Report by Luis Frois on 17th Japan
When William Shakespeare was rising to stardom in London, a genius from Portugal was writing a great report on and history of Japan as he had been sent to the then mysterious country Japan for a mission.
Luís Fróis (1532 – 1597) was a Portuguese missionary.
He was born in Lisbon and in 1548 joined the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). In 1563, he arrived in Japan to engage in missionary work, and in the following year arrived in Kyoto, meeting Ashikaga Yoshiteru who was then Shogun. In 1569, he befriended Oda Nobunaga and stayed in his personal residence in Gifu while writing books for a short while.
His writings include the History of Japan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu%C3%ADs_Fr%C3%B3isHowever the original writings by Frois were not sent to Europe. Only their copies were sent to the Portuguese court in the 18th century. The original documents were stored in a Church in Macau. But, in 1835 a fire broke out in the church to destroy the precious documents.
It was in 1970s that a Japanese scholar found, by chance, missing copies of the History of Japan in a library in Lisbon. This discovery made the History of Japan by Frois complete for the first time.
It was the first book ever written by a European to describe detailed states of Japan, including battles and behaviors of samurais and daily lives and practices of ordinary Japanese, though the Japanese society there introduced was that of the late 16th century.
