| NOTA |
(★)(Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Protestant Missions, Two Volumes in One)(With this long-awaited reprinting of Otis Cary´s monumental work ´A History of Christianity in Japan´, a sourcebook of inestimable value is once again made available to scholars, students, and general readers. First published in 1909, it has been out of print since several years after that date, but it has by no means fallen into obscurity, and the continuing demand for it has proved its enduring worth. Of Cary and his book, Edwin O.Reischauer says in his foreword to this new edition :´While more recent scholarship has dealt with much of his subject matter in greater detail, with new materials, and from differing angles of vision, it is a tribute to his thoroughness, careful scholarship, and sense of balance that his two volumes should still be in strong demand more than six decades after their first publication. In fact, since he himself was a major participant during the latter part of the nineteenth century, his judgments and evaluations of this phase of the story are not merely secondary materials but in a sense a primary source in this significant period in the history of Christian missions in Japan.´ In a similar vein, Otis Cary´s grandson and namesake writes in his preface to the new edition :´It may seem odd to republish a work... long since in the public domain. However, if the requests, and even supplications, from libraries are any indication, there is a void that this original work fills in the spiritual history of the inroads of the Christian faith in the older religious fabric of the East.´ Cary´s impressive work, first published in two volumes, appears here in a convenient one-volume edition. The first part deals with Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox missions ; the second, with Protestant missions. The story begins with the arrival of Francis Xavier in Japan in 1549, unfolds through the early successes of the Roman Catholic missions and the subsequent age of hideous persecutions and the virtual extirpation of Christianity in the seventeenth century, and moves forward to its revival in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is in many ways an absorbingly dramatic tale, and Cary tells it exceedingly well. There is small need to wonder, then, that this book should still be in demand far more than half a century after he wrote it.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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