Latest / The History of Portugal: The Small Nation That Built a Global Empire — Fexingo History / The Portuguese Reach Japan: The Nanban Trade and the Lost Samurai Embassy
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, let's pick up a thread we've only hinted at before: Portugal's arrival in Japan. It's one of the most consequential encounters of the Age of Discovery, and it starts almost by accident. Luna: Accident? I thought it was deliberate exploration. Lucas: Not really. In 1543, three Portuguese merchants on a Chinese junk were blown off course and shipwrecked on the island of Tanegashima, off southern Kyushu. They were carrying arquebuses — early matchlock guns. The local daimyo, lord Tanegashima Tokitaka, was fascinated. He bought two of them and ordered his swordsmith to reverse-engineer them. Lucas: Within a decade, Japanese smiths were mass-producing these guns — they called them teppo or tanegashima. And this happened right in the middle of the Sengoku period, the Warring States era, when Japan was fractured into dozens of warring domains. Firearms changed everything. Luna: So Portugal accidentally gave Japan its gunpowder revolution. Lucas: Exactly. And the Portuguese quickly realised Japan was a huge market — especially for Chinese silk. But China had banned trade with Japan because of wokou pirates, who were a mix of Japanese and Chinese raiders. So the Portuguese became middlemen: they bought silk in Macau and sold it in Japan for silver, which they then took back to China. It was a triangular trade that made Macau incredibly wealthy. Lucas: Alongside the merchants came the Jesuits. Francis Xavier arrived in 1549, landing at Kagoshima. He was the first Christian missionary to set foot in Japan. He learned Japanese, adapted to the culture, and made some high-profile converts among daimyo who saw Christianity as a way to access Portuguese firearms and trade. Luna: Did the Japanese rulers see it as a political tool? Lucas: Absolutely. Oda Nobunaga, the first of the three unifiers of Japan, was particularly welcoming. He was fighting Buddhist monasteries that opposed him, so he saw the Jesuits as a counterbalance. He even allowed them to build a church in Kyoto. But after Nobunaga's death in 1582, his successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi grew suspicious. He saw the Christians as a potential fifth column — a foreign religion loyal to a foreign power. Lucas: In 1587, Hideyoshi issued an edict expelling the Jesuits, though it wasn't strictly enforced. But the real turning point came in 1597, when he crucified 26 Christians in Nagasaki — a mix of Japanese converts and foreign missionaries. That was the first major persecution. Luna: Wait — didn't the Japanese also send an embassy to Europe? Lucas: Yes, the Tensho Embassy! In 1582, four young Japanese Christian samurai — representing three Christian daimyo from Kyushu — sailed to Europe. They visited Portugal, Spain, and Italy, meeting King Philip II and Pope Gregory XIII. They were a sensation — Europeans were amazed to see sophisticated, well-mannered Japanese nobles. They returned in 1590 with a printing press, which the Jesuits used to publish Japanese-language Christian texts. Lucas: But the political winds were shifting. After Hideyoshi's death, Tokugawa Ieyasu took control and unified Japan under his shogunate. At first, he tolerated the Portuguese trade — he needed the revenue. But he also worried about the growing influence of Christianity. By 1614, he issued a complete ban on the faith, ordering all missionaries to leave and forcing Japanese Christians to apostatise. Luna: So the Portuguese were between a rock and a hard place. Lucas: They tried to keep the trade going, but the Tokugawa shogunate became increasingly isolationist. In 1637, the Shimabara Rebellion — a massive uprising led mostly by Christian peasants — was crushed brutally. After that, the shogunate decided to cut off virtually all foreign contact. The Portuguese were expelled entirely in 1639, and the only Europeans allowed to remain were the Dutch, who were confined to the tiny island of Dejima in Nagasaki Bay. Lucas: Portugal's brief but intense presence in Japan left deep marks. The Japanese word for bread, pan, comes from Portuguese pão. Tempura, the dish, is thought to derive from the Portuguese tempêro, meaning seasoning. And the tradition of folding screens, nanban byobu, often depicted the exotic 'southern barbarians' — the Portuguese — with their long noses, flowing robes, and strange ships. Luna: It's incredible how much exchange happened in just a century. Lucas: And it's a story of unintended consequences — a chance shipwreck that introduced firearms to a country in the midst of civil war, setting off a chain reaction that ultimately helped unify Japan. But the very foreign presence that aided unification was eventually seen as a threat, leading to two centuries of near-total isolation. Luna: Speaking of unintended consequences — you know, a handful of listeners chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that's literally what funds making episodes like this possible. It's a small group, but it keeps us ad-free and independent. Lucas: Yeah, and we're really grateful for that. It means we can dive into these niche stories without worrying about commercial pressure. If you enjoy these deep dives and want to support the show, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Every bit helps. Luna: And now back to Japan — after the Portuguese were expelled, what happened to the remaining Christians? Lucas: They went underground. For over 200 years, Kakure Kirishitan — hidden Christians — maintained their faith in secret, often disguising Christian symbols as Buddhist ones. They used fumi-e, or trampling on images of Christ and Mary, as a test to root out believers. Many died as martyrs. When Japan finally reopened in the 19th century, some of these hidden communities were discovered still practising a version of 16th-century Portuguese Catholicism. Luna: That's a powerful legacy of resilience. Lucas: It really is. And it shows how deeply the Portuguese presence shaped Japan, even after they were gone. The Nanban trade wasn't just about goods — it was about ideas, technology, and faith, all of which left an indelible mark on Japanese history.