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A fine, tall copy bound in contemporary calf, rebacked (corners bumped, wear to the extremities, some scuffs and scrapes to the boards, recent endpapers.) Profusely illustrated with an engraved title page, a folding engraved map showing the T?kaid? road from Osaka to Edo (Tokyo) and the sea route from Osaka to Nagasaki; 24 folding double-page engraved views of Osaka, Miyako, Edo, Tsukishima and Kagoshima, and double-page illustrations (such as an earthquake, crucified Christians, and a temple scene). The text is illustrated with smaller engraved images depicting Japanese culture. The contents are in fine condition, with just a small hole on leaf R1 affecting one word, a few light marginal stains, a short marginal tear to leaf R2, and light browning to 6 plates. A detailed and extensive compilation of western accounts of Japan, largely compiled from sources in the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and Jesuit sources and first published the previous year in Amsterdam. It is considered the first major English language work on Japan. The Jesuits in Japan: 1549-1641 Montanus' monumental work contains an extensive account of the activities of the Jesuits in Japan, including accounts of the arrival of St. Francis Xavier in 1549, the early proselytizing efforts of the Jesuit missionaries, the periodic suppression of Christians and the martyrdoms of the 1580s and 1590s, the final expulsion of the order from Japan in 1641, and the Jesuits' attempt to return in the 1650s. Montanus gives a detailed account of the journey of Xavier, Cosme de Torres (d. 1570), and Fernandez from Goa to Japan aboard a Chinese ship. Montanus quotes at length from a number of the earliest Jesuit reports and letters, including Xavier's letter to St. Ignatius Loyola in 1549 and Torres' letter of 1557, in which he describes the customs and character of the Japanese people. There is also an account of the early missionary activities of Torres, Fernandez, and J.B. Montanus in Japan after Xavier's departure, including the composing of plays and songs in Japanese for teaching Christianity. Montanus draws heavily on the works of Jesuit authors, in particular, on those of Cornelius Hazart. The accounts of other Jesuit authors such as Maffei and Acosta are cited for the information they provide on the topography, customs and history of Japan. The work also includes the fascinating details of Valignano's journey to Rome with several converted members of Japanese royalty. Upon their arrival in Rome, the Japanese visitors are given residence at the Jesuit College. There follows an account of the foreigners' audience with Pope Gregory XIII and a vivid description of the papal procession, in which the Japanese participate dressed in their native attire. Montanus recounts the violence visited on Christians after the Emperor Taikosama's edict banishing the Jesuits from Japan in 1587. He also gives an account of the crucifixion of the Nagasaki Martyrs (among them three Japanese Jesuit catechists) at the orders of Hideyoshi 1596, and narrates the final expulsion of the Order in 1641 (for conspiring to bring Japan under the power of Portugal), an event that also marked the end of Portuguese trade with Japan, after which Japan became a closed society, conducting only limited trade with the Dutch. It is in this new atmosphere that the Dutch embassies take place and it is in the context of these that we have our final encounter with the Jesuits. In the second part of Montanus' work, an account is given of four Jesuit priests, captured in 1641, who are tortured and relentlessly interrogated by the Japanese authorities. Their miserable and broken condition is described by sailors from the Dutch ship "Breskens", who are also being interrogated at Edo. When the four Jesuits are finally released, we learn that they had revealed, under torture, that the Jesuit order was planning to send missionaries to Japan secretly to undertake clandestine conversion of the Japanese people. Montanus' Vivid. Seller Inventory # 5095
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