Converting the cityscape: emotions, religion and civic ritual in the renaissance city for the Tenshō embassy

In 1583, the Jesuit Visitor to the East Indies, Alessandro Valignano, assembled four adolescent Japanese converted Christians of noble extraction to send to Europe. Valignano planned to use the boys as examples of the mission’s possibilities to justify his request for increased financial support. However, Valignano did not anticipate other Italian cities, like Florence and Venice, would compete to receive the Japanese. The rulers of these cities co-opted the boys’ arrival for their own political ends. The rulers incorporated the boys into the Italian cityscape to communicate fear, pride and anxiety in reaction to the Reformation and Spanish imperialism. This chapter explores the place of emotion in shaping the rulers’ utilization of the Japanese converts in, on and through the cities’ physical spaces. Analysing the role of architecture to express pride, ambition and fear offers an alternative understanding of what it felt like to be a citizen of these cities during a time of vast change.