Conquering Demons: The "Kirishitan," Japan, and the World in Early Modern Japanese Literature Hardcover – January 4, 2013

Conquering Demons examines the origins and influence of three popular anti-Kirishitan (anti-Christian) works from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These sensational fictional accounts of a near conquest of Japan by a kind of mythical Kirishitan, who used money and magic to gain converts in their attempt to take over Japan, are studied in the context of the publication trends of the time they were produced, as well as of the cultural and political attitudes toward Christianity that prevailed when they were written. The book also analyzes the representations of Japan and the Kirishitan that appear in these texts in the context of contemporary discourses on the world and Japan's place in it. New maps and information brought by the missionaries and traders to Japan reflected a world that looked very different from the traditional Sino-centric one. These anti-Kirishitan popular narratives meet the challenge of this new world by expelling it and reasserting the conventional three-re Read more