Scripted Subversions: The First Jesuit Japan Missions Un-Idealized In Early Modern Spanish Jesuit Japonicas

Date of Award

Spring 1-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Spanish and Portuguese

First Advisor

González-Pérez, Aníbal

Abstract

This thesis will analyze two early modern Spanish Jesuit Japonicas: San Francisco Javier, el Sol en Oriente (henceforth El sol) attributed to Diego Calleja SJ, and El niño constante, que es la historia de Chicacata y Chicatora y de don Francisco, rey de Bungo (henceforth El niño constante) attributed to Pedro de Salas SJ. These works of Spanish Jesuit theater respectively celebrate the first Jesuit missions in Japan: those supervised by St. Francis Xavier (1549-1552), and those conducted under Francisco Cabral (1570-1583). However, El niño constante and El sol exhibit unintended, un-propagandistic subversions against the Spanish Jesuit institution, and prevent the Jesuits’ characterizations of the first Jesuit Japan missions as unquestionable successes. Rather, the difficulties, impasses and challenges, experienced by the first Jesuit missionaries in Japan and persistently unresolved by the subsequent Jesuits in Spain, are dramatized by El niño constante and El sol. The Spanish Jesuit institution paradoxically realizes and manifests inconvenient internalizations of the overseas Japan missions, as demonstrated by these Spanish Jesuit Japonicas. El niño constante and El sol’s following, theatrically Japanese characters will be analyzed via extensive, comparative close-reading: El niño constante: Bungo Jezabel, and El sol: Combagio and Fucardono. Component I of this research focuses upon El niño constante’s subversive representations of the difficulties and impasses, derivative of the Cabral Japan missions. Component I: Chapter 1: El niño constante’s Bungo Jezabel, the anti-Catholic female sovereign of the theatrical Bungo, becomes repudiated by her Catholic-inclined spouse the king of Bungo, and loses conjugal and political authority. El niño constante’s poetic justice against Bungo Jezabel seemingly justifies the historical first Jesuit missionaries’ legitimization of the following, theologically controversial incident in the Cabral missions: Bungo warlord Ōtomo Sōrin’s repudiation of Lady Nata. However, Bungo Jezabel prevents this Spanish Jesuit Japonica from achieving a post-factum, theatrical justification of the historical repudiation. Rather, the historical repudiation becomes theologically and literarily difficult to legitimize, as indicated by Bungo Jezabel. Component II of this thesis analyzes El sol’s undermining portrayals of the difficulties and impasses, originating from the St. Xavier Japan missions. Component II: Chapter 2: Within El sol, Combagio, the theatrically Japanese Buddhist prophet later visualized as the hagiographical Giant Indian, apparently personifies the Jesuits’ successful imposition of Catholicism upon Japan. However, the Jesuits’ unidirectional domestication of theatrical / actual Japanese Buddhism becomes ironically disrupted by Combagio. Rather, as caused by Combagio, El sol dramatizes the momentary symbiosis between Catholicism and theatrical / actual Japanese Buddhism. Furthermore, Combagio even represents the ironic de-Catholicization of the theatrical San Francisco Javier. Thus, the backfiring effects of the Jesuits’ accommmodatio of knowing, and subjugating, Japanese Buddhism becomes manifested by Combagio. Component II: Chapter 3: El sol’s Fucardono, the severely anti-Catholic, theatrically Japanese Buddhist priest, showcases vicious religious misogyny. Theatrical Japanese Buddhism is thus seemingly depicted as misogynistic, in comparison to the supposedly egalitarian Catholicism. Even so, the Japanese Buddhist portrayal of religious misogyny becomes probed by Fucardono. Fucardono’s misogyny arises as not as theatrically Japanese Buddhist as El sol asserts. Moreover, Fucardono exposes his apparently theatrically Japanese Buddhist misogyny as not as Other-ed as intended by the Jesuits. Rather, Fucardono’s misogynistic rhetorics and motifs appear in the dialogues of other Jesuit theater characters, including those characterized as virtuous and pro-Jesuit. Thus, Fucardono exposes El sol’s intended Other-ing of the Spanish Jesuit institution’s own misogyny upon the theatrical, non-Catholic Other of Japanese Buddhism. El niño constante and El sol recontextualize the first Japan missions into a religiously and institutionally precarious enterprise, in spite of contemporaneous and scholarly conceptualizations of their success. The Cabral Japan missions and St. Xavier Japan missions’ missed opportunities, incompletions and even failures as an evangelizing project, become uncovered by these Spanish Jesuit Japonicas. El niño constante and El sol expose the first Jesuit Japan missions’ persistent, inconvenient and even negative impacts and repercussions upon the early modern Spanish Jesuit institution.

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