No Copy in Japan, No Copy in America

[JAPAN].

CABRAL, Francisco.

Nouveaux Advis de l’Amplification du Christianisme és pays & Royaumes du Iappon, Envoyees au R. P. General de la compagnie du nom de Iesus….

Lyon, Benoist Rigaud, 1580.

8vo (17 x 10.5 cm). 37, [3] pp. (last two pages blank). Woodcut printer’s emblem on title page. Bound in old vellum, endpapers renewed.

Extremely rare second French edition (first, 1579) of this Jesuit relation from Japan, composed by the Portuguese missionary Francisco Cabral. Such early Jesuit letters, as well as offering some of the first Western glimpses from inside Japan, tell of unparalleled success in proselytizing, in stark contrast to the tales of persecution and martyrdom under Japanese rulers from the late 16^th century onwards. According to Laures Kirishitan Bunko Database online, this is a French translation of Cabral’s letter of September 9, 1576. (For a complete list of editions, see Laures; the relative chronology of extant versions, of which none seems to have been published before 1579, appears to be unknown.) Further, according to Laures, there is no copy of this edition in either Japan or America.

Francisco Cabral (1528-1609), who was stationed in Japan as Vice-Provincial of the Order, tells here of his triumphant attempts to convert lay people, royalty, and indeed entire monasteries of Buddhist monks to the Roman Catholic faith. Much of Cabral’s narrative concerns one of his most important converts: the King of Bungo’s second son. Against the strongest wishes of his father, who desired him to become a Bonze, or Buddhist monk, the Prince decided to become a Catholic and takes the name Etienne upon conversion, becoming a model Christian for his fellow citizens. He is one of over 20,000 converts (including the Bonzes of no less than 60 monasteries) cited by Cabral. 

The letter is punctuated by Cabral’s occasional cultural observations: he finds the Japanese “the most virile and sensual people he has ever seen” and comments upon the “courtisans” of Japan, all between 17 and 25 years of age but very badly nourished. Missing the mark only slightly, he remarks that the Japanese pray to their gods whom they call “Pagodi” – evidently a reference to Buddhist places of worship. References to rulers and their territories are frequent throughout Cabral’s letter but are difficult to identify with their modern cognates. A copy of a letter from the “King of Tosa”, for example, is appended to the present work. In it the king declares that he is so overcome with faith in the new religion that he wishes Cabral to personally baptize him.

Cabral comes out as something of a backward villain in Boxer’s The Christian Century in Japan, famous for having advocated a policy of “keeping the Japanese in their place” (p. 211). He headed Portuguese Jesuit missionary efforts in Japan from 1570 to 1581 before returning to India (via Macau).

The present Lyon imprint is unrecorded on OCLC, KvK, or the CCF, but is noted in De Backer/Sommervogel, who, however, had not seen the earlier 1579 Paris edition. OCLC records two copies of the 1579 edition, at Bibliothèque Marazine and the University of Bern; Laures online notes two copies of the same edition, both in Japan (Tenri Central Library and the University of Tsukuba). A 1582 Paris edition is held by NYPL and U.C. Berkeley.

* De Backer/Sommervogel II, 490; Cordier, Japonica,72: Bibliographie lyonnaise III, 361 (not seen); cf. also the Catholic Encylopedia entry on Japan and Laures Kirishitan Bunko Database (https://digital-archives.sophia.ac.jp/laures-kirishitan-bunko/?lang=en).

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