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- Convenor:
-
Alexandra Curvelo Campos
(FCSH-UNL)
- Formats:
- Roundtables
- Location:
- Sala 76, Piso 0
- Sessions:
- Thursday 18 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This project aims at promoting a comprehensive research on the way Southern Europeans and Japanese confronted each other, interacted and mutually experienced religious “otherness” through the analysis of diverse sources – manuscript and printed texts written in both European languages and Japanese, architecture, paintings, engravings and maps.
Long Abstract:
The Portuguese expansion in Asia in the early modern period heralded a new age of cultural interactions among several civilizations. The arrival of European traders, mercenaries and well-trained members of religious orders in East Asia prompted a wave of debate, studies and controversies between Buddhist monks and their Western counterparts. At this regard, Jesuits played a major role in this global enterprise and, contrary to their policies in China, in Japan started to interact with the composite Buddhist clergies and the political elite. Relations between religions, strategies of interpretation and accommodation are the main fields in which intercultural contacts can be observed.
The chosen chronology corresponds to the period of the Portuguese presence in Japan and to the process of unification of the territory by the Japanese military elite. This period was crucial in terms of religious affiliation, as it coincides with rival interactions between Buddhist sects and practices and the action of Catholic missionaries, particularly the Jesuits, active in Japan since 1549. In spite of the final edit of expulsion of the religious orders (1614) and the Christian martyrdoms and persecutions, their presence lasted until the expulsion of the Portuguese in 1639 and the last unfruitful attempt to re-establish diplomatic contact (1647).
The comprehensive portrait of these interactions will be studied through four main lines of inquiry:
1. References to Buddhist sects, system of beliefs, and practices in missionary writings.
2. Buddhist influences in Christian literature published in Japan.
3. Interactions between Buddhist and missionary visual culture and ceremonial practices.
4. Interactions between Buddhist and Jesuit scientific cultures.