Study Guide for Week 4
Assigned Documents
1. PEREIRA, Galeote. "Certain Reports of China..." (1565, translation by R. Wills 1577)
Galeote Pereira was arrested while traveling in China in the mid-sixteenth century; you are reading an excerpt of his account of China based on his travels and imprisonment. The translated text we have provided is taken from South China in the Sixteenth Century: Being the Narratives of Galeote Pereira, Fr. Gaspar da Cruz, O.P., and Fr. Martin de Rada, O.E.S.A., ed. and with an introduction by C.R. Boxer (1953, The Hakluyt Society).
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2. TOKUGAWA IEMITSU. "Closed Country Edict of 1635" and "Exclusion of the Portuguese, 1639."
At the end of the fifteenth century, the Japanese archipelago was an area of diffuse and shifting political domains. There was neither a unifying Japanese identity, nor a centralizing state. During the last half of the sixteenth century, three powerful political and military figures -- Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokogawa Ieyasu -- sought to forge a central ruling authority. They did so through both conquest over, and strategic alliances with, local-level authorities, known as daimyo. Many daimyo resisted. From 1598-1616, central rule was consolidated under Ieyasu's grandson, Tokugawa Iemitsu.
Portuguese traders began regular visits to Japanese ports in the very midst of this dynamic struggle between localizing and centralizing authority, and along with the traders came Catholic missionaries of the Jesuit order. Initially, the priests and traders alike were encouraged, but within a few decades, daimyo opposed to central rule strengthened their position by obtaining firearms through alliances with the Christians/Portuguese. The two edicts assigned to you express the reaction of the centralizing state to this development.
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Questions:
1a. On what specific points, does Pereira regard life in China as superior to life in his own Christendom? (As always, use quotations and page citations in order to give evidence to support your answer!)
1b. On what specific points, does Pereira regard life in China as inferior to life in his own Christendom?
2. The “Closed Country Edict of 1635” and the memorandum of 1639 titled, “Exclusion of the Portuguese,” have typically been characterized by historians as having had the effect of “closing Japan.” There is evidence to support this in the documents, but your task is to look at these documents for contrary evidence. Identify ways in which these official declarations left Japan “open.”