Creating the Otherness: Mind and emotions in the European making of 16th-century Japanese people

The Japanese man of the 16th century is presented Europe by the hand of the Society of Jesus, who built an image according to the reality of the European world, playing very skillfully with mind and emotions, two concepts that had an impact here determinant in the discovery of a new culture. The Jesuits’ letters arrive in Europe full of information, and we managed to capture the difficulty that was, for the religious people, due to the tight control of the institution, to balance mind and emotions, in a constant dialectic and dynamic that determined the way Europeans understood others and themselves. The mind is present for the need to adapt the information to the rules and the objectives that Society of Jesus intends to achieve, but emotions are also there because those who write and describe the Japanese reality cannot be totally rational and impartial. We try to verify objectivity and impartiality in the image of Japan and the Japanese man that the Jesuits presented to Europe because, in fact, Japanese culture and especially the Japanese people in the European mind are a creation of the Society of Jesus. We try to capture what comes from reason and emotion, which is not always easy because these two elements are almost always present inseparably.