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Podcast: NBN Book of the Day
Episode: Mayu Fujikawa, "Envisioning Diplomacy: Japanese Ambassadors in Early Modern Europe" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2025)
Description: In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Japan sent its first diplomatic delegations to visit the popes and dignitaries of Europe. European artists portrayed these historic ambassadorsâthe TenshĹ embassy (1582â90) and the KeichĹ embassy (1613â20)âin numerous oil paintings, frescoes, drawings, and prints. Envisioning Diplomacy: Japanese Ambassadors in Early Modern Europe (Pennsylvania State UP, 2025) by Dr. Mayu Fujikawa analyzes these imagesâincluding newly discovered and lost worksâwithin their cross-cultural and diplomatic contexts.
Drawing on extensive and geographically expansive archival research, art historian Dr. Fujikawa investigates how the embassies were received and either assimilated or differentiated at European courts...