Dijing jingwu lue

• Date: 1695
• Chinese/Japanese: 帝京景物略 (Dìjīng jǐngwù lüè / Teikyou keibutsu ryaku)

The Dìjīng jǐngwù lüè was a guidebook to Beijing, published in China.

When copies of the book were imported into Japan at Nagasaki, they were confiscated by the authorities on account of their Christian content (in discussing the sites of the city, the book mentions the former site of a Catholic cathedral, and the site of the tomb of Matteo Ricci). Much documentation survives today detailing the process of hearings and discussions surrounding the question of whether to destroy and ban the book, serving as a useful source for historians to understand the book censorship process at Nagasaki more broadly.

In this case, the ship's owner and captain were barred for life from entering Japan.

References

• Marius Jansen, China in the Tokugawa World, Harvard University Press (1992), 73.