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Reviewed by:
  • Tanegashima: The Arrival of Europe in Japan
  • Marcia Yonemoto (bio)
Tanegashima: The Arrival of Europe in Japan. By Olof G. Lidin. NIAS Press, Copenhagen, 2002. xiv, 304 pages. £45.00, cloth; £17.99, paper.

In this recent study, Olof G. Lidin is interested in beginnings, specifically in exploring various perspectives on the first encounter between Europeans and Japanese in the mid-sixteenth century. He discusses in considerable detail the arrival of the first Portuguese merchants in Japan and their introduction of the new Western technology of firearms. He discusses more briefly the coming of Christianity via the teachings of Portuguese missionaries. Lidin pays particular attention to primary texts, both Japanese and European, that describe these early encounters and he offers partial and complete translations of several key Japanese and Western-language accounts. Ultimately, [End Page 196] he is concerned with the emergence of a new Japanese consciousness of the world outside of Asia: "Japan's first encounter with Europeans was epoch-making in both Japanese and world history. It meant first of all that Japan's second internationalization began and that the process started that has continued until this day. Before, Japan had been a part of the East Asian world with China at the centre; now it became a part of the whole world" (p.34).

Lidin begins his investigation in the place in which the Japanese-European encounter began: Tanegashima, the largest of a chain of twelve islands off the southern tip of Kyushu (there are helpful maps included in the text to orient the reader). In the first chapter, Lidin recounts, in detailed and fairly straightforward terms, the arrival on Tanegashima of two Portuguese traders in the eighth month of 1543 and the dramatic consequences of this event, the first of which was the introduction of the gun. The two merchants had with them several muskets, which they demonstrated for and eventually sold to the local daimyo, Tanegashima Tokitaka. By coincidence, Tanegashima was an island rich in iron ore and thus had a long tradition of metalworking. One of the skilled smiths on the island, a man named Yaita Kinbee Kiyosada, was charged by the Tanegashima lord with the task of making a copy of the Portuguese musket, which he apparently accomplished within months. News of the musket spread rapidly, largely due to the fact that the Tanegashima lords had traditionally maintained a tributary relationship (solidified by marriage ties) with the Shimazu, the powerful lords of nearby Satsuma, who had contact with domains throughout the archipelago. By 1544, muskets were being manufactured in Sakai and in the Kii peninsula and as any fan of Japanese historical dramas knows, by the 1570s musket corps had become decisive and highly destructive forces in the final battles of the Warring States period.

Lidin adds texture to this narrative of encounter by including translations from the Teppōki (Record of the musket, 1606) and the Tanegashima kafū, both of which describe in some detail the local reaction to the European visitors and their firearms. The awe with which the Japanese regarded the new guns is evident in the words of Nanpo Bunshi, author of the Teppōki: "One shot from this object can make a mountain of silver crumble and break through a wall of iron. Someone with aggression in mind toward a neighbouring country would lose his life instantly when hit....The many ways this object can be used in the world cannot possibly be counted" (p.38). The text is also full of memorable images like that of Tanegashima officials attempting to communicate with the Chinese navigators of the junk bearing the Portuguese by sketching Chinese characters in the sand with sticks. The compilers of the Tanegashima kafū, by contrast, utilize the spare descriptive language characteristic of genealogical records to focus, in the portion of the [End Page 197] text translated here, on the role of the young Tanegashima daimyo Tokitaka in acquiring, reproducing, and spreading the new technology.

The translations of the two texts, which comprise chapters two and three, are followed by a rather digressive discussion of the history of the Tanegashima family as revealed in the Tanegashima kafū(chapter four). Certainly the family history...

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