4to. 15 pp., early manuscript foliation. Fine 19th century blue crushed morocco by Emile Rouselle, double gilt fillets to boards, faux raised bands to spine, tooled and lettered in gilt, corners somewhat rubbed, all edges gilt. Inconsequential foxing and toning, else fine.

The embassy was an initiative of Alessandro Valignano, Visitador of Japan, and according to Boxer “fulfilled his double intention of attracting the attention of Christendom to the splendid progress the Jesuits were making in Japan, and of impressing the Japanese with the power and civilization of

Catholic Europe.”

The Tenshō Embassy departed from Nagasaki in February 1582 and arrived in Lisbon in August 1584. It comprised four young envoys: Mansho Ito (c.1569-1612) and Miguel Chijiwa (1569-1632) were the ambassadors representing three warlords, or daimyō (Ōtomo Sōrin, Omura Sumitada, and Arima Harunobu); these young men were accompanied by Julian Nakaura (ca. 1568-1633) and Martino Hara (ca. 1569–-1629), nobles from the cities of Nakaura and Hizen. The legation also included two Japanese Jesuit brothers, Costantino Dourado (1567?-1620) and Jorge de Loyola (1562-1589), who had studied printing in Goa and who were to acquire further proficiency in printing techniques during their European sojourn, enabling them to print books in the Japanese language, in kana script, after their return to Japan.

In Madrid the embassy was received by Philip II. It also travelled throughout Italy for almost a year, receiving an audience in Florence with Grand Duke Francis I de’ Medici and in Rome with Pope Gregory XIII. A short time after the reception in Rome the pope died, and the envoys were fortunate enough to be able to attend the coronation of the new pope, Sixtus V. The return trip to Japan, by way of Barcelona and Lisbon, took four years, the embassy arriving back in Nagasaki in July 1590.

Cordier, Japonica, 94; de Backer-Sommervogel, III, 1603; Streit, IV, p. 1619; Laures 156 and plate 21; Boscaro, 2a; Boxer, Christian Cent. in Japan, 73 and passim.