THE CIVILIZATIONAL OTHERNESS: THE SIXTEENTHCENTURY JAPAN BY THE EYES OF A PORTUGUESE JESUIT

Abstract

In the sixteenth century, Europe began to know Japan, far away and exotic, through the Jesuit epistolography, particularly by Luís Fróis, who takes to this territory the culture of a new Europe, the Europe of the Renaissance and the Catholic Reformation, making possible a cultural exchange of extraordinary dimensions. It is through the eyes of the Jesuits that Europe surrenders to the potentialities of a territory which is now born for modernity and which warmly welcomes the foreigner, who carries a different culture and a different thought, by blurring the predominantly mental boundaries. The various Japanese realities are highlighted by Fróis in a great edition of the correspondence sent to Europe during the second half of the sixteenth century, called Cartas de Évora. Fróis eyes on the civilizational Otherness are the eyes of an European, a religious, but above all a man who sees, describes and interprets, always conditioned, another man.