Reading Sino-Japanese Chronologies in the Jesuit Mission:

João Rodrigues Tsūzu and his “Tratado do Modo de Contar os Tempos” (1604-1608)

Salvador Valera-Paterna | IH-CSIC, IHA visiting researcher

Gonzalo San Emeterio Cabañés | CEAO-UAM

18 NOV, 18h

Colégio Almada Negreiros – CAN 219

«In Azuchi-Momoyama Japan (1573-1615), Jesuit missionaries found a valuable source of information about the population they sought to convert in historical records. Accessing these sources, however, posed a number of problems for the preachers who had recently arrived in the Japanese archipelago since their contents were not only difficult to read but were also organized according to the practices, habits, and concepts of the local time-reckoning system.

For this reason, the Jesuit João Rodrigues Tsūzu included a treatise on this subject in his Arte da Lingoa de Iapam (1604-1608): the “Tratado do Modo de Contar os Tempos”. In doing so, Rodrigues offered his fellow Jesuits a panoramic view of the local habits related to time, as well as a chronology of the most important events of the Sino-Japanese past from various chronicles obtained from the Kyoto court circles. Our aim with this lecture is to explore the production process of this Jesuit chronology, its function within the apostolic mission, and the view of the Sino-Japanese past that it conveyed.»