De missione legatorum Iaponensium ad Romanum curiam rebusque in Europa ac toto itinere animadversis Dialogus ex Ephemeride ipsorum legatorum collectus et in sermonem latinum versus ab Eduardo de Sande sacerdote Societatis Iesu is arguably the single most important historical record of the Tenshō embassy sent by the Japanese Christian daimyō Ōtomo Sōrin to Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. Envisioned first by Alessandro Valignano, the embassy of four teenage Japanese Christians, which toured Europe between 1584 and 1590, met Pope Gregory XIII and Pope Sixtus V, King Philip II of Spain, and the grand duke of Tuscany Francesco I de’ Medici. The dialogue of thirty-four colloquia purports to be the notes taken by the four Japanese legati: Mancio Itō, Miguel Chijiwa, Julião Nakaura, and Martinho Hara. In truth, it relied as much, if not more, on accounts of their chaperones, Diogo de Mesquita and Nuno Rodrigues; a lost manuscript authored by Valignano; and additions by Duarte de Sande. The Latin text published in 1590 displays some knowledge of humanist Latin and rhetoric. It was most likely intended to be used in Jesuit seminaries to introduce Japanese to various aspects of European culture.

This Italian translation by Pia Assunta Airoldi, edited by Marisa Di Russo, joins an already crowded field that includes Hisanosuke Izui's Tensh ō nenkan ken-Ō shisetsu kenbun taiwaroku, Eduardo de Dande hen (1942), Izui's expanded De Sande Tenshō ken-Ō shisetsuki (1969), Américo da Costa Ramalho's Diálogo sobre a Missão dos Embaixadores Japoneses à Cúria Romana (1997), and Derek Masarella and J. F. Moran's Japanese Travelers in Sixteenth-Century Europe: A Dialogue Concerning the Mission of the Japanese Ambassadors to the Roman Curia (1590) (2012), to say nothing of a robust discussion in the secondary academic literature. In fact, the Tenshō embassy is one of the longest-studied aspects of the Jesuit mission to Japan, being introduced to modern scholarship by Guglielmo Berchet's Le antiche ambasciate giapponesi in Italia (1877) and Francesco Boncompagni-Ludovisi's Le prime due ambasciate dei giapponesi a Roma (1585–1615) (1904). With this edition, general readers of Italian will be introduced to a text that is otherwise inaccessible. Specialists in mission history, Jesuit pedagogy, and the intersection of humanism and Orientalism in Europe will find much to appreciate as well. Airoldi's translation is expertly annotated with people, places, events, and Japanese words and phrases thoroughly explained. Di Russo's apparatus is especially thorough, including a lengthy introduction and afterword, transcriptions of several supporting documents, and a minutely detailed chronology of events from Valignano's arrival in Japan in 1579 to the five Sakoku Edicts of 1633–39. Di Russo has also curated seventy-nine black-and-white images and forty-five color images to accompany Airoldi's translation. Although a great number of these will be known to specialists, their sheer number, which includes drawings and prints of the protagonists, several title pages, and examples of Mancio Itō’s beautiful handwriting, is especially gratifying. The Jesuits’ world map that illustrates the reverse of a folding screen depicting the Battle of Lepanto is worth the price of the book.

This volume is a worthy companion to Di Russo's collection Alessandro Valignano: Uomo del Rinascimento: Ponte tra Oriente e Occidente (2008). Although the title page shows that she attributes the authorship of De missione to Valignano rather than Duarte de Sande, Di Russo takes a somewhat novel approach to this long-standing scholarly debate. After summarizing the arguments of Américo da Costa Ramalho in favor of de Sande and the counterargument of J. F. Moran in favor of Valignano, Di Russo reminds readers that Valignano did not share our modern concept of authorship. While we cannot deny that Valignano conceived the work, chose its literary form, wrote the first Spanish version, and oversaw the production of the final work, she prefers to say if one must attribute more than its mere curation to Valignano, he or she may attribute “paternity” to him. Otherwise, Di Russo sticks closely to the standard presentation of Valignano as a model to inspire in readers “a much-needed harmony among differences,” an approach that is perfectly in keeping with this translation, especially given the constraints imposed by the addition of so much genuinely helpful material.