Mission as laboratory: Attempts to overcome competing world interpretations in Japanese translations of the early Jesuit mission

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The project aims to explore, on the basis of Japanese translations from the late 16th and early 17th centuries, how Jesuits and Japanese converts dealt with competing world interpretations in an effort to create a new order of knowledge and values for a Catholic Japan that was to be uniform and harmonious. Since the Jesuit missionaries took an exclusivist approach to overcoming competing world interpretations, they had to design a vocabulary that could convey Catholic conceptions of the world, humanity and salvation in contradistinction to Buddhist conceptions and that could ultimately guide action. Epistemic competition with Japanese Buddhism existed particularly in the area of conceptions of the body, which in Catholicism included not only normative and cognitive conceptions but also bodily practices such as baptism, self-flagellation and death sacraments. Hence, following an aesthetic-of-religion’s approach, the project examines Jesuit attempts to overcome competing interpretations of the world in Japan by focusing on conceptions of the body and the practices associated with them. The project sheds light on these bodily practices because the acceptance of Christianity in large parts of the population of Japan depended on the cultural translation of concrete actions that had to be in accordance with the doctrinal prescriptions in the texts and sermons. The focus of the project is on the Japanese translation of three Latin language compendia, which were produced in 1593-1595 specifally for the mission to Japan. They comprise the knowledge ratified at the Tridentine Council in its entirety: compendia on philosophy (Aristotle's De Anima), religion (Compendium catholicae veritatis [Compendium on Catholic Truth]) and cosmology (De Sphaera). In Japan, the compendia, chiefly the Catholic tracts, also had the task of teaching bodily practices related to religion. Overall, the translation includes world interpretations from three traditions: ancient Greek, post-Tridentine Catholic and Japanese Buddhist. The project contributes to exploring the content of the Wolfenbüttel manuscript of the translation, which was rediscovered in 2019 and, unlike the previously known, yet incomplete manuscript (Magdalen College, University of Oxford), contains all three parts. Turning away from a Eurocentric perspective, the project investigates the global interconnections and contexts in the experimental linguistic and cultural translation of Catholic conceptions of the body and the confrontations with the competing world interpretations in early modern Japan that were taken into account in the translation and use of the compendia. The project thus makes a new contribution to research on the formation of comparative concepts from a period of lively exchange and encounters in Asia.