Arte da Lingoa de Iapam
The accompanying images belong to a primer written by a Portuguese Missionary, João Rodriguez. The primer was written to help Portuguese speakers learn Japanese upon arrival.
The art in the middle of the title page is a christogram, or a monogram denoting the presence of Jesus Christ. The “IHS” in the center is an abbreviation of the first three letters of Jesus in Greek (Iota-Eta-Sigma), which helps pinpoint the intended audience as Christian missionaries to Japan.
The second image shows part of the first page of the primer. Linguistically speaking, it’s amazing to see how Father Rodriguez is looking at the Japanese language and is trying to teach it to his followers. He chooses to describe it using Latin forms, with nominative being a latin subject, genitive showing possession, accusative being the direct object, dative the indirect object, vocative being the addressee, and ablative being an object of preposition. Because he is choosing Latin over Portuguese to explain Japanese grammar rules, it is evident that this was for an audience of the church. However, using Latin also made it accessible to other Europeans, allowing this early primer to be a huge resource for future contact.
In 1604, there aren’t many points of contact between Japan and European countries, so this primer is important to understand the earliest conceptions that both Japan and Europe made about one another.