일본과 기독교의 만남의 과정에서 일어났던 타자의 인식 -예수회의 초기 일본 선교를 중심으로-

Abstract

The beginning of Jesuit's mission to Japan in 1549 was the first encounter between East Asian country and Christianity. This encounter exemplifies how East Asians and Westerners understood each other. Jesuits in Japan endeavored to establish the ground for communication to Japanese. They depicted Japanese as a "white people" which implied Japanese's common nature with Westerners. This image enabled them to get over the dualism of us/them and include Japanese into people like "us".

Jesuit's Accommodative Policy was the result of this recognition. At first, the assumption of missionary policy developed from the recognition of similarity to that of difference between Japanese and Western religion. However. arriving on the phase of accommodative policy, Jesuits could strategically select the similarity or the difference dependent upon their need. Their accommodative efforts in art, building, and ritual were based on their anthropological observations and understanding.

From the view of Ja panese, Westerners, especially Catholic missionaries, had been recognized as double images, that is, both monster and the source of wealth. Especially, Japanese called them as "Southern Barbarian" (Nambanji. 南蠻人) borrowing from Chinese term. It shows the Japanese way of locating Westerners in its cosmology. though its location was at the margin of Japanese cosmos. As time goes on. two contradictory images of monster and wealthy were fused within the exotic word. "Nambanji."