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Encounter as Process: England and Japan in the Late Sixteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Nandini Das
Nandini Das*
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
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Abstract

Taking a cue from a fleeting reference to Japan in a remarkably idiosyncratic sixteenth-century language manual, this essay explores the knowledge about Japan that circulated in England before first formal contact took place between the two nations in 1613–14. The cumulative record of fleeting intersections and near-forgotten moments when the two nations came into each other’s circuit demands a reassessment of current conceptualizations of the travel encounter, juxtaposing the traditional view of encounter as a singular significant event, with one that acknowledges the encounter’s rootedness in long-running processes of knowledge making and circulation.

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Type
Studies
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Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 69 , Issue 4 , Winter 2016 , pp. 1343 - 1368
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 Renaissance Society of America

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References

Bibliography

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Oratio Nomine Legatorum Japoniae Habita in Publico Consistorio Romano, XXIII. Rome, 1585.Google Scholar
Parke, Robert The historie of the great and mightie kingdome of China, and the situation thereof togither with the great riches, huge citties, politike gouernement, and rare inuentions in the same. London, 1588.Google Scholar
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Quinn, David B., and Alison M. Quinn. “A Hakluyt Chronology.” In The Hakluyt Handbook, ed. D. B. Quinn, 1:263–331. London, 1974.Google Scholar
Roberts, R. A., ed. 1597. Vol. 7 of The Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Hon. the Marquis of Salisbury, Preserved at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire. London, 1899.Google Scholar
Sainsbury, Noel, ed. 1513–1616. Vol. 2 of The Calendar of State Papers Colonial, East Indies, China and Japan. London, 1864.Google Scholar
Screech, Timon “The English and the Control of Christianity in the Early Edo Period.” Japan Review 24 (2012): 3–40.Google Scholar
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Taylor, E. G. R., ed. The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts. 2 vols. London, 1935.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Üçerler, M. Antoni J., “Alessandro Valignano: Man, Missionary, and Writer.” Renaissance Studies 17.3 (2003): 337–66.Google Scholar
Vaughan, Alden T., American Genesis: Captain John Smith and the Founding of Virginia. Boston, 1975.Google Scholar
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British Library (BL), London, Additional MS 59681. Dee, John. “Brytanici Imperii Limites.”Google Scholar
BL, Harleian MS 6249. Anon. “Of the Relations of Moderne states.” Cited as BL, Harleian MS 6249.Google Scholar
The National Archives (NA), London, Kew, State Papers (SP) 12/195 fols. 212r–220v. Cited as NA, SP 12/195.Google Scholar
NA, Kew, SP 12/243 fol. 26. Cecil, Robert, Earl of Salisbury. “Sir Robt. Cecil to Lord Burghley.” 19 September 1592. Cited as NA, SP 12/243.Google Scholar
NA, Kew, SP 14/111 fol. 201. Wilson, Thomas. “[Sir Thos. Wilson] to the King.” 1619.Google Scholar
Abbot, George Briefe description of the whole world. London, 1599.Google Scholar
Acta Consistorii Publice Exhibiti a S. D. N. Gregorio Papa XIII. Regum Japoniorum Legatis Romae, Die 23. Martii 1585. Rome, 1585.Google Scholar
Barbour, Richmond Before Orientalism: London’s Theatre of the East, 1576–1626. New York, 2003.Google Scholar
Bennett, Josephine Waters. “Britain among the Fortunate Isles.” Studies in Philology 53 (1956): 114–40.Google Scholar
Boscaro, Adriana Sixteenth-Century European Printed Works on the First Japanese Mission to Europe: A Descriptive Bibliography. Leiden, 1973.Google Scholar
Bourne, William Treasure for traueilers. London, 1578.Google Scholar
Braunmuller, A. R. A Seventeenth-Century Letter-Book: A Facsimile Edition of Folger MS. V.a. 321 with Transcript, Annotation, and Commentary. Newark, 1983.Google Scholar
Brown, Judith C. “Courtiers and Christians: The First Japanese Emissaries to Europe.” Renaissance Quarterly 47.4 (1994): 872–906.Google Scholar
Cocks, Richard Diary Kept by the Head of the English Factory in Japan: Diary of Richard Cocks, 1615–1622. 3 vols. Tokyo, 1979–82.Google Scholar
Cooper, Michael The Japanese Mission to Europe, 1582–1590: The Journey of Four Samurai Boys through Portugal, Spain and Italy. Folkestone, 2005.Google Scholar
Das, Nandini “Richard Hakluyt’s Two Indias: Textual sparagmos and Editorial Practice.” In Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe, ed. Daniel Carey and Claire Jowitt, 119–28. Farnham, 2012.Google Scholar
Eliot, John Ortho-epia Gallica, Eliots fruits for the French: enterlaced with a double new invention, which teacheth to speake truely, speedily and volubly the French-tongue. London, 1593.Google Scholar
Farrington, Anthony, ed. The English Factory in Japan: 1613–1623. 2 vols. London, 1991.Google Scholar
Frampton, John A discourse of the nauigation which the Portugales doe make to the realmes and prouinces of the east partes of the worlde. London 1579.Google Scholar
Fuller, Mary Voyages in Print: English Travel to America 1570–1624. Cambridge, 1995.Google Scholar
Galvão, António. The discoueries of the world from their first originall vnto the yeere of our Lord 1555. London, 1601.Google Scholar
Green, Mary Anne Everett, ed. 1619–1623. Vol. 3 of The Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of James I. London, 1858.Google Scholar
Hakluyt, Richard Principall nauigations, voyages and discoveries of the English nation. London, 1589.Google Scholar
Hakluyt, Richard The principal navigations, voyages, traffiques, and discoveries of the English nation. 3 vols. London, 1598–1600.Google Scholar
Hakluyt, Richard A Particuler Discourse concerninge the Greate Necessitie and Manifolde Commodyties That Are Like to Growe to This Realme of Englande by the Westerne Discoveries Lately Attempted. Ed. David B. Quinn and Alison M. Quinn. London, 1993.Google Scholar
Hayward, John A treatise of union of the two realmes of England and Scotland. London, 1604.Google Scholar
Hume, Martin A. S., ed. 1587– 1603. Vol. 4 of The Calendar of State Papers, Spain (Simancas). London, 1899.Google Scholar
Klekar, Cynthia “‘Prisoners in Silken Bonds’: Obligation, Trade, and Diplomacy in English Voyages to Japan and China.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 6.1 (2006): 84–105.Google Scholar
Knapp, Jeffrey An Empire Nowhere: England, America, and Literature from “Utopia” to “The Tempest.” Berkeley, 1992.Google Scholar
Lach, Donald The Century of Discovery. Vol. 1, book 2 of Asia in the Making of Europe. Chicago, 1965.Google Scholar
Lach, Donald A Century of Advance. Vol. 3, book 4 of Asia in the Making of Europe. Chicago, 1998.Google Scholar
Lemon, Robert, ed. The Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Elizabeth, 1581–90. London, 1865.Google Scholar
Linschoten, John Huyghen van. Iohn Huighen van Linschoten his Discours of Voyages into ye Easte & West Indies. London, 1598.10.5962/bhl.title.153963CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lomas, Sophie Crawford, ed. August 1584–August 1585. Vol. 19 of The Calendar of State Papers Foreign, Elizabeth. London, 1916.Google Scholar
MacLean, Gerald The Rise of Oriental Travel: English Visitors to the Ottoman Empire, 1580–1720. Hampshire, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacMillan, Ken “John Dee’s ‘Brytanici Imperii Limites.’” Huntington Library Quarterly 64.1–2 (2001): 151–59.Google Scholar
Massai, Sonia “John Wolfe and the Impact of Exemplary Go-Betweens on Early Modern Print Culture.” In Renaissance Go-Betweens: Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe, ed. Andreas Hoefele and Werner von Koppenfel, 104–18. Berlin, 2005.Google Scholar
Massarella, Derek A World Elsewhere: Europe’s Encounter with Japan in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. New Haven, 1990.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Colin Paul. Sir Thomas Roe and the Mughal Empire. Karachi, 2000.Google Scholar
Moran, Joseph F. The Japanese and the Jesuits: Alessandro Valignano in Sixteenth-Century Japan. London, 1993.Google Scholar
Oratio Nomine Legatorum Japoniae Habita in Publico Consistorio Romano, XXIII. Rome, 1585.Google Scholar
Parke, Robert The historie of the great and mightie kingdome of China, and the situation thereof togither with the great riches, huge citties, politike gouernement, and rare inuentions in the same. London, 1588.Google Scholar
Phillips, Edward “The Life of Mr John Milton.” In Letters of State Written by Mr. John Milton, A4r–b1v. London, 1694.Google Scholar
Pinto, J. A. Abranches, and Henri Bernard. “Les Instructions du Père Valignano pour l’ambassade japonaise en Europe. (Goa, 12 décembre 1583).” Monumenta Nipponica 6.1–2 (1943): 391–403.Google Scholar
Purchas, Samuel Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes, Contayning a History of the World, in Sea Voyages, &; Lande Travels, by Englishmen and others. 4 vols. London, 1625.Google Scholar
Quinn, David B., and Alison M. Quinn. “A Hakluyt Chronology.” In The Hakluyt Handbook, ed. D. B. Quinn, 1:263–331. London, 1974.Google Scholar
Roberts, R. A., ed. 1597. Vol. 7 of The Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Hon. the Marquis of Salisbury, Preserved at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire. London, 1899.Google Scholar
Sainsbury, Noel, ed. 1513–1616. Vol. 2 of The Calendar of State Papers Colonial, East Indies, China and Japan. London, 1864.Google Scholar
Screech, Timon “The English and the Control of Christianity in the Early Edo Period.” Japan Review 24 (2012): 3–40.Google Scholar
Sherman, William John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance. Amherst, 1995.Google Scholar
Shimada, Takau “The Authorship and Date of Harl. Ms. 6249, ff. 106v–110.” The British Library Journal 16 (1990): 187–91.Google Scholar
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay Courtly Encounters: Translating Courtliness and Violence in Early Modern Eurasia. Cambridge, MA, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, E. G. R., ed. The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts. 2 vols. London, 1935.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Üçerler, M. Antoni J., “Alessandro Valignano: Man, Missionary, and Writer.” Renaissance Studies 17.3 (2003): 337–66.Google Scholar
Vaughan, Alden T., American Genesis: Captain John Smith and the Founding of Virginia. Boston, 1975.Google Scholar
Virgil, . Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–VI. Trans. H. Rushton Fairclough. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA, 1938.Google Scholar
Willes, Richard The history of trauayle in the West and East Indies, and other countreys lying either way, towardes the fruitfull and ryche Moluccaes. As Moscouia, Persia, Arabia, Syria, Aegypte, Ethiopia, Guinea, China in Cathayo, and Giapan: with a discourse of the Northwest passage. Gathered in parte, and done into Englyshe by Richarde Eden. Newly set in order, augmented and finished by Richard Willes. London, 1577.Google Scholar
Woods, Leonard A Discourse on Western Planting. Vol. 2 of The Documentary History of the State of Maine. Cambridge, MA, 1877.Google Scholar
Yates, Frances A. John Florio: The Life of an Italian in Shakespeare’s England. 1934. Reprint, Cambridge, 2010.Google Scholar