ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an account of the Indian race and the houses of the Society in India by the Japanese travellers. In the Sumario de la India Valignano stated that not only did the people of the Indies differ from Europeans in appearance, dress, language, customs, governance, and so on, but all, with the exception of the Chinese and Japanese, were black-skinned, although of various shades. The Chinese and the Japanese, on the other hand, were, as Valignano, and other European observers noted, ‘gente blanca’ white people, like Europeans, people of the temperate zone. In the Sumario de la India, Valignano associated dark skin with poverty, nakedness, oppression, disregard for learning, deceitfulness and the loss of the faculty of reason occasioned by idolatry. Such people did not embrace the Christian message as a matter of inner, spiritual conviction like the Japanese but, but rather as a way to escape temporal hardship or as a means to gain reward or favour.
