Introduction 
Luís Fróis' Historia do Japão, which was written from a first hand experience of Japanese civilization, presents itself as a privileged site from which we can question the intersection of the literary with the representational activity. 
This being by nature a literary reflection, what we aim to do is not to question the historical veracity of facts nor the extent to which the image of the other is real, but rather obtain a certain number of images that, expressed as at a given time and in a given literary tradition, reveal in the translation of the other the ideological space of the one who creates the images. 
To speak of the other is to make it different. This difference which appears to be a simple non-coincidence, only becomes important when it is spoken, when it is allowed to be contained in the signifying systems of language and writing. 
It is here that the task of bringing the other unto the self starts. Starting from a significant difference, it develops a rhetoric of otherness that in a persuasive manner allows the world from which it is spoken to be inscribed in the world about which it is spoken. 
This is the task of the narrator.