More Information In 1627, the Pope, Urban the 8th, beatified twenty-six martyrs, who were crucified thirty years earlier, in Nagasaki, Japan. This beatification was exceptional, not for its sheer speed, but also because they were the first blessed from the new missionary territories. In permitting their cult inside the Franciscan and Jesuit orders, the Church not only recognized the value of their sacrifice. It also confirmed a certain view of Japan as the land of martyrs. This book recreates the process which led to the formation, and the diffusion of such rhetoric on the Japanese martyrs in Europe. In doing so, it showcases a double perspective (“à parts égales”), built on a rigorous analysis of both European and Japanese sources. Integrating such stories to a broader historical and historiographical perspective, it clarifies the impact of the term “martyrdom” in the descriptions of Japan in Early modern Europe – showing how the missionary orders and the Church came to advertise the martyrs of Japan, and the ideological implications, as well as the world-view, such discourses gave birth to. Later, the rhetoric of Japan as the land of martyrs would be amplified and diffused all over the Catholic world. Such “reflections,” in iconography, literature, or even theater, produced an “imaginary Japan,” a land of heroic martyrs, tyrants, cruel executioners, or converted princes, which would haunt the whole modern period.
