The Jesuit Mission Press in Japan, 1591-1610

[Note: This page appears to be a near-duplicate or a printer's error in the original document, essentially repeating the textual content found on Page 20.]

and Portuguese Vocabulary; the whole comprising about 700 pages. On the title-page of each part is a tolerably-executed engraving from a copper-plate, and both parts bear the date of 1591. Not professing myself to be intimately acquainted with the niceties of the Japanese tongue, I here submit to the reader the entire title-page and imprint of one part, verbatim: "Sanctos nogosagueono uchinnuqigaqi quan dai ichi. Fii en no cuni Tacacunogun Iesus no companhia no Collegio Cazzuza ni voite Superiores no von yuruxi no cô muri core uo fanto nasu mono nari. Goxxuxxe irai. 1591," which pleasant piece of writing is commended to his best attention. Need I add a syllable on the degree of rarity of this curious volume, of which this copy, formerly belonging to the learned Selden, may, perhaps, be unique in Europe? Where Cotton obtained the authority for his so-called town of Takagus in the island of Niphon, I have been unable to discover. It is clear that Tacacu is not the name of a town, but that of one of the subdivisions (gun or kori) of the province of Hizen. FII EN is Fijen, the local pronunciation of what in the dialect of the capital becomes "Hizen." His mistake is the more curious, as he remarks that the book was printed "at the College of Cazzusa, a settlement three miles distant from the town of Arima," which, as everyone knows, is in the island of Kiushiu, not in the larger one which Europeans used to call Niphon. Cazzusa is evidently identical with Katsusa, distant 4¾ miles from Minami Arima, and 6¾ from Kita Arima, on the peninsula formed by the county or department of Takaku.

The seminary seems to have been removed to the island of Amakusa shortly after the date of this book. At p. 52 of the Literæ annuæ japonenses of the years 1591 and 1592, there is a section entitled "De Collegio Canzucano, quod nunc est in Amacusa." At p. 56 of the same we read "P. Visitator [Valignani] tandem Canzucam reuertit," and at p. 57, "Hoc tempore, è principibus viris, qui venerūt salutatum patrem, fuit Dominus Joannes; qui (quoniam Meaco nunciabatur Quabacondonum non cogitare de Patribus restituēdis, foréque necessarium, vt Collegiū Canzucanū ob portus marinī celebritatem, è medio tollatur) operam suam offerebat pro conferuando Collegio, in ditione sua," and lastly, at p. 66, "maxima diligentia vsi sumus, tū in aptādo Seminario, in loco quodā dicto Fachirao, tribus passuū milibus ab Arima disiuncto, tū in locādo Collegio & Nouitiatu in vrbe Amacusa."

The "silk paper" on which the book is printed was probably manufactured from a mixture of gampi (Wikstrœmia canescens) and mitsumata (Edgeworthia papyrifera), and has no more to do with the produce of the silkworm than the so-called rice-paper, upon which Chinese artists are wont to paint for the delectation of the foreigner, has to do with the grain which furnishes the food of their countless millions of fellow-countrymen. Perhaps the earliest writers in Latin spoke of charta serica, i.e., Chinese paper, which later on was interpreted by its other meaning "silk paper."

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

p. 1. TATTOQI APOSTOLOS NARV S. PEDRO. S. PAVLONOGO SAGVEO, NARABINI SONO MARTYRIO NO YODAI COREAMATA no Doutores no qirocu nari. (Lives of the Holy Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, with the manner of their martyrdom: this is from the writings of several doctors—[in reality the life of St. Peter only].)