate chapters, but the chapters do not draw comparisons. There is admittedly one historian whose work addressed both missions. Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix, a French Jesuit Father of the eighteenth century, was the first and last individual to do so, but even he dealt with the respective missions in separate volumes with no attempt at synthesis.
It is clear that Japan was no longer an unknown country for French Jesuit authors in the eighteenth century. In 1715, almost thirty years before his own history of New France was published in 1744, Charlevoix completed a series of volumes on the Japanese mission. In this work, he described Jesuit activity there as if he himself had been a missionary in this archipelago. Because eighteenth-century Japan maintained no regular connections with Europeans, except via Dutch merchants, the only way that Charlevoix could have become acquainted with the ecclesiastical history of this oriental country was by reading Jesuit missionary reports on Japan. Joseph-François Lafitau, his French-Jesuit contemporary of the eighteenth century, was also familiar with Japan, though he too had never visited it. In his anthropological monograph on native North Americans, Lafitau refers to Yezo, or today’s Hokkaido, as a possible land of origin for indigenous North Americans.
The Jesuit priests in seventeenth-century New France w
