Alessandro Valignano: education, inculturation and adaptation in Japan

Abstract

The figure of the Jesuit Alessandro Valignano as teacher and visitor of the missions in the East Indies allows us to know a new method of evangelization in Japan at the end of the XVIth and early XVIIth centuries. Far from breaking into the receiving culture, Valignano tried to get the Jesuit missionaries to dialogue interculturally, adapting Christian beliefs to the Japanese way of life.