Letters from Exile: Jesuit Knowledge Production on Japan in the Wake of the “Christian Century” (1640–70)

Most accounts of the Japanese mission stop at the expulsion, the martyrdoms, or Ferreira's apostasy. This article follows the Jesuits into the strange afterlife of the “Christian Century”: three decades (1640–70) in which the Society, banished from Japan, went on writing about it — gathering intelligence through informants scattered across East Asia and composing annual letters about a country none of the writers could visit. González-Bolado is interested in how such exile-knowledge was made credible: the narrative techniques and sourcing claims that let reports on an inaccessible Japan circulate with authority in Europe.

For this site's readers the appeal is direct: it is the scholarly frame around our articles on the aftermath of sakoku and the last embassies — what the losing side did with the loss. (Assessment based on the published abstract; the full article is open access at the DOI above.)

Related articles on Nanban.pt

• Behind Closed Doors: How Japan Reinvented Itself in Isolation
• Cristóvão Ferreira: The Fallen Jesuit of Japan
• The Last Ship: Portugal’s Final Embassy to Japan, 1644–1647
• Sakoku: How and Why Japan Closed Its Doors

Reviewed by Nanban.pt editorial, 2026-07-04.

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