Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the significance of the figure of the deceitful Christian conqueror in early-modern Japanese chapbooks, kabuki, and puppet plays, in the context of Japan's engagement with the West and of eighteenth century discourses on Japan and its place in the world.

Paper long abstract:

From around the time of the 1614 expulsion through the nineteenth century in Japan, anonymous texts chronicling the arrival and expulsion of the European missionaries circulated widely in manuscript despite censorship of works on Christianity. Though the narratives of the three main texts differ significantly in focus, they all paint an alarming picture of a Western enemy bent on the conquest of Japan from within. That enemy is the Nanbanjin, a kind of all-purpose Western Other, who rejects a direct military invasion because Japan is protected by its own gods. Instead, he chooses to use religion to gain converts with the expectation that they would then help the Nanban armies conquer Japan and steal its wealth. This Christian/Western villain is not only confined to these tales; his influence is evident in kabuki and jôruri theater of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in which a foreign villain tries to trick people into letting him conquer Japan, and shows up in the anti-Western discourse of the early nineteenth century. Significantly, all these discourses paint the same picture of the deceitful Christian bent on conquest from within, and there are virtually no other representations of Christians during this period. Though the actual missionaries abandoned any plans for insurrection early on, the potential threat they posed was fixed in the literary record of their stay as a lasting trauma. The endurance and popularity of these narratives and the tropes they contain point to the importance of the Christian figures in them as repositories for anxiety about Japan's vulnerability to influences and powers beyond its borders. This paper examines the significance of the figure of the deceitful Christian conqueror in the context of Japan's engagement with the West and of eighteenth century discourses on Japan and its place in the world.