Topsy-Turvy 1585

The author spent over 20 years in Japan where he published 7 books in Japanese and had the opportunity to read widely in non-fiction while "working" as an acquisition editor. This continued study in many fields proved perfect for explicating Luis Frois's treatise, which treats many aspects of European and Japanese culture, ranging from fingernails to fire-fighting, from eye-size to monkeys. His field of expertise is Edo era haiku, where he has "raised the bar very high in terms of a translator's responsibility" (W.J. Higginson), so when he is short of information on the late sixteenth century, he is able to add it from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth, often in the form of a haiku (or senryu) never before Englished. While he can only read Portuguese (Frois's language) with a dictionary, he reads Spanish well and his fluency in Japanese allowed him to reference the two Japanese translations of Frois's Tratado, the original Portuguese and translation of which form 5-10% of TOPSY-TURVY 1585. While a small part of the total, Frois's 611 distiches form the frame upon which the book was built and Luis Frois SJ (who was 53 when he wrote the last draft of his treatise, as Robin D. Gill was 53 when he finished his translation and explication) should be recognized as the second author of this book.Gill, Robin D. is the author of 'Topsy-Turvy 1585' with ISBN 9780974261812 and ISBN 0974261815.