La nouvelle histoire du Iapon, divisee en cinq livres,

; où il est traicte amplement de l’estat de sa Chrestienté, du progrés de la foy Catholique, des grandes persécutions qui y sont arrivées … jusques à l’année mil six cens quinze. Composée en Espagnol par le R.P. Louys Pigneyra … et traduicte … par I.B. Paris : Adrian Taupinart, 1618. Thick octavo, handsome binding by Aquarius of full red calf richly gilt; edges stained red; pp. 16, 879, [10]; early owner’s inscription ‘Grenoble juillet 1782’ to verso of first blank; title-leaf with two sections of restoration at fore-edge, with infill to missing lettering, last few leaves also with some marginal restoration to the edges (not affecting the text), otherwise very good throughout.

This work, translated from the Spanish of Jesuit Father Luis Piñeyro, was one of several collections of accounts of the recent persecutions of Christian missionaries and their converts in Japan that were published in France in 1618, relatively soon after the visit of the second Japanese mission to Europe, the so-called Keichō Embassy, in 1614-15. Others included Balinghem’s Histoire de l’estat de la chrestienté au Iapon; another edition of Piñeyro printed by Jean Foüet; and Lettres annales du Iappon, des annees M. DC. XIII. & M. DC. XI, compiled by the translator, Michel Coyssard. The order of publication of these works, including the two editions of Piñeyro, is not clear. All of these collections were based on eyewitness accounts taken from letters sent to Rome by Jesuit missionaries. Piñeyro’s work also provides an account of the events leading up to Ieyasu’s expulsion edict of January 1614, which led to the exodus of many friars and dojuku who were forced to leave Nagasaki for Manila or Macao.

Cordier, BJ, 291 (noting that on 4 August 1618 both Taupinart and Foüet were granted royal privilege to print this work); cf. Palau, 226933; Pages, 142

The last copy with the Taupinart imprint recorded in the Rare Book Hub database is the Robinson copy in 1988; there is no sale record in the Rare Book Hub database for the Jean Foüet imprint.