Gender, Feeling and the Making of Korean Christian Knowledge in Sengoku Japan*

Abstract

This essay explores the production of Korean Christian knowledge in Sengoku Japan by analysing narratives about a vision said to have been experienced by an evangelised Korean woman, which circulated within Jesuit correspondence from Japan and in subsequent publications. These texts, about a convert's journey to diverse netherworlds, made affective experiences central to spiritual perception, and to Jesuit interpretation of faith. They held important implications for how women living in a society permeated by Buddhist beliefs and practices could be represented as producers of Christian knowledge and as faith guides to others, whose bodies did not hinder spiritual perception but rather offered tools for achieving it.