Japan on the Jesuit Stage

Haruka Oba, Akihiko Watanabe, Florian Schaffenrath

"Jesuits in the East were a major source of European information on Japan from the late 16th to early 17th century. Not only were they active as missionaries, they also produced linguistic, religious and cultural tracts, regional chronicles, and thousands of Latin plays written in imitation of classical Greco-Roman theatre. An intriguing yet underexplored segment of Jesuit school theatre is that which stages non-classical, non-Western subjects such as Japan, and this volume is the first to present Latin texts of two of these plays alongside full English translations, commentaries and an extensive introduction. The plays in question - Martyrs of Japan and Victor the Japanese - were performed in Koblenz and Munich, in 1625 and 1665 respectively, and have been collected from original 17th-century manuscripts. They were based on specific events which took place in Japan in 1597 and 1613,...