Brazilian Cannibals in Sixteenth-Century Europe and Seventeenth-Century Japan

Abstract

This article follows the transmission of a visual trope depicting Brazilian cannibals from accounts of travelers to Brazil in the 16th century to world maps and popular tales in 17th century Japan. The image of tribesmen roasting human limbs over a fire in woodcut illustrations (such as Theodore de Bry's woodcut illustrations to the captivity of Hans Staden among Tupi indians) provided the iconography for depictions of ‘Brazilian’ people on Japanese world maps, such as Hayashi Jizaemon's 1671 “ Bankoku sozu“, and printed encyclopedias . As this iconography was transmitted to cheaper printed editions, it started to become more Japanese, merging with the concept of ‘Cannibal Land’ and the image of the ‘demon’ (oni) within Japanese culture. This adapted iconography was then included in 17th century illustrations to a scene in the popular tale “The drunken ogre“ (jp. Shuten doji), depicting a cannibalistic feast in the demon's mountain lair. In following this iconographic transfer I compare the ways in which cannibalism was used in the process of defining a peripheric Other, in both 16th century Europe and 17th century Japan. The peripheric location of Brazil in both the European and Japanese worldviews was accompanied by the depiction of its inhabitants as the cannibal Other. As cartographic historian Marcia Yonemoto has shown , the permeability of geographical knowledge throughout Edo period culture meant that representations of space were malleable and ‘commodifiable’ throughout society. The image of the Brazilian cannibal was thus adapted to Japanese culture, to the point of being integrated into 17th century versions of a Japanese popular tale. By following this process, this study reveals how the topological and ontological conjoined in the construction of a marginal alterity against which European and Japanese culture could define itself.