Self through the Other : production, circulation and reception in Europe of written sources on Japan in the "Christian century"

The first encounter between Europe and Japan, between the second half of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century (in the time-period commonly, and not without controversy, known as the “Christian century” of Japanese history), generated a huge amount of direct sources, in European languages, on Japan: letters, travel relations, histories, maps, written by missionaries and merchants who often spent significant parts of their lives on the archipelago. Some of such materials were merely circulated in manuscript form among the circles of the clergy and of professional readers. More often than not, however, they were given to print, and commercially distributed in Europe. The present research aims at introducing the different existing typologies of printed sources, both in term of their contents and from a bibliographical point of view, describing the imaginary they constructed, interpreting it, and evaluating their effective impact on the European public.