In Japanese Nihon-koku or Nippon-koku, literally the country of the origin of the sun, is an archipelago made of almost 7000 islands in Eastern Asia, situated 36 degrees north and 138 degrees east. Its larger islands are, from North southwards, Hokkaido;, Honshu;, Shikoku and Kyushu;.
In the ancient times it was called Yamato (from the fact that until the 8th century Japan's central regions were ruled by the Yamato family, a clan said to have descended from Amaterasu Oomikami, the Sun Goddess, which governed since 660, when the first emperor, Jinmu, came down from the heavens), but from the Nara era (710-784) onwards the country officially became to be called Nippon or Nihon.
Since the end of the 12th until the second half of the 19th century in Japan were present two kinds of ruler: the tenno (commonly translated with "emperor"), the official successor of Amaterasu and the seii taishogun (generally abbreviated as shogun and translated as "barbarian-subduing generalissimo"), which in the 1190s created a new political structure stronger and only officially under the court's orders - the bakufu (literally "tent government") -, thus becoming the military and basically actual ruler of Japan.
Japan's first appearance in European sources dates back to 13th century (Marco Polo's Il Milione), whereas the first Portuguese to mention it was Tomé Pires in 1514 (Summa Oriemtall); yet, the Portuguese were the first Europeans to actually set foot in Japanese ground, precisely on September 23rd, 1543 according to a Japanese chronicle (Teppoki, 1594-1614). The Portuguese merchants reached Tanegashima - an island in southern Kyushu; - in a moment of political anarchy, the Warring States era (Sengoku jidai, 1467-1573), from which stood up those three daimyo; (feudal lords), who are now considered as the unifiers of Japan: Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598) and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542?-1616). It took almost 30 years to unify the country, from the battle of Nagashino (1575) - when Oda's armies equipped with muskets defeated Takeda's mounted warriors - to the foundation of the last shogunal dynasty, the Tokugawa, in 1603. The battle of Nagashino is quite relevant in the history of Luso-Japanese relationships, because it is the first battle where the use of firearms proved to be decisive. The espingardas had been introduced by the Portuguese only 30 years before and in such a small lapse of time they had given a new course to Japanese warfare and history; besides, the Portuguese took to Japan also their faith (the arrival in Kagoshima of the first Jesuit, Francis Xavier, is dated August 15th, 1549). Just like what happened in the rest of the Portuguese India, also in Japan the fates of the Portuguese merchants and the Christian missionaries were tightly tangled, there, in particular, after China severed relations because of the depredations of pirates, the Portuguese carracks emerged as the perfect carriers of continental silk to Kyushu;, and the daimyo; who harboured these ships bound themselves to the Jesuits who attempted to manipulate docking decisions to evangelical advantage. Japan's political fragmentation and religious syncretism, along with Japanese addiction to novelty, acted as favourable conditions to the spread of the Christian faith. Although the conversion of powerful daimyo; was by no mean quick, Omura Sumitada (1533-1587) was baptized already in 1563 and Otomo Sorin Yoshishige (1530-1587) in 1578. Yet, an important factor which must be underlined is that the missionaries did not use only religious arguments to gain daimyo's favours. The Ignatians, in fact, imported to Japan almost the whole range of European knowledge. Japan, then, came for the first time in contact with Western scientific thought (mathematics, physics, astronomy, gnomonic, engineering etc.), artistic techniques (oil painting, perspective, chiaroscuro, architecture etc.) and also Portuguese gastronomy.
Beside the conversion of some lords, the 1570s had been a positive period for the Society of Jesus, since Nobunaga's military strategy included also the annihilation of Jesuits' opponents: the Buddhist monks of the Enryakuji and of the Ishiyama Honganji. Nevertheless, this period of political support saw its end when Oda was betrayed and killed by one of his general (1582), a murder avenged by Toyotomi Hideyoshi few days later. Despite the Fathers lose such a powerful upholder, initially Hideyoshi maintained an attitude similar to Oda's. Yet, the status quo took suddenly a turn for the worse: in 1587 Hideyoshi, then imperial regent (kanpaku), started to fear that the activities of the Jesuits in Kyushu; could be potentially dangerous; the missionaries, in fact, beyond the conversion of the populace , were destroying Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples and were basically the lords of Nagasaki harbour - the city was granted to them by Omura Sumitada in 1570 - from where they acted as gold and silver brokers and trafficked in shares of the Portuguese carracks. Therefore, the kanpaku issued the first anti-Christian edict, raising the "Christian issue" to be a national problem; namely, he ruled that the Christian faith was no more to be preached on Japanese soil, consequently all the missionaries were to be expelled within twenty days, whereas Portuguese merchants were not included in the expulsion order.
The directives were not enforced at once and the Fathers were allowed to stay, although they had to move more carefully. In 1590, Hideyoshi's domestic campaigns came largely to an end with the surrender of Hojo Ujimasa. Having nothing more to conquer in Japan, the kanpaku turned his eyes to the continent. He organized two different expeditions (1592 and 1597) in the attempt of conquering China passing through Korea. Hideyoshi's interests were both economic - he was willing to resume the official licensed trade with China and to obtain Korea southern provinces - and personal, since he was also reaching for an empire. He accomplished none. Besides, the year of the second campaign is remembered also for the incident caused by the Spanish galleon San Felipe and for the execution of twenty-six Christians in Nagasaki, the first martyrs of Japan. The executions were an act of redress, a pattern of reprisal against a militant church, not the initiation of a general persecution: the missionaries were allowed to remain in Japan and trade was not affected at all.
In 1598 Hideyoshi died leaving the kingdom to his five tairo (Elders), amongst which there was Tokugawa Ieyasu, who, after the victorious campaign ended with the battle of Sekigahara (1600), founded the Tokugawa bakufu (1603-1867). Under Ieyasu the Christian mission was to enjoy a decade of still water, but it was only a matter of time for the definitive expulsion. Initially, the bakufu tolerated the presence of the Fathers, because it was generally thought that, without the missionaries, the Nao do trato would have stopped to come to Japan. But, a problem of corruption in the Tokugawa house government changed the whole situation, and the Christians played an active part in it. The men who set off this scandal were the Christian daimy!3; Arima Harunobu (1567-1612) and a aide of Ieyasu's roju (senior councilor) Honda Masazumi (1565-1637), Okamoto Daihachi, who was a Christian, too. For his part in the incident, Harunobu was first exiled and then sentenced to death. Subsequently, the bakufu prohibited the Christian faith in shogunal domains and the same measure was taken by Tokugawa's followers. The thing that did change compared to Hideyoshi's time is the fact that Portugal was losing the trade monopoly within Japan. Spaniards were already there before 17th century; the Dutch arrived in 1600 and in 1609 the Dutch East India Company receives the shogunal permission to trade at Nagasaki. In 1613 England founded a trading post in Hirado. So, basically, the bakufu could dare to take the risk of getting rid of Portugal. The basic rationale for the expulsion - laid out by a Zen monk on February 1614 - first rehearses the standard traditionalist dictum - "Japan is the Land of the kami (Shinto's deities)" - and then declares that the Christians seek to make Japan into "their own possession". This time too the difference between missionaries and Portuguese merchants was made clear. It was because of that that the Fathers, who remained illegally in Japan, started to dress up as fidalgos (noblemen) to avoid Nagasaki's authorities. The Christians, however, had still a powerful ally on their side: Hideyoshi's son, Toyotomi Hideyori. Kanpaku's heir started to behave sympathetically towards the Western faith since 1610 and his army was filled with several Christians captains, but the final battle at Osaka's castle (1615) ruled Ieyasu's victory.
By 1616 the bakufu had limited European trade to Nagasaki and the small southern island of Hirado. The same year Ieyasu died, but his successors, Hidetada and Iemitsu, started and formalized that process which would have lead to the intensification of martyrdoms and to the semi-closure of the country. Although, in fact, by the 1620s the Portuguese merchants stopped to introduce missionaries in Japan, they were still offering accommodations and keeping the mails exchange active. This help put the Luso-Japanese relationship in troubles and, moreover, the Portuguese were about to lose their privileges in the silk trade at Dutch's vantage.
It was during Iemitsu's shogunate (1623-1645) that the situation came to a definite resolution. In 1633 he forbid any Japanese to leave the country, the following year the bakufu called for itself the foreign trade's monopoly and concentrated the incoming trading activities in the artificial island of Deshima in Nagasaki (1636). In 1637, an uprising by peasants in Shimabara, most of all Christians, put an end to the Portuguese presence in Japan. The Dutch were allowed to stay in Deshima since they had avoided proselytizing and gave military help to the shogunal troops. Thus, in 1639 the Portuguese were ordered off Japan and the imperative was emphasized the following year, when Japanese authorities slaughtered almost the whole Portuguese embassy sent from Macao to reestablish contacts.
Bibliography:
COSTA, João Paulo Oliveira e, O Cristianismo no Japão e o Episcopado de D. Luís de Cerqueira, dissertação de doutoramento em História apresentada à Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisboa, 1998 (texto fotocopiado). SCHURHAMMER, Georg, O Descobrimento do Japão pelos Portugueses no Ano de 1543, Orientalia, Bibliotheca Instituti Historici S. I. vol. XXI, Roma-Lisboa, 1963, 485-580. Whitney Hall, John (ed.), McClain, James (ass.), The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol. 4: Early Modern Japan, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
