Luís Fróis, the Portuguese who helped to understand Japan
Born in Lisbon in 1532, Luís Frós would join the Society of Jesus in 1548.
In 1565, he joined a Jesuit mission to evangelize the Japanese territory, twenty years after the establishment of relations between Portugal and Japan.
He would arrive in 1566 in the city of Kyoto, where he would be received by Ashikaga Yo####eru, then shogun, commanding general of the Japanese army.
Fróis would eventually settle permanently in the residence of Oda Nobunaga, daimyo who would become known as the great warrior who would start the reunification of the Empire of the Rising Sun, in the city of Gifu.
Luís Fróis developed an in-depth work of understanding and describing the Japanese traditions and culture of the 16th century, writing letters in which he described them to Macau, the Holy See and the Crown.
Having been guided by the Portuguese missionary Gaspar Vilela, Fróis recounted in his letters the civil war that was unfolding around the capital of the Japanese Empire, which were translated into several languages and gained great fame in Europe.
Luís Fróis would finish in 1585 his “Treatise on the Differences between Europe and Japan”, a work in which he explained in detail, using more than 600 examples, that the two civilizations were opposites in their practices, but similar in the fact that they were equally civilized.
Fróis was able to establish the difficult balance between two civilizations that, from the start, seemed to be completely antagonistic, studying Japanese culture in depth without ever putting aside his Portuguese roots.
Proof of his great understanding of Japanese traditions is the occasion when he wrote about the differences between suicide in Europe, a sin for the Catholic faith, and the practice of Seppuku, a Japanese suicide ritual that could be the greatest honor in a warrior's life.
Luís Fróis would die in 1597 in Nagasaki, at the age of 65, but the texts that the Portuguese wrote describing his vast experience of 34 years in Japan are still an unavoidable source for understanding the History and culture of the Empire of the Rising Sun. .
Miguel Louro
"####"= brown substance deposited into toilet before flushing beginning with letter S and ends in T