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In 1587, Toyotomi Hideyoshi issued his famous anti-Christian edict on the pretext that the Jesuits were trading in Japanese slaves. The situation was complicated in 1592, when Hideyoshi ordered the invasion of Korea. As the war economy set in, the large armies required food and supplies, and to sustain them several warlords of southern Japan, including Christians, began to kidnap unfortunate Koreans to bring back as slaves.
In 1598, Father Gnecchi-Soldo Organtino, a Jesuit who had lived in Japan for more than thirty years, responded to accusations of slave trading, during a Jesuit consult held in Nagasaki. My paper delves into the arguments proposed by Organtino, with an analysis of the extent to which the Jesuits were reflecting their own values concerning slavery onto Japanese society. It is known that the Jesuit-sponsored confraternities did engage in what has been called “slave trade,” but was this truly slave trade? In order to answer to this complex question, I will consider how European social values were applied to Japan, and how terms concerning slavery were translated by both missionaries and merchants.