Interactions Between Rivals: The Christian Mission and Buddhist Sects in Japan (c.1549-c.1647)

Angelo CATTANEO

Angelo Cattaneo is a Researcher for the CNR – National Research Council of Italy, based at the ISEM – Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea, and an Affiliated Researcher of CHAM – Centre for the Humanities (NOVA FCSH, Lisbon). His research centres on two main topics which span from the 13^th to the 17^th centuries: the cultural construction of space (studying cosmography, cartography, travel literature and the spatiality of languages and religions); and the history of cross-cultural encounters at the interface of the European (in particular Portuguese) and Asian empires, focusing on Catholic missions and trade. He was the PI of the exploratory project The Space of Languages. The Portuguese Language in the Early Modern World (FCSH NOVA, 2015–2017). Amongst his current projects, he is pursuing the study of the corpus of Japanese nanban ‘world map’ folding screens, and the history of the first contacts of world languages and cultures in early modernity from a global perspective.

Alexandra CURVELO

With a PhD in History of Art on Nanban Art and its circulation between Asia and America (c.1550–c.1700), Alexandra Curvelo is Professor at NOVA FCSH, Lisbon, Researcher and Board member of the Art History Institute (IHA / NOVA FCSH), and Affiliated Researcher of CHAM – Centre for the Humanities (NOVA FCSH). She is the author and/or editor of several books, including Nanban Folding Screens Masterpieces. Japan-Portugal XVIIth Century (Chandeigne, 2015), book chapters and scientific articles. From 2010 to 2016, she was the editor in chief of the Bulletin of Portuguese-Japanese Studies. Among others, she was co-curator of the exhibitions A Striking Story: Portugal-Japan 16th – 20th Centuries (Lisbon, 2018/19); Portugal, Jesuits, and Japan: Spiritual Beliefs and Earthly Goods (Boston, 2013), and Scientific Curator of the exhibition Nanban Commissions. The Portuguese in Modern Age Japan (Lisbon, 2010/11). Her research focuses on the visual and material culture of early modern Japan during the Iberian presence and on processes of cultural transfers between Asia and the Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Linda Zampol D’ORTIA

Linda Zampol D’Ortia is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and Australian Catholic University. She obtained her PhD in Religious Studies and History from the University of Otago (New Zealand), in 2017, with the dissertation The Cape of the Devil. Salvation in the Japanese Jesuit Mission Under Francisco Cabral (1570–1579). She was adjunct lecturer at Ca’ Foscari University, where she taught “Early modern Christianity in Japan”; she has published articles and book chapters on related topics. She has held research fellowships at the Centre for Religious Studies of Ruhr University Bochum, at the National Library of Australia, and the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Spiritualities of the Giorgio Cini Foundation.

Lucia DOLCE

Lucia Dolce (PhD Leiden University, 2002) is Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhism at SOAS University of London, and Chair of the Centre for the Study of Japanese Religion and of Centre of Buddhist Studies. She has published extensively, in English and in Japanese, on the hermeneutical and ritual practices of Japanese Buddhist traditions, in particular Nichiren Buddhism and Tantric Buddhism; on ritual iconography; and on Shinto-Buddhist combinatory cults.

Daniele FRISON

Graduated in Japanese Language and Culture from “La Sapienza” University of Rome (2009), Daniele Frison holds a Ph.D. in History of the Portuguese Discoveries and Expansion from the New University of Lisbon (2014) with a dissertation entitled The Nagasaki-Macao trade between 1612 and 1618: Carlo Spinola SJ Procurator of Japan. His research focuses on the cultural exchanges between Europe and Asia, specifically on the history of the mission and the evangelization of Japan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from global perspective. His most recent works include “A face hidden behind the façade. New evidences about Carlo Spinola’s authorship of the project of São Paulo’s Church” (Review of Culture 55, 2017), “The Jesuit monopoly of the souls in Japan from its beginnings to its end” (in Il Grande Viaggio. La missione giapponese del 1613 in Europa, 2019), and the entry “Carlo Spinola”, in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (vol. 93).

Frédéric GIRARD

Frédéric Girard is Emeritus Professor of the French Institute of Oriental Studies, specializing in classical Japanese studies, works in the fields of historical, philological and social sciences relating to the history of Buddhism and the religions of Japan. He works on the fundamental texts of the Avatamsaka current, from India to Japan, on the classical texts of Sino-Japanese Zen, with an emphasis on the work of Dōgen (1200–1253) and on philosophy in Japan, currently on the Christianity-Buddhism dialogues and intellectual exchanges. He makes inquiries through classical works touching the arts (Nō, tea, martial arts) and more modern. He taught Japanese Buddhism, Religions and Thought in the École Pratique des Hautes Études (History and Philology Section), at Geneva University, and Waseda University. He gained the Shibusawa-Claudel Prize 1992 and the International Prize of Kanazawa University, 2018. He is the author, among others, of Dōgen’s Dialogues in China, Geneva, Droz, 2017.

Yoshie KOJIMA

Max MOERMAN

D. Max Moerman (Ph. D. Stanford University, 1999) is Professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures, Barnard College, Columbia University and Co-Chair of the Columbia University Seminar on Buddhist Studies. His research interests lie in the visual and material culture of pre-modern Japanese Buddhism. His publications have examined such topics as the burial of Buddhist sutras and images; the death of the Buddha in medieval painting and Edo-period print culture; islands of women in the history of Japanese cartography; narrative and iconographic traditions of lepers and hot springs; woodblock printed talismans used in feudal oaths and legal disputes; and the history of the Japanese Buddhist cartography. He is the author of Localizing Paradise: Kumano Pilgrimage and the Religious Landscape of Premodern Japan (2005) and The Japanese Buddhist World Map: Religious Vision and the Cartographic Imagination (2021).

Ana Fernandes PINTO

Ana Fernandes Pinto is Researcher at CHAM – Centre for the Humanities (NOVA FCSH, Lisbon). She holds a PhD in History on The Missionary Narrative on Catholics Martyrs in Japan (1598–1650). She teaches in the Master of History of the Portuguese Empire at NOVA FCSH, and she is the editor in chief of the Bulletin of Portuguese and Japanese Studies (CHAM).

Author of the book Uma Imagem do Japão. A Aristocracia Guerreira Nipónica nas Cartas Jesuítas de Évora, 1598 (Macau: 2004) and of several scientific articles. Coordinator and co-author of a Data Collection with references to Buddhist sects, systems of beliefs, and practices in missionary writings within the research project Interactions Between Rivals. The Christian Mission and Buddhist Sects in Japan (c.1549–c.1647).

She was co-curator of the exhibition A Striking Story: Portugal-Japan 16th – 20th Centuries (Lisbon, November 2018–March 2019), and scientific and editorial co-coordinator of its catalogue, which won APOM’S prize for Best Exhibition Catalogue (2019).

Martin Nogueira RAMOS

José Miguel Pinto dos SANTOS

José Miguel Pinto dos Santos holds a doctorate in History from NOVA-FCSH with a thesis on the process of cross-cultural transmission of natural philosophy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Japan. He is Guest Professor (Global) at Keio University-Faculty of Letters, and Researcher at CHAM – Centre for the Humanities (NOVA FCSH, Lisbon). His research focus is on Japanese intellectual history during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He has edited the doctrine written by Marcos Jorge, Padre Marcos Jorge, S.J.: Doutrina Cristã escrita em dialogo para ensinar meninos (Lisboa: Paulus, 2016) and, with António Guimarães Pinto, the Portuguese translation of the catechism authored by Alessandro Valignano, S.J., Catecismo da Fé Cristã, no qual se mostra a verdade da nossa santa religião e se refutam as seitas japonesas (Lisboa: Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau, 2017).

Carla TRONU

With a PhD in History on Sacred space and ritual in early modern Japan: the Christian community of Nagasaki (1569–1643) (SOAS, University of London), Carla Tronu is an Associate Professor at Kansai University of Foreign Studies and Associate Researcher at Kyōto University. Author of several articles and book chapters including “The Post-Tridentine Parish System in the port city of Nagasaki”, in Nadine Amsler et al. (eds.), Catholic Missionaries in Early Modern Asia (Routledge, 2020). She held postdoctoral research positions at Tenri University (JSPS 2014–2015), the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture (2015–2016), and Kyōto University (JSPS 2016–2019). She has been a member of competitive research projects in Spain, Portugal and Japan and is currently the PI of a KAKENHI Project ‘Laity in the Early Modern Japanese Mission: Confraternities and Missionary Rivalry’ (2020–2023).