"Es scheint, die Japaner hätten absichtlich gelernt keinem Volk gleich zu sein." Das jesuitische Japanerbild zwischen Missionsarbeit und Konfessionskonflikt im 16. Jahrhundert

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This paper analyses the construction of a European image of the Japanese during the second half of the sixteenth century, examining accounts by the Jesuits Francis Xavier, Lus Fris, and Alessandro Valignano as well as their contemporary reception. The missionaries produced their ethnographic knowledge in Japan against the backdrop of Jesuit Catholic convictions, order-specific ambitions, and mission-political strategies. Through repeated confirmation and gradual development, the missionaries conceptualised an image of the Japanese to whom pagan, heretical, and post-Tridentine Jesuit characteristics were simultaneously attributed, ultimately resulting in the Japanese being stereotyped as ‘civilised’ constitutive Others. This stereotypical image of the Japanese was subsequently disseminated within the European Republic of Letters via the order’s extensive and efficient information network. It was precisely the stereotypicality of this Jesuit image of the Japanese that enabled a non-denominational reception as well as a canonisation which would endure for over a hundred years.