Envisioning Diplomacy - Japanese Ambassadors in Early Modern Europe

Envisioning Diplomacy: Japanese Ambassadors in Early Modern Europe



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English | October 14, 2025 | ISBN: 0271099259, 9780271099521 | True EPUB | 256 pages | 102 MB

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Japan sent its first diplomatic delegations to visit the popes and dignitaries of Europe. European artists portrayed these historic ambassadors―the Tenshō embassy (1582–90) and the Keichō embassy (1613–20)―in numerous oil paintings, frescoes, drawings, and prints. Envisioning Diplomacy analyzes these images―including newly discovered and lost works―within their cross-cultural and diplomatic contexts.

Drawing on extensive and geographically expansive archival research, art historian Mayu Fujikawa investigates how the embassies were received and either assimilated or differentiated at European courts. She nstrates how delegates’ gifts to their hosts, their Europeanized kimonos, and the Western clothes they wore while traveling functioned as tools of soft diplomacy. Fujikawa also shows how printed materials functioned much as news does today, promoting the embassies widely and conveying information about the guests and their striking physical appearance.