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Paper short abstract

This paper analyzes Japanese words found in Francis Xavier’s letters to reconstruct early missionary transcriptions. Focusing on sources before 1591, it examines their spelling conventions and significance for understanding Late Middle Japanese phonology and the history of Japanese romanization.

Paper long abstract

This research focuses on the romanized Japanese lexical items found in the letters attributed to Francis Xavier, written during his time as head of the Jesuit mission in Japan in the mid-16th century. These letters constitute the earliest surviving written examples of Japanese transcribed using the Latin alphabet and represent a crucial, yet underexamined, source for Late Middle Japanese phonology and early missionary transcription practices. Although they have long been studied from historical and religious perspectives, their linguistic value has not been sufficiently explored.

Previous research on missionary linguistics focuses mainly on later printed works, such as Sanctos no Gosagyo, or early manuscripts such as Manoel Barreto’s miscellany, both dating to around 1591. By contrast, Xavier’s letters predate the establishment of the Jesuit mission press in Japan and offer insight into transcription systems in their early stage. The letters contain Japanese lexical items following mainly Portuguese and Spanish spelling conventions, reflecting how early missionaries perceived and represented Japanese sounds, prior to the adoption of Jesuit mission press in 1591.

By examining orthographic patterns, phonetic representations, and internal inconsistencies, the research identifies which transcriptional features persisted in subsequent systems and which were later modified or abandoned. This approach also clarifies the influence of European linguistic frameworks, particularly Old Portuguese and Early Modern Spanish, on early Japanese romanization practices.

The corpus is based on critical editions of Xavier’s letters, with most of these being copies written by members of the Jesuit order, dating several decades before the first printed edition of Sanctos no Gosagyo, resulting in a diverse dataset with a wide range of textual differences. These differences are treated not as simple errors but as evidence of the missionaries’ developing Japanese linguistic competence and the influence of European languages.

By focusing on Xavier’s letters, this research demonstrates their value for reconstructing early and otherwise undocumented transcription systems such as that of Juan Fernandez, contributing to the fields of Japanese historical linguistics, missionary linguistics, and broader discussions of early modern language contact.