The Japanese reactions to the missionaries' Christianity in the 16th and 17th centuries

• Grant number: 14/23744-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: April 01, 2015
• End date: March 31, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Modern and Contemporary History
• Principal Investigator: Carlos Alberto de Moura Ribeiro Zeron
• Grantee: Renata Cabral Bernabé
• Supervisor: Shinzo Kawamura
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Sophia University, Japan
• Associated to the scholarship: 14/02510-9 - Japanese reactions to the Christianism in the XVI-XVIIth century Japan, BP.DR

Abstract

The Japanese Christian Mission during the second half of the Sixteenth century was initially under the monopoly of the Society of Jesus. However, in the last decade of the century this monopoly finished with the entrance of the mendicants orders, particularly the Franciscans. The co-existence of these two orders in Japan was not as easy as one could think, and once the situation of the Christian mission began to deteriorate after the expelling Edict of the Jesuits of Toyotomi Hideyoshi , in 1587, the accusations between members of both orders were mutual.However, while Franciscans and Jesuits were arguing about the best method to evangelize, the Japanese were reconfiguring their country politically and socially. The reunification, carried out by Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, together with the Togugawa regime (1600-1868), redesigned the Japanese society from above and placed the foreign and the religion as potentially dangerous elements. The regulations these elements were put under during the Tokugawa Regime had never been seen in the Japanese History before.The way the Franciscans and Jesuits missionaries understood this Christian mission in the European and Christian expansion context of the Modern Age, the Japanese ways of appropriation of this Christianity and the reaction it caused in the Buddhist and others Japanese intellectual circles, as well as in the politics of the Tokugawa, are the main themes we plan to develop in this investigation. (AU)