Derek Massarella is Professor of History in the Faculty of Economics, Chuo University, Tokyo, where he has taught since 1981. His research interests include early modern European-Asian relations, the history of globalization, and seventeenth-century English history. He is the author of A World Elsewhere: Europe’s Encounter with Japan in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1990), co-editor of The Furthest Goal: Engelbert Kaempfer’s Encounter with Tokugawa Japan (1995), and has contributed to a number of other books and scholarly publications. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the International Representative, Japan, for the Hakluyt Society. The late Joseph Moran taught at a number of universities in Britain and Japan. He was Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Stirling from 1991 until his retirement in 1996. In addition to the history of the Jesuit mission in Japan, his research interests included the history of the Japanese language. He was the author of The Japanese and the Jesuits: Alessandro Valignano in Sixteenth Century Japan (1993), and a number of scholarly articles on the Japanese language and Jesuit history.
'...De Missione is still an important document on the Jesuit mission in Japan and on the first Japanese visitors to several European courts, as an English translation, Japanese Travellers finally makes that document accessible to a much wider audience. Moreover, the introduction and annotations tap a broad range of sources on the histories of Europe and Asia in the sixteenth century, as well as primary sources on the Jesuit mission in Japan and the boys' travels, making the book a treasure trove of information and a very welcome addition to scholarship of the period.' Monumenta Nipponica 'This vibrant addition to the works of the Hakluyt Society is of considerable note and finds a prominent place within the renewed scholarly interest in Japan's Christian Century. ' Journal of Jesuit Studies