author
Diego Collado
d. 1638
A Spanish Dominican missionary who carried Christianity into Japan during one of its harshest periods of persecution, he is also remembered for writing some of the earliest European works on the Japanese language. His life joined dangerous travel, church politics, and scholarship in a way that still feels dramatic today.
2 Audiobooks
Ars grammaticae Iaponicae linguae
by Diego Collado
Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language
by Diego Collado
About the author
Born in Miajadas in Extremadura, probably in the late sixteenth century, Diego Collado entered the Dominican Order at Salamanca around 1600. In 1619 he went to Japan, where Christianity had already been banned and missionaries worked in hiding under constant danger.
After the martyrdom of fellow Dominican Luis Flóres in 1622, Collado traveled to Rome and later to Spain to argue for the needs of the missions in East Asia. He eventually returned to the region with papal and royal support, but his career was marked by controversy as well as dedication, and sources differ on some details of his later years.
Collado is especially notable to readers today because he was more than a missionary: he was also a linguist. He produced influential early books on Japanese, including a grammar and dictionary prepared for European missionaries, helping preserve a record of how scholars of his time tried to understand Japan through its language. Many accounts say he died in a shipwreck in 1638 while traveling toward Manila, after staying with fellow passengers to comfort them rather than saving himself.