PREFACE.

Some years ago, during an investigation into the history of printing in Japan, I discovered that the earliest book printed with movable type in that country under purely native management dated to 1596. From various evidence, I concluded that this invention had been introduced around that time from Korea, where it had been in use for over two-and-a-half centuries. I was, however, unaware that there existed in various European libraries at least five separate works, all of earlier dates, printed in Japan with Roman type by the Jesuit missionaries. Thus, the art had actually been practiced on Japanese soil by foreigners for some years before its adoption by the local people. On the other hand, the earliest dated work from the local mission press using Japanese characters belongs to 1598. A letter from 1594 mentions devotional treatises in Japanese using Japanese characters, but these were likely engraved on blocks. It seems possible, therefore—though perhaps not very probable—that the Japanese may have learned the advantages of typography from the missionaries rather than from the Koreans.

From Bartoli, we find that Valignani Alessandro Valignano, an Italian Jesuit missionary who played a major role in the mission in Japan. returned to Japan from Europe on July 21st, 1590, bringing with him a fount of European type, and that the first extant work produced at the new press was published the following year. It forms No. 1 of the present list.

It is only fair to add that I was greatly aided in my searches by the Bibliographie Japonaise of M. Léon Pagès, although it was the Bibliothèque Asiatique et Africaine of Ternaux-Compans that first drew my attention to these books. I am greatly indebted to Bodley's Librarian, the authorities of the British Museum, the National Library and the Library of the Institute in Paris, the gentlemen in charge of the Biblioteca Angelica and Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome, and the Director of the Torre do Tombo in Lisbon for their courteous aid in my investigations, as well as for permission to have facsimiles made of the title-pages of books under their control. I owe also a large debt of