Paper short abstract:

As I show from new materials, the Jesuit Visitor Valignano used European theatre and music to present the triumphant Japanese Boys’ Embassy in Japan, both before Christian lords in their home region and the sovereign Hideyoshi—despite an official ban on theatre in a mission context.

Paper long abstract:

In 1582, the Jesuit Visitor Alessandro Valignano began an ambitious public relations campaign: he recruited four boys from among the families of local Japanese strongmen who had converted to Christianity, paraded them before the Pope and various European monarchs, and then published voluminous dialogues in their names in Europe, extolling the value of Christianity for Japan and soliciting donations to the mission effort. This paper focuses on the reception they received on their return to Japan in 1590, which has attracted little scholarly interest despite, or indeed because of, its ambivalences for Jesuit ideals and restrictions, which in this case were honored in the breach by one of the mission's highest ranking members. I introduce previously unstudied original Jesuit letters describing the boys' performances of European theatre and music before Christian lords in their home region and before the more skeptical eye of the sovereign Hideyoshi and his court, who while Valignano and the boys were away had issued the first edict of expulsion. I explore the contradiction and harmony between this diplomatic use of theatre and official Jesuit prohibitions on its use in a mission context, prohibitions which Valignano himself had naturally enforced in previous years. Self-censorship and compensatory measures are resorted to in order to ensure the purity of the presentation, but Valignano largely sacrifices the letter of the law, no doubt because of the urgency of convincing Hideyoshi himself to show no great zeal in enforcing his own edict: that of the expulsion of the missionaries.