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 : Jean Foüet, 1618. Thick octavo, contemporary limp vellum (remnants of original ties), spine with old manuscript title label; pp. 16, 879, [10]; title-leaf with an early (?)ecclesiastical collection stamp (title-leaf is browned, restored at gutter, has some minor loss at top edge and a short closed tear at fore-edge margin); pale water staining to margins in some sections, but generally very clean and sound throughout, a good copy.

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 Adrian Taupinart; 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.

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

No sale record in the Rare Book Hub database for the Foüet imprint (the last copy with the Taupinart imprint offered being the Robinson copy in 1988).