The is a 3-volume study of the Occident by Japanese politician and scholar Arai Hakuseki

Arai Hakuseki

was a Confucianist, scholar-bureaucrat, academic, administrator, writer and politician in Japan during the middle of the Edo Period, who advised the Shogun Tokugawa Ienobu. His personal name was Kinmi or Kimiyoshi . Hakuseki was his pen name...

 based on conversations with Italian missionary Giovanni Battista Sidotti

Giovanni Battista Sidotti

Giovanni Battista Sidotti was an Italian Jesuit priest. During the Edo period, he entered Japan illegally and was arrested, whereupon he was confined until his death....

.
The first volume is a collection of conversations with Sidotti. The second volume is a study of "the five continents" (Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

, Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 and the Americas). The third volume contains an overview of Roman Catholicism which includes some of Hakuseki's critical notes on Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

, as well as a few comparisons he makes of Christianity and Buddhism

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

. It was written in or around 1715, and published in 1882.

An English translation by S.R. Brown, a missionary, can be found in the Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series II and III, 1865-66.