The geography of the encounter: where the ships sailed from, where they anchored, and where the century was decided. The map is schematic — distances are not to scale; every dot links to its entry.
Schematic — not to scale
The island off southern Kyushu where storm-blown Portuguese merchants landed in 1543 — the first documented Europeans in Japan. The arquebus they sold the island's young lord was copied within months, and “tanegashima” became the Japanese word for the gun itself.
Tanegashima, 1543: First Contact and the Gun that Changed Japan · From Reconquista to Tanegashima: How a Crusade on the Iberian Frontier Led to a Beach in Japan
The Satsuma port where Francis Xavier stepped ashore in 1549 to open the Japanese mission, guided home by the fugitive Anjirō — Japan's first Christian convert. The Shimazu lords' welcome cooled within a year, and the mission moved on; the faith's first foothold was also its first lesson in daimyō politics.
The Matsura clan's island port in northwest Kyushu, the Portuguese ships' main harbour before Nagasaki and later the seat of the Dutch (1609) and English (1613) factories. For three decades it was the Protestant beachhead in Japan, until the Dutch were moved to Dejima in 1641.
Red Lion, Red Seal: The Dutch Arrival at Hirado in 1609 · William Adams and the Protestant Disruption
The fishing village Ōmura Sumitada opened to the Portuguese ship in 1571, ceded to the Jesuits in 1580, and confiscated by Hideyoshi in 1587 — by then the boom town of the Japan trade and the most Christian city in Asia. Under the shogunate it became the country's single supervised window on the world, and the stage for the persecution's grimmest theatre.
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
The fan-shaped artificial island built in Nagasaki harbour in 1636 to confine the Portuguese — who were expelled three years later, before they had finished paying for it. From 1641 it held the Dutch instead, and for two centuries this hectare of reclaimed ground was Europe's only door into Japan.
Sakoku: How and Why Japan Closed Its Doors · Behind Closed Doors: How Japan Reinvented Itself in Isolation
The peninsula and islands east of Nagasaki, old Christian daimyō country, where taxation and persecution ignited the great rising of 1637–38. The rebels' last stand at Hara Castle cost some 37,000 lives and sealed the shogunate's case for expelling the Portuguese.
The Ōtomo capital in Bungo (modern Ōita), the mission's early headquarters under Ōtomo Sōrin's protection: site of Japan's first European hospital and, for a generation, the safest Christian ground in the country — until the Shimazu armies broke Ōtomo power in 1586–87.
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 self-governing merchant city at the edge of the Kinai, Japan's great entrepôt and gunsmithy — the place that turned the Tanegashima arquebus into an industry. Its autonomy ended under Nobunaga, but its merchants and its muskets shaped every campaign of the unification.
The Demon King and the Monks: Oda Nobunaga’s War on Buddhist Power · The Weight of Silver: Measurements, Money, and the Mechanics of Nanban Commerce
The imperial capital — Miyako, “the capital”, to the missionaries — where Vilela opened the mission's second front in 1559. Its church, the Nanbanji, rose under Nobunaga's protection and fell with the first persecutions; the capital was where the mission's fortunes were always decided.
The Man Who Walked into Kyoto: Gaspar Vilela and the Mission to the Imperial Capital · The Azuchi Debate: Nobunaga's Rigged Trial and the Golden Age of Christian Japan
Hideyoshi's castle city and the Toyotomi stronghold, built on the site of the Honganji fortress Nobunaga had spent a decade reducing. Its fall in the sieges of 1614–15 destroyed the Toyotomi cause — and with it the last great lordly refuge of Christian samurai.
The Siege of Osaka: The Last Battle and the Banners of the Cross · The Monkey Who Became God: The Life and Personality of Toyotomi Hideyoshi
The Tokugawa capital (modern Tokyo), seat of the bakufu from 1603 and the place where the anti-Christian machinery was designed. What Edo decreed, Nagasaki executed: the geography of the persecution ran between these two cities.
The Dutiful Son: Tokugawa Hidetada and the Machinery of Persecution · Born to Rule: Tokugawa Iemitsu and the Perfection of Control
The capital of Portugal's Estado da Índia and the administrative heart of the Asian empire — every Japan voyage, missionary, and dispatch passed through it. The India-bound Cabral and the Japan-bound Valignano alike answered to Goa before Rome.
From Reconquista to Tanegashima: How a Crusade on the Iberian Frontier Led to a Beach in Japan · The Visitor: Alessandro Valignano and the Remaking of the Japan Mission
The strait city taken by Albuquerque in 1511, the hinge of the route between the Indian Ocean and the China seas. Xavier met Anjirō here in 1547 — the conversation that turned the Society of Jesus toward Japan.
From Reconquista to Tanegashima: How a Crusade on the Iberian Frontier Led to a Beach in Japan · Sailing from Lisbon to Nagasaki: The Deadliest Journey in the World
The Portuguese settlement on the China coast from the 1550s, licensed by the Ming and enriched by exactly one privilege: the legal middleman's seat between China's silk and Japan's silver. The Japan trade built its churches and paid its garrison; the 1639 expulsion nearly broke it.
The City at the Edge of Empire: A History of Portuguese Macau · The Nau do Trato: Portugal's Great Ship to Japan
The Spanish capital of the Philippines, terminus of the Pacific galleon and the mission's Franciscan gateway into Japan — a rivalry the Jesuits never welcomed. The San Felipe's wreck in 1596 lit the fuse of the first great martyrdom; Takayama Ukon died in exile here in 1615.
The San Felipe Incident: The Shipwreck That Sank a Mission · Takayama Ukon: The Samurai Who Chose God Over Japan