Short definitions of the terms that recur across this archive. Every entry links to the articles where the term does its work; anchors are stable, so you can cite an entry directly.
Portuguese, “captain-major”
The commander of the annual Japan voyage, a crown appointment that was also a trading concession worth a fortune. André Pessoa, the capitão-mor who blew up the Madre de Deus rather than surrender her in 1610, is the office's most famous — and shortest-lived — holder.
The Nau do Trato: Portugal's Great Ship to Japan · The Madre de Deus Affair: The Ship That Blew Up a Century
Also appears in: The Sword Was at Hand: Konishi Yukinaga, the Merchant’s Son Who Refused Seppuku, c. 1555–1600
Portugal's Asian empire: the network of forts, fleets, and trading stations from Mozambique to Macau, governed from Goa. Japan sat at its farthest profitable edge, reached through the Goa–Malacca–Macau sailing circuit.
The City at the Edge of Empire: A History of Portuguese Macau · From Reconquista to Tanegashima: How a Crusade on the Iberian Frontier Led to a Beach in Japan
Also appears in: The Ethiopian Embassy to King Sebastian: A Patriarch, a Prince, and the Rescue of Prester John · A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · The Topsy-Turvy Kingdom: How the Portuguese Saw the Japanese · The Nau do Trato: Portugal's Great Ship to Japan · The Weight of Silver: Measurements, Money, and the Mechanics of Nanban Commerce · The Price of a Person: The Portuguese Trade in Japanese Slaves · The Union of the Crowns: How a Crusade in Morocco Rewrote the Map of Asia · Fortress by Fortress: How the Iberian Union Destroyed the Portuguese Empire · +8 more
Portuguese, “factory”
A fortified trading post — the basic building block of European commerce in Asia. The Portuguese never held a true feitoria in Japan, trading instead through Nagasaki; the Dutch and English “factories” at Hirado (1609, 1613) brought the model to Japanese soil.
Red Lion, Red Seal: The Dutch Arrival at Hirado in 1609 · The City at the Edge of Empire: A History of Portuguese Macau
Also appears in: William Adams and the Protestant Disruption · The Madre de Deus Affair: The Ship That Blew Up a Century
Portuguese, a light galley
A light oared galley of the Portuguese Indies, fast and gun-bearing. Gaspar Coelho's armed fusta — paraded before Hideyoshi in 1586 — became the mission's most notorious miscalculation, feeding the suspicion of military ambition behind the 1587 edict.
Gaspar Coelho: The Priest Who Thought He Was a Prince · The Warlord Descends: Hideyoshi’s 1587 Kyūshū Campaign
The raw-silk allotment guild instituted in 1604: a cartel of merchants from the great cities empowered to buy the Portuguese silk cargo at a single negotiated price. It broke the Macau traders' pricing power and marked the shogunate's growing grip on the Nanban trade.
The Weight of Silver: Measurements, Money, and the Mechanics of Nanban Commerce · The Nau do Trato: Portugal's Great Ship to Japan
Also appears in: The City at the Edge of Empire: A History of Portuguese Macau · Nagasaki: How a Handful of Fishermen’s Huts Became the Trade Capital of the World · João Rodrigues Tçuzzu: The Interpreter Who Spoke for an Empire · One King, Two Crowns: The Iberian Union and the Unmaking of Portuguese Japan, 1580–1640 · The Patient Conqueror: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu · The Company: How the VOC Conquered an Ocean and Inherited an Island · Red Lion, Red Seal: The Dutch Arrival at Hirado in 1609 · The Governor in the Surf: Rodrigo de Vivero, the San Francisco, and Spain's Best Offer to Japan, 1609–1610 · +3 more
A measure of rice volume, about 180 liters — by convention the amount that fed one person for a year. Domains and samurai stipends were valued in koku (a fief's kokudaka), which is why the era's power politics — from Hideyoshi's grants to the post-Sekigahara redistributions — are counted in it.
The Weight of Silver: Measurements, Money, and the Mechanics of Nanban Commerce · The Battle of Sekigahara: Six Hours That Made the Shogunate
Also appears in: From Ashikaga to Azuchi: Japan’s Road to the Sengoku Period · The Year on the Gable: Hirado, the Matsuura Lords, and the Century of the Open Door, 1543–1641 · The Sword Was at Hand: Konishi Yukinaga, the Merchant’s Son Who Refused Seppuku, c. 1555–1600 · Not by Human Persuasion: The Life and Uses of Hosokawa Gracia, 1563–1600 · Lord Fool to Demon King: The Life and Personality of Oda Nobunaga · Takayama Ukon: The Samurai Who Chose God Over Japan · Gaspar Coelho: The Priest Who Thought He Was a Prince · The Warlord Descends: Hideyoshi’s 1587 Kyūshū Campaign · +14 more
“Black ships”: the Japanese name for the tar-hulled Portuguese vessels, above all the Macau carrack. Two centuries after the Portuguese expulsion the word was revived for Commodore Perry's squadron — but it was coined for the Nanban trade.
The Nau do Trato: Portugal's Great Ship to Japan
Also appears in: The Dandy Who Learned Japanese: Juan Fernández and the Tongue of the Mission · A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · Through Barbarian Eyes: How the Japanese Saw the Portuguese · Nagasaki: How a Handful of Fishermen’s Huts Became the Trade Capital of the World · From Tempura to Castella: The Culinary Legacy of the Nanban · Paper and Vermilion: The State Papers of the Macau-Nagasaki Trade, 1611–1621 · Sakoku: How and Why Japan Closed Its Doors · Behind Closed Doors: How Japan Reinvented Itself in Isolation · +1 more
A silver weight of about 3.75 grams, the everyday unit of Japan's silver-by-weight currency. Trade accounts, silk prices, and crew wages in the Nagasaki trade were reckoned in silver momme.
The Weight of Silver: Measurements, Money, and the Mechanics of Nanban Commerce
Also appears in: The Year on the Gable: Hirado, the Matsuura Lords, and the Century of the Open Door, 1543–1641 · A Nanban Kitchen: Period Recipes from the Portuguese-Japanese Culinary Exchange · 20 Plates and a Borrowed Name: The Fumi-e, Giuseppe Chiara, and the Making of Silence, 1629–1685 · The Fan Without Its Ribs: Dejima and the Three Acres That Held the West, 1634–1859
“Southern barbarians” — the Japanese term, borrowed from Chinese usage, for the Portuguese and Spanish who arrived from the south by way of Macau and the Philippines. Originally dismissive, it settled into plain description and named the whole era of Iberian-Japanese contact, 1543–1639.
A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · Nanban Screens: Imagining the Foreign
Also appears in: The Poet Ambassador: Song Hui-gyeong's 1420 Journey to Japan · From Ashikaga to Azuchi: Japan’s Road to the Sengoku Period · From Reconquista to Tanegashima: How a Crusade on the Iberian Frontier Led to a Beach in Japan · An Offering Refused: Buddhism, Kami, and Christianity in Japan, 1500–1700 · The Dandy Who Learned Japanese: Juan Fernández and the Tongue of the Mission · The Ethiopian Embassy to King Sebastian: A Patriarch, a Prince, and the Rescue of Prester John · The Year on the Gable: Hirado, the Matsuura Lords, and the Century of the Open Door, 1543–1641 · Through Barbarian Eyes: How the Japanese Saw the Portuguese · +109 more
The “southern barbarian people” themselves: Portuguese and Spanish merchants, sailors, and missionaries in Japan. Their black-clad priests, billowing bombacha trousers, and tall ships fascinated Japanese painters, who fixed their image on the nanban byōbu screens.
Nanban Screens: Imagining the Foreign · From Reconquista to Tanegashima: How a Crusade on the Iberian Frontier Led to a Beach in Japan
Also appears in: A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · Through Barbarian Eyes: How the Japanese Saw the Portuguese · Southern Barbarian Chicken: The Improbable History of Chicken Nanban · The Price of a Person: The Portuguese Trade in Japanese Slaves · The Man the Jesuits Never Named: What the Sources Actually Say About Yasuke, 1579–1582 · Paper and Vermilion: The State Papers of the Macau-Nagasaki Trade, 1611–1621 · Sakoku: How and Why Japan Closed Its Doors · No Descendant Shall Remain: The Fourth Sakoku Decree and the Deportation of Nagasaki's Children, 1636
The “southern barbarian ships” — the Portuguese vessels on the Japan run, of which the greatest was the annual carrack from Macau. Their arrival at Nagasaki was the commercial event of the Japanese year.
The Nau do Trato: Portugal's Great Ship to Japan · Sailing from Lisbon to Nagasaki: The Deadliest Journey in the World
Also appears in: Nanban Screens: Imagining the Foreign · The Last Ship: The São Paulo Voyage of 1685
Portuguese, “ship of the trade”
The great annual carrack that sailed from Macau to Japan (to Nagasaki from 1571) from the late 1550s until galliots replaced it in 1618, among the largest vessels afloat in its day. It carried Chinese silk and gold to Japan and returned with silver, and its cargo funded both Portugal's Asian empire and the Jesuit mission; the Japanese knew it as the kurofune, the black ship.
The Nau do Trato: Portugal's Great Ship to Japan · The City at the Edge of Empire: A History of Portuguese Macau
Also appears in: The Poet Ambassador: Song Hui-gyeong's 1420 Journey to Japan · The Dandy Who Learned Japanese: Juan Fernández and the Tongue of the Mission · A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · Sailing from Lisbon to Nagasaki: The Deadliest Journey in the World · Brother Lourenço of Hirado: The Blind Minstrel Who Built a Church · The Man Who Stayed: Cosme de Torres and the Long Decade of the Japanese Mission · The Sword Was at Hand: Konishi Yukinaga, the Merchant’s Son Who Refused Seppuku, c. 1555–1600 · Much the Better Port: Kuchinotsu, the Harbor That Sheltered the Japan Mission, 1562–1638 · +24 more
Dutch, “chief head”
The chief factor of the Dutch East India Company in Japan — head of the factory at Hirado and, from 1641, at Dejima. Rotated annually by shogunal requirement and obliged to the periodic court journey to Edo, he was for two centuries the only European official in the country.
The Company: How the VOC Conquered an Ocean and Inherited an Island · Sakoku: How and Why Japan Closed Its Doors
Also appears in: The Year on the Gable: Hirado, the Matsuura Lords, and the Century of the Open Door, 1543–1641 · William Adams and the Protestant Disruption · Prize of War: The Dutch Captures of the Santo António · The Wrong Cloth in the Wrong Town: The English East India Company at Hirado, 1613–1623 · The Word Pirate Is Shameful in Japan: The 1621 Edict Against Dutch and English Privateering · The Boy on the Water: Amakusa Shirō and the Manufacture of a Messiah, 1621–1638 · The Fan Without Its Ribs: Dejima and the Three Acres That Held the West, 1634–1859 · The Castle That Was Already a Ruin: Hara-jō, the Siege of 1637–1638, and What the Excavators Found · +1 more
Portuguese, “at a blow”
The bulk-sale system under which the itowappu guild bought the carrack's entire silk cargo at one stroke, at one price, before individual trading could begin. What the Portuguese called selling à pancada, the Japanese side ran as an instrument of control.
The Weight of Silver: Measurements, Money, and the Mechanics of Nanban Commerce
Also appears in: The Nau do Trato: Portugal's Great Ship to Japan
via Malay pikul, “a man's load”
A Chinese-derived unit of weight, 100 catties — roughly 60 kilograms; the standard measure of the Macau–Nagasaki silk trade. The great ship's cargo was reckoned in piculs of raw silk, and the pancada price was struck per picul.
The Nau do Trato: Portugal's Great Ship to Japan · The Weight of Silver: Measurements, Money, and the Mechanics of Nanban Commerce
Also appears in: A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · The Year on the Gable: Hirado, the Matsuura Lords, and the Century of the Open Door, 1543–1641 · The Sword Was at Hand: Konishi Yukinaga, the Merchant’s Son Who Refused Seppuku, c. 1555–1600 · Much the Better Port: Kuchinotsu, the Harbor That Sheltered the Japan Mission, 1562–1638 · The Soldier Who Would Not Bend: Francisco Cabral and the Battle for Japan’s Soul · Nagasaki: How a Handful of Fishermen’s Huts Became the Trade Capital of the World · 40 Seconds at Shitaragahara: The Battle of Nagashino, 1575 · João Rodrigues Tçuzzu: The Interpreter Who Spoke for an Empire · +4 more
“Red-seal ships”: Japanese merchant vessels licensed for overseas trade by a vermilion-seal permit of the shogun, instituted under Tokugawa Ieyasu. For three decades they made Japan an active trading power across Southeast Asia, until the sakoku edicts of the 1630s forbade Japanese to sail abroad at all.
The Red Seal: How Japan Licensed an Ocean · The Patient Conqueror: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu · The Ayutthaya Incident: How a Spanish Freelancer Burned a Japanese Ship and Cost Portugal Two Years of Silver
Also appears in: The Nau do Trato: Portugal's Great Ship to Japan · One King, Two Crowns: The Iberian Union and the Unmaking of Portuguese Japan, 1580–1640 · The Scattered Kingdom: The Japanese Diaspora of the Iberian World · The Line on Nishizaka: The Twenty-Six Martyrs of Japan, 5 February 1597 · Crosses on Both Sides: The Christian Daimyō at Sekigahara and the Victory That Ruined Them, 1600 · William Adams and the Protestant Disruption · The Company: How the VOC Conquered an Ocean and Inherited an Island · Prize of War: The Dutch Captures of the Santo António · +14 more
via Portuguese and Malay tahil
The East Asian ounce of silver, about 37–38 grams — 10 momme — and the accounting unit of the China trade. Macau's silk-for-silver arithmetic, and most contemporary estimates of the Japan trade's value, are stated in taels.
The Weight of Silver: Measurements, Money, and the Mechanics of Nanban Commerce · The Nau do Trato: Portugal's Great Ship to Japan
Also appears in: A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · The Year on the Gable: Hirado, the Matsuura Lords, and the Century of the Open Door, 1543–1641 · 40 Seconds at Shitaragahara: The Battle of Nagashino, 1575 · One King, Two Crowns: The Iberian Union and the Unmaking of Portuguese Japan, 1580–1640 · The Battle of Sekigahara: Six Hours That Made the Shogunate · The Governor in the Surf: Rodrigo de Vivero, the San Francisco, and Spain's Best Offer to Japan, 1609–1610 · The Wrong Cloth in the Wrong Town: The English East India Company at Hirado, 1613–1623 · Sakoku: How and Why Japan Closed Its Doors · +3 more
Dutch, Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie
The Dutch East India Company, chartered in 1602: the Protestant, joint-stock rival that shadowed the Portuguese across Asia. Careful to trade without preaching, it outlasted every competitor in Japan and held the Dejima monopoly for two centuries after 1641.
The Company: How the VOC Conquered an Ocean and Inherited an Island · Red Lion, Red Seal: The Dutch Arrival at Hirado in 1609
Also appears in: The Year on the Gable: Hirado, the Matsuura Lords, and the Century of the Open Door, 1543–1641 · Sailing from Lisbon to Nagasaki: The Deadliest Journey in the World · The City at the Edge of Empire: A History of Portuguese Macau · The Nau do Trato: Portugal's Great Ship to Japan · Manila Under Spanish Rule: The City That Swallowed the World's Silver · The Union of the Crowns: How a Crusade in Morocco Rewrote the Map of Asia · Fortress by Fortress: How the Iberian Union Destroyed the Portuguese Empire · One King, Two Crowns: The Iberian Union and the Unmaking of Portuguese Japan, 1580–1640 · +21 more
"The pit": suspension upside down in a pit of filth, with a small cut behind the ear so the blood pressure would not kill quickly. Introduced around 1633 as the persecution's instrument of choice for forcing apostasy rather than granting martyrdom — Cristóvão Ferreira apostatized after five hours in it that October.
Cristóvão Ferreira: The Fallen Jesuit of Japan · The Tokugawa Persecution of Christians, 1617–1640: How the Shogunate Learned to Manufacture Apostates
Also appears in: A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · The Christian Century: Faith and Power in Feudal Japan · Nagasaki: How a Handful of Fishermen’s Huts Became the Trade Capital of the World · The Tenshō Embassy: Japanese Princes in Renaissance Europe · The Dutiful Son: Tokugawa Hidetada and the Machinery of Persecution · The 1614 Expulsion Edict: The Monk, the Manifesto, and the End of Christian Japan · The Siege of Osaka: The Last Battle and the Banners of the Cross · A Witness from Rome: Thomas Araki and Japan’s Christian Persecution, 1619–1640s · +5 more
from Portuguese padre, “father”
The Japanese rendering of padre: a Catholic priest, above all a Jesuit father. The word headlines Hideyoshi's 1587 expulsion order — the bateren tsuihō-rei — and by the persecution era it was written with deliberately ugly characters.
Francis Xavier and the Jesuit Mission in Japan · Hideyoshi’s Edict: The Night Japan Turned Against the Church
Also appears in: A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · The Christian Century: Faith and Power in Feudal Japan · Nagasaki: How a Handful of Fishermen’s Huts Became the Trade Capital of the World · Portuguese Words in Japanese: A Linguistic Archaeology · Gaspar Coelho: The Priest Who Thought He Was a Prince · The Stage of Empire: The Building of Osaka Castle, 1583–1590 · The Warlord Descends: Hideyoshi’s 1587 Kyūshū Campaign · The Sword Hunt of 1588: The Peasant Who Welded the Ladder Shut · +10 more
Hideyoshi's edict of 1587 ordering the missionaries out of Japan within 20 days — issued overnight from his camp at Hakata, and then barely enforced for a decade. It was the first state declaration that Christianity and Japanese rule could not coexist.
Hideyoshi’s Edict: The Night Japan Turned Against the Church · The Warlord Descends: Hideyoshi’s 1587 Kyūshū Campaign
Also appears in: A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · Nagasaki: How a Handful of Fishermen’s Huts Became the Trade Capital of the World · The Stage of Empire: The Building of Osaka Castle, 1583–1590 · The Sword Hunt of 1588: The Peasant Who Welded the Ladder Shut · The Line on Nishizaka: The Twenty-Six Martyrs of Japan, 5 February 1597 · Crosses on Both Sides: The Christian Daimyō at Sekigahara and the Victory That Ruined Them, 1600
The mission's institution of higher studies — philosophy and theology for future priests, European science for the curious. With its printing press, the collegio made the mission briefly Japan's most cosmopolitan school.
The Visitor: Alessandro Valignano and the Remaking of the Japan Mission
Lay brotherhoods on the Iberian model — devotional confrarias and the charitable Misericórdia of Nagasaki, which ran hospitals and poor relief. When the priests were expelled, these lay structures carried the hidden church.
Nagasaki: How a Handful of Fishermen’s Huts Became the Trade Capital of the World · The Christian Century: Faith and Power in Feudal Japan
The cosmic Buddha of Shingon, and the mission's first, disastrous word for God: Xavier, advised by Anjirō, preached "Dainichi" in 1549–51 until he realized the Japanese heard a Buddhist deity — then reversed himself to "do not worship Dainichi," and the mission switched to the loanword Deusu.
Francis Xavier and the Jesuit Mission in Japan · The Man Who Stayed: Cosme de Torres and the Long Decade of the Japanese Mission
Also appears in: An Offering Refused: Buddhism, Kami, and Christianity in Japan, 1500–1700 · The Dandy Who Learned Japanese: Juan Fernández and the Tongue of the Mission · Through Barbarian Eyes: How the Japanese Saw the Portuguese · The Words Between Them: How Portuguese and Japanese Communicated, 1543–1673 · The Christian Century: Faith and Power in Feudal Japan · Number of Christian Converts in Japan, 1549–1700 · The Surgeon’s Capital: Luís de Almeida in Japan, 1552–1583 · The Man Who Walked into Kyoto: Gaspar Vilela and the Mission to the Imperial Capital · +1 more
Latin/Portuguese Deus, “God”
The mission's word for God — adopted after Xavier's early use of “Dainichi” (the cosmic Buddha) proved a catastrophic mistranslation that made Christianity sound like a Buddhist sect. The retreat to untranslated Deusu marks the mission's hardest lesson in the limits of translation.
Francis Xavier and the Jesuit Mission in Japan · The Azuchi Debate: Nobunaga's Rigged Trial and the Golden Age of Christian Japan
Also appears in: An Offering Refused: Buddhism, Kami, and Christianity in Japan, 1500–1700 · The Dandy Who Learned Japanese: Juan Fernández and the Tongue of the Mission · Through Barbarian Eyes: How the Japanese Saw the Portuguese · The Words Between Them: How Portuguese and Japanese Communicated, 1543–1673 · Number of Christian Converts in Japan, 1549–1700 · The Man Who Stayed: Cosme de Torres and the Long Decade of the Japanese Mission · The Nau do Trato: Portugal's Great Ship to Japan · The Man Who Walked into Kyoto: Gaspar Vilela and the Mission to the Imperial Capital · +22 more
The catechism of the Japanese mission, printed in romanized and native-script editions around 1591–1600 on the Jesuit press. It fixed the hybrid Portuguese-Japanese vocabulary in which Japan's first Christianity spoke.
The Visitor: Alessandro Valignano and the Remaking of the Japan Mission · The Christian Century: Faith and Power in Feudal Japan
Also appears in: Softened into the Colloquial Tongue: The Jesuit Mission Press in Japan, 1586–1620
Japanese lay catechists who lived in the Jesuit residences: preachers, interpreters, and assistants who did much of the mission's daily work without belonging to the Society. Their ambiguous, underpaid position was a running sore in mission politics.
The Soldier Who Would Not Bend: Francisco Cabral and the Battle for Japan’s Soul · The Christian Century: Faith and Power in Feudal Japan
Also appears in: The Words Between Them: How Portuguese and Japanese Communicated, 1543–1673 · Number of Christian Converts in Japan, 1549–1700 · Julia and Tokuan Naitō: The Abbess and the Lord of Tanba · Brother Lourenço of Hirado: The Blind Minstrel Who Built a Church · The Man Who Stayed: Cosme de Torres and the Long Decade of the Japanese Mission · The Man Who Walked into Kyoto: Gaspar Vilela and the Mission to the Imperial Capital · The Visitor: Alessandro Valignano and the Remaking of the Japan Mission · Softened into the Colloquial Tongue: The Jesuit Mission Press in Japan, 1586–1620 · +9 more
An image of Christ or the Virgin cast in bronze or carved in wood, to be trodden on. Instituted at Nagasaki in the late 1620s, the annual trampling ceremony (e-fumi) became the persecution's signature instrument for detecting believers.
20 Plates and a Borrowed Name: The Fumi-e, Giuseppe Chiara, and the Making of Silence, 1629–1685 · The Tokugawa Persecution of Christians, 1617–1640: How the Shogunate Learned to Manufacture Apostates · Born to Rule: Tokugawa Iemitsu and the Perfection of Control
Also appears in: Number of Christian Converts in Japan, 1549–1700 · Nagasaki: How a Handful of Fishermen’s Huts Became the Trade Capital of the World · The Dutiful Son: Tokugawa Hidetada and the Machinery of Persecution
from Portuguese irmão, “brother”
A Jesuit brother — a member of the Society below priestly orders. Many of the mission's Japanese members served as iruman, and João Rodrigues spent years as one before his ordination.
Francis Xavier and the Jesuit Mission in Japan · João Rodrigues Tçuzzu: The Interpreter Who Spoke for an Empire
The “hidden Christians” who kept the faith in secret after the ban — senpuku (“concealed”) for the Edo-period underground, kakure for the communities that stayed separate even after toleration returned in the 19th century. Their re-emergence at Nagasaki in 1865 stunned Europe.
The Same Heart as Yours: Japan's Hidden Christians from the Underground Church to World Heritage, 1640–2018 · Behind Closed Doors: How Japan Reinvented Itself in Isolation · Number of Christian Converts in Japan, 1549–1700
Also appears in: An Offering Refused: Buddhism, Kami, and Christianity in Japan, 1500–1700 · A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · The Year on the Gable: Hirado, the Matsuura Lords, and the Century of the Open Door, 1543–1641 · The Christian Century: Faith and Power in Feudal Japan · Where the Churches Had Been: Traces of Christianity in Japan, 1549–1873 · Francis Xavier and the Jesuit Mission in Japan · The Man Who Stayed: Cosme de Torres and the Long Decade of the Japanese Mission · Nagasaki: How a Handful of Fishermen’s Huts Became the Trade Capital of the World · +20 more
from Portuguese cristão, “Christian”
A Japanese Christian of the mission era. The word later acquired hostile spellings under the ban and survives as the standard historical term for Japan's first Christianity and its people.
The Christian Century: Faith and Power in Feudal Japan · Number of Christian Converts in Japan, 1549–1700
Also appears in: The Dandy Who Learned Japanese: Juan Fernández and the Tongue of the Mission · The Year on the Gable: Hirado, the Matsuura Lords, and the Century of the Open Door, 1543–1641 · Through Barbarian Eyes: How the Japanese Saw the Portuguese · The Topsy-Turvy Kingdom: How the Portuguese Saw the Japanese · Where the Churches Had Been: Traces of Christianity in Japan, 1549–1873 · Francis Xavier and the Jesuit Mission in Japan · Julia and Tokuan Naitō: The Abbess and the Lord of Tanba · Brother Lourenço of Hirado: The Blind Minstrel Who Built a Church · +37 more
A “fallen” Christian: one who formally renounced the faith under pressure, usually by trampling the fumi-e. The most notorious korobi of all was a priest — Cristóvão Ferreira, the mission's own Vice-Provincial, who apostatized under torture in 1633.
Cristóvão Ferreira: The Fallen Jesuit of Japan · The Tokugawa Persecution of Christians, 1617–1640: How the Shogunate Learned to Manufacture Apostates
The “closed country”: the Tokugawa policy of strictly limited foreign contact built by the edicts of 1633–39 and kept until 1854. The word itself was coined only in 1801, long after the policy it names.
Sakoku: How and Why Japan Closed Its Doors · Behind Closed Doors: How Japan Reinvented Itself in Isolation
Also appears in: A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · Through Barbarian Eyes: How the Japanese Saw the Portuguese · The Christian Century: Faith and Power in Feudal Japan · Number of Christian Converts in Japan, 1549–1700 · The City at the Edge of Empire: A History of Portuguese Macau · The Nau do Trato: Portugal's Great Ship to Japan · Nagasaki: How a Handful of Fishermen’s Huts Became the Trade Capital of the World · A Nanban Kitchen: Period Recipes from the Portuguese-Japanese Culinary Exchange · +32 more
The Jesuit boarding schools for Japanese boys founded under Valignano's reforms from 1580, teaching Latin, music, and painting alongside Japanese letters. The four boys of the Tenshō embassy were seminario students.
The Visitor: Alessandro Valignano and the Remaking of the Japan Mission · The Tenshō Embassy: Japanese Princes in Renaissance Europe
Also appears in: An Offering Refused: Buddhism, Kami, and Christianity in Japan, 1500–1700 · Takayama Ukon: The Samurai Who Chose God Over Japan · Softened into the Colloquial Tongue: The Jesuit Mission Press in Japan, 1586–1620 · Gaspar Coelho: The Priest Who Thought He Was a Prince · The Stage of Empire: The Building of Osaka Castle, 1583–1590 · Nanban Screens: Imagining the Foreign
"Break and subdue": the combative method of conversion by refutation, associated above all with the Nichiren school. The public religious disputation it fostered was the arena the Jesuits walked into — most famously at the Azuchi debate of 1579.
The Azuchi Debate: Nobunaga's Rigged Trial and the Golden Age of Christian Japan · The Man Who Walked into Kyoto: Gaspar Vilela and the Mission to the Imperial Capital
Also appears in: An Offering Refused: Buddhism, Kami, and Christianity in Japan, 1500–1700
The shogunate's religious inspection: the yearly investigation of every household's sect, recorded in registers and backed by a dedicated office (the shūmon aratame-yaku) founded in 1640. Together with terauke and the fumi-e it formed the machinery that ground Japanese Christianity underground.
The Tokugawa Persecution of Christians, 1617–1640: How the Shogunate Learned to Manufacture Apostates · Behind Closed Doors: How Japan Reinvented Itself in Isolation
Also appears in: An Offering Refused: Buddhism, Kami, and Christianity in Japan, 1500–1700 · The Christian Century: Faith and Power in Feudal Japan · Number of Christian Converts in Japan, 1549–1700 · Crosses on Both Sides: The Christian Daimyō at Sekigahara and the Victory That Ruined Them, 1600 · The Commissioner Who Left No Wake: Ibi Masayoshi and the Seven-Year Journey to Europe, c. 1615–1622 · The Siege of Osaka: The Last Battle and the Banners of the Cross · The Surname That Means a Country: Hasekura Tsunenaga's Afterlife and the Japón of Coria del Río, 1620–2013 · The Boy on the Water: Amakusa Shirō and the Manufacture of a Messiah, 1621–1638 · +7 more
The temple-certification system: every household required a Buddhist temple's attestation that its members were not Christians. It bound the whole population to temple registries and made Buddhism an organ of anti-Christian surveillance.
Sakoku: How and Why Japan Closed Its Doors · The Tokugawa Persecution of Christians, 1617–1640: How the Shogunate Learned to Manufacture Apostates
Also appears in: An Offering Refused: Buddhism, Kami, and Christianity in Japan, 1500–1700 · Number of Christian Converts in Japan, 1549–1700 · Lord Fool to Demon King: The Life and Personality of Oda Nobunaga · The Patient Conqueror: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu · The Okamoto Daihachi Scandal: Corruption, Forgery, and the End of Christian Japan · The 1614 Expulsion Edict: The Monk, the Manifesto, and the End of Christian Japan · The Boy on the Water: Amakusa Shirō and the Manufacture of a Messiah, 1621–1638 · The Great Martyrdom of Nagasaki, 1622 · +8 more
Portuguese, “Visitor”
The inspector-general of the Jesuit missions of the East Indies, with authority over every superior between Goa and Nagasaki. Alessandro Valignano held the office across three decades and used it to reinvent the Japanese mission.
The Visitor: Alessandro Valignano and the Remaking of the Japan Mission
Also appears in: A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · The Words Between Them: How Portuguese and Japanese Communicated, 1543–1673 · The Christian Century: Faith and Power in Feudal Japan · Number of Christian Converts in Japan, 1549–1700 · The Portuguese in Yamaguchi · Brother Lourenço of Hirado: The Blind Minstrel Who Built a Church · O Desejado: Dom Sebastião and the Ghost That Haunted Two Empires · The Nau do Trato: Portugal's Great Ship to Japan · +23 more
Literally “tent government”: the shogun's administration. In this archive it usually means the Tokugawa bakufu at Edo, the state apparatus that regulated, restricted, and finally ended the Portuguese presence.
The Dutiful Son: Tokugawa Hidetada and the Machinery of Persecution · Born to Rule: Tokugawa Iemitsu and the Perfection of Control
Also appears in: The Poet Ambassador: Song Hui-gyeong's 1420 Journey to Japan · From Ashikaga to Azuchi: Japan’s Road to the Sengoku Period · An Offering Refused: Buddhism, Kami, and Christianity in Japan, 1500–1700 · A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · The Year on the Gable: Hirado, the Matsuura Lords, and the Century of the Open Door, 1543–1641 · Through Barbarian Eyes: How the Japanese Saw the Portuguese · The Words Between Them: How Portuguese and Japanese Communicated, 1543–1673 · The Topsy-Turvy Kingdom: How the Portuguese Saw the Japanese · +78 more
The Laws for the Military Houses: the code by which the Tokugawa bound the daimyō, first issued in 1615 after the fall of Osaka, drafted by Konchiin Sūden. Iemitsu's 1635 revision made alternate attendance compulsory and barred daimyō from building ships of 500 koku or more (merchant ships exempt from 1638); the withdrawal of the hōsho licenses, not this ban, ended the red-seal voyages.
The Dutiful Son: Tokugawa Hidetada and the Machinery of Persecution · Born to Rule: Tokugawa Iemitsu and the Perfection of Control
Also appears in: The Red Seal: How Japan Licensed an Ocean
A territorial warlord: the provincial rulers whose domains, armies, and rivalries defined the Sengoku century. Kyushu daimyō competed for the Portuguese ship, and a string of them — Ōmura, Ōtomo, Arima, Takayama — took baptism.
From Ashikaga to Azuchi: Japan’s Road to the Sengoku Period · Takayama Ukon: The Samurai Who Chose God Over Japan
Also appears in: The Poet Ambassador: Song Hui-gyeong's 1420 Journey to Japan · An Offering Refused: Buddhism, Kami, and Christianity in Japan, 1500–1700 · The Dandy Who Learned Japanese: Juan Fernández and the Tongue of the Mission · A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · The Year on the Gable: Hirado, the Matsuura Lords, and the Century of the Open Door, 1543–1641 · Through Barbarian Eyes: How the Japanese Saw the Portuguese · The Topsy-Turvy Kingdom: How the Portuguese Saw the Japanese · Tanegashima, 1543: First Contact and the Gun that Changed Japan · +79 more
Imperial regent — the loftiest civil office at the emperor's court. Hideyoshi, a peasant's son, had himself appointed kanpaku in 1585: the legal fiction that let him rule Japan without shogunal pedigree.
The Monkey Who Became God: The Life and Personality of Toyotomi Hideyoshi
Also appears in: Julia and Tokuan Naitō: The Abbess and the Lord of Tanba · The Sword Was at Hand: Konishi Yukinaga, the Merchant’s Son Who Refused Seppuku, c. 1555–1600 · The Chronicler: Luís Fróis and the 34-Year Report · Takayama Ukon: The Samurai Who Chose God Over Japan · Gaspar Coelho: The Priest Who Thought He Was a Prince · The Warlord Descends: Hideyoshi’s 1587 Kyūshū Campaign · The Sword Hunt of 1588: The Peasant Who Welded the Ladder Shut · The Imjin War: Hideyoshi’s Invasion of Korea and the War That Broke an Empire · +2 more
The shogunal magistrate of Nagasaki, governor of Japan's window on the outside world. The office ran the trade, policed the ban on Christianity, and pronounced the sentences on the 1640 Macau embassy.
Nagasaki: How a Handful of Fishermen’s Huts Became the Trade Capital of the World · The Last Embassy: Macau's Final Gamble in Nagasaki, 1640
Also appears in: An Offering Refused: Buddhism, Kami, and Christianity in Japan, 1500–1700 · Where the Churches Had Been: Traces of Christianity in Japan, 1549–1873 · Number of Christian Converts in Japan, 1549–1700 · The Sword Was at Hand: Konishi Yukinaga, the Merchant’s Son Who Refused Seppuku, c. 1555–1600 · Manila Under Spanish Rule: The City That Swallowed the World's Silver · João Rodrigues Tçuzzu: The Interpreter Who Spoke for an Empire · The Scattered Kingdom: The Japanese Diaspora of the Iberian World · Softened into the Colloquial Tongue: The Jesuit Mission Press in Japan, 1586–1620 · +24 more
The “age of the country at war”: the century of fragmentation and civil conflict, conventionally 1467–1568, into which the Portuguese sailed. Its hunger for guns and trade goods is what made the newcomers welcome.
From Ashikaga to Azuchi: Japan’s Road to the Sengoku Period
Also appears in: A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · Tanegashima, 1543: First Contact and the Gun that Changed Japan · The Alvares Report: Europe’s First Portrait of Japan · The Christian Century: Faith and Power in Feudal Japan · Francis Xavier and the Jesuit Mission in Japan · The Man Who Stayed: Cosme de Torres and the Long Decade of the Japanese Mission · The Nau do Trato: Portugal's Great Ship to Japan · The Man Who Walked into Kyoto: Gaspar Vilela and the Mission to the Imperial Capital · +15 more
The military ruler of Japan, formally the emperor's generalissimo, in practice the country's sovereign. Tokugawa Ieyasu took the title in 1603; his house held it — and with it the fate of the Nanban trade — until 1867.
The Patient Conqueror: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu · The Battle of Sekigahara: Six Hours That Made the Shogunate
Also appears in: The Poet Ambassador: Song Hui-gyeong's 1420 Journey to Japan · From Ashikaga to Azuchi: Japan’s Road to the Sengoku Period · A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · The Year on the Gable: Hirado, the Matsuura Lords, and the Century of the Open Door, 1543–1641 · The Words Between Them: How Portuguese and Japanese Communicated, 1543–1673 · Tanegashima, 1543: First Contact and the Gun that Changed Japan · The Alvares Report: Europe’s First Portrait of Japan · The Christian Century: Faith and Power in Feudal Japan · +69 more
The honorific of a retired imperial regent, in practice the title by which Toyotomi Hideyoshi ruled after 1591 and by which history remembers him. The taikō never took the title of shogun; he never needed it.
The Monkey Who Became God: The Life and Personality of Toyotomi Hideyoshi
Also appears in: The Sword Was at Hand: Konishi Yukinaga, the Merchant’s Son Who Refused Seppuku, c. 1555–1600 · Lord Fool to Demon King: The Life and Personality of Oda Nobunaga · A Nanban Kitchen: Period Recipes from the Portuguese-Japanese Culinary Exchange · The Weight of Silver: Measurements, Money, and the Mechanics of Nanban Commerce · The Sword Hunt of 1588: The Peasant Who Welded the Ladder Shut · Hideyoshi's Manila Demand of 1591: The Con Man Who Forged a War · The Barefoot Invasion: The Franciscan Friars in Japan · The Line on Nishizaka: The Twenty-Six Martyrs of Japan, 5 February 1597 · +1 more
The professional interpreters of the Japan trade. The Portuguese-era interpreters were followed by hereditary guilds of Dutch and Chinese tsūji at Nagasaki; João Rodrigues, nicknamed “Tçuzzu”, was interpreter enough to serve two shoguns.
João Rodrigues Tçuzzu: The Interpreter Who Spoke for an Empire
Also appears in: The Words Between Them: How Portuguese and Japanese Communicated, 1543–1673 · The Sword Hunt of 1588: The Peasant Who Welded the Ladder Shut
from Portuguese pão de Castela, “bread of Castile”
The sponge cake the Portuguese brought to Kyushu, naturalized over four centuries into a Nagasaki specialty. Its egg-and-sugar luxury made it a gift item from the start — and it never stopped being one.
From Tempura to Castella: The Culinary Legacy of the Nanban · A Nanban Kitchen: Period Recipes from the Portuguese-Japanese Culinary Exchange
Also appears in: A Flask of Sugar: Konpeitō and the Portuguese Gift to Nobunaga, 1569 · Southern Barbarian Chicken: The Improbable History of Chicken Nanban · Portuguese Words in Japanese: A Linguistic Archaeology
from Portuguese confeito, “confection”
Star-shaped sugar candy, from the Portuguese confeito. A flask of it, presented by Luís Fróis to Oda Nobunaga in 1569, is the era's most famous sweet — and the word survives unchanged in Japanese today.
Portuguese Words in Japanese: A Linguistic Archaeology · From Tempura to Castella: The Culinary Legacy of the Nanban
Also appears in: The Chronicler: Luís Fróis and the 34-Year Report · Lord Fool to Demon King: The Life and Personality of Oda Nobunaga · A Flask of Sugar: Konpeitō and the Portuguese Gift to Nobunaga, 1569 · Southern Barbarian Chicken: The Improbable History of Chicken Nanban · A Nanban Kitchen: Period Recipes from the Portuguese-Japanese Culinary Exchange
The great folding screens depicting the southern barbarians' arrival: black ships, capitães in bombachas, priests in black and gray. Some 90 survive, most from the Kanō school, and they remain the century's most vivid visual record.
Nanban Screens: Imagining the Foreign
Also appears in: The Ethiopian Embassy to King Sebastian: A Patriarch, a Prince, and the Rescue of Prester John · Through Barbarian Eyes: How the Japanese Saw the Portuguese · The Words Between Them: How Portuguese and Japanese Communicated, 1543–1673
Export lacquerware made to Iberian taste and Christian use — chests, lecterns, and host-boxes in black lacquer, gold maki-e, and mother-of-pearl. It was the first Japanese art produced in quantity for European buyers.
The everyday words the century left in Japanese: pan (pão, bread), kappa (capa, raincape), botan (botão, button), karuta (carta, playing cards), tabako (tabaco). Long after the ships were banned, the vocabulary stayed — the quietest legacy of the Nanban trade.
"Dutch learning": the study of European science and medicine through the Dutch window at Dejima after the expulsion of the Iberians. It flowered in the 18th and 19th centuries — the sakoku system's own proof that the closed country never stopped importing knowledge.
Behind Closed Doors: How Japan Reinvented Itself in Isolation · Sakoku: How and Why Japan Closed Its Doors
Also appears in: A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · Nagasaki: How a Handful of Fishermen’s Huts Became the Trade Capital of the World · Cristóvão Ferreira: The Fallen Jesuit of Japan · The Fan Without Its Ribs: Dejima and the Three Acres That Held the West, 1634–1859
Ritual suicide by self-disembowelment, the samurai class's prerogative and obligation — the honorable alternative to capture or execution. It recurs through the century's politics, from battlefield defeats to the judicial sentences that closed the Okamoto Daihachi affair.
The Okamoto Daihachi Scandal: Corruption, Forgery, and the End of Christian Japan · The Battle of Sekigahara: Six Hours That Made the Shogunate
Also appears in: The Dandy Who Learned Japanese: Juan Fernández and the Tongue of the Mission · The Pardon That Came Too Late: Life, Status and Killing in Japan, 1543–1700 · The Topsy-Turvy Kingdom: How the Portuguese Saw the Japanese · Francis Xavier and the Jesuit Mission in Japan · The Portuguese in Yamaguchi · The Man Who Stayed: Cosme de Torres and the Long Decade of the Japanese Mission · The Sword Was at Hand: Konishi Yukinaga, the Merchant’s Son Who Refused Seppuku, c. 1555–1600 · Lord Fool to Demon King: The Life and Personality of Oda Nobunaga · +10 more
from Portuguese têmporas or tempero (disputed)
Batter-fried food, from the Portuguese practice of frying fish on fast days. Japan took the technique, refined it beyond recognition, and made the foreigners' Lenten dish a national cuisine.
From Tempura to Castella: The Culinary Legacy of the Nanban · Southern Barbarian Chicken: The Improbable History of Chicken Nanban
Also appears in: A Nanban Kitchen: Period Recipes from the Portuguese-Japanese Culinary Exchange · Portuguese Words in Japanese: A Linguistic Archaeology · The Patient Conqueror: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu