By early modern, I'm thinking circa 1500 to 1800; right after Columbus, but (mostly) before the Industrial Revolution started to kick in and Napoleon did his thing.

You hear a lot about European (mostly Iberian, British and French) intrusions and entradas into the Americas, and you have a whole host of conquest literature, travel journals, and other such sources to draw upon in knowing how early-modern Europeans formulated their understanding and cultural perception of the Americas. The fascination with El Dorado, the Fountain of Youth, mountains of silver and gold, etc, take your pick.

I'm not so much aware of how non-European polities and regions' viewed the Americas (or for that matter the parts of Europe that weren't so involved in New World ventures; Germany, Italy, etc, along most of Eastern and Central Europe) - my general assumption is they presumably had some knowledge that there were massive continents out west, given the early modern era was precisely an age of globalization; lots of trade of cartographic and geographic knowledge and so on.

I'm aware for example that some Japanese Catholics in the 17th or so century traveled to Spain's dominions in the Americas as part of a diplomatic/religious mission, and presumably there are probably other analogous examples for other regions of the world - I'm wondering whether any sources exist for what the Japanese _themselves_ might have thought of the world out there, once the diplomats presumably returned home and disseminated stories of their voyages? What did they think, call of Mexico? And what about any other examples in the rest of the world. Etc.