Project Leader
Lucio de Sousa (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
Sub-Coordinator
Eliseu Pichitelli (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
Head Researcher
Victor Laubenstein
Project
The database includes information from two related projects: “The Japanese Diaspora in the Early Modern Period” and “The European Presence in Japan in the Early Modern Period”
Research Objectives
The project, “Europe and Japan in the early modern period (1549–1640),” is born from the desire to rethink the history of Japanese presence in the world during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in a broader and global perspective.
In our first stage, “The Japanese Diaspora in the Early Modern Period,” we study, first of all, chronologically Asian emigration to Europe and to the Americas during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and, secondly, rebuild the Japanese overseas diaspora and the beginning and development of the first Japanese communities in Europe and the Americas. The scientific significance and originality of this work lies in the fact that it clarifies the life of unknown Japanese emigrants in their countries of destination and the social networks to which they belonged and, finally, it also clarifies whether these early Japanese living in Europe and America had any descendants and whether they were assimilated or not by the societies in which they lived.
In our second stage, “The European Presence in Japan in the Early Modern Period,” we rebuild the European presence in Japan and the beginning and development of the first European communities in Hirado and Nagasaki. The scientific significance and originality of this work lies in the fact that it clarifies the life of unknown European emigrants settled in Japan and the social networks to which they belonged.