A full translation, explication and essay of Luis Frois S.J.'s famous 1585 treatise (Tratado) listing 611 ways Europeans and Japanese were contradictory or opposite to one another. Frois's treatise (tratado) is bold and unique. Herodotus made dozens of black and white contrasts between Egypt and the Greco-Roman civilization he called the rest of the world; Alberuni did the same, contrasting India to the West (mostly Arab world); but no one has made hundreds as did Frois, who was also the most prolific writer on Japan of the 16th century, and, probably, of all time. In this book, Frois's 611 (!) skeletal distiches (two lines we might call heroic contrast!)are translated into English, most for the first time. The author provides ample (and hopefully entertaining) commentary on the veracity and significance of the contrasts as well as their relationship to the Jesuits' attempt to accommodate themselves to life in Japan, something that preceded and paved the way for the more famous effort of Ricci in China described by Jonathon Spence (S:MPMR) and others.The topsy-turvy is interesting in itself. Two slightly annotated Japanese translations of Frois's treatise have gone through countless popular pocket-book printings. Scholars value the work because most of Frois's contrasts are not judgmental but descriptive, resembling the more neutral stuff of cultural anthropology and history; and laymen enjoy it because the Tratado is also, to quote Elison, " a booklet of amazing banality in which everything Japanese from the man's head to the horse's tail is included. Who but Frois would have noticed we pick our noses with different fingers and bothered to write it down! Ideas raised by Frois's contrasts are explored when deemed significant or interesting. Additional Faux Frois contrasts are suggested, bringing the total distiches (two-line contrasts) in the book to a thousand or so. Essays into the history of topsy-turvy and the way China (Japan's closest competition for being topsy-turvy to the Occident) fits into the general picture provide added perspective and, the author is not ashamed to hope, entertainment.The "author" of the book is the translator, robin d. gill, and not Luis Frois, because the original Tratado comprises but 5% of the book and the explanation 95%.