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
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 · Through Barbarian Eyes: How the Japanese Saw the Portuguese · The Words Between Them: How Portuguese and Japanese Communicated, 1543–1673 · The Alvares Report: Europe’s First Portrait of Japan · The Portuguese in Yamaguchi · +9 more
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.
Francis Xavier and the Jesuit Mission in 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 · 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 · The Alvares Report: Europe’s First Portrait of Japan · The Christian Century: Faith and Power in Feudal Japan · +11 more
The Matsura clan's island port in northwest Kyushu, the Portuguese ships' main harbor 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.
The Year on the Gable: Hirado, the Matsuura Lords, and the Century of the Open Door, 1543–1641 · Red Lion, Red Seal: The Dutch Arrival at Hirado in 1609 · William Adams and the Protestant Disruption
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 · A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · The Pardon That Came Too Late: Life, Status and Killing in Japan, 1543–1700 · The Words Between Them: How Portuguese and Japanese Communicated, 1543–1673 · Sailing from Lisbon to Nagasaki: The Deadliest Journey in the World · Tanegashima, 1543: First Contact and the Gun that Changed Japan · The Christian Century: Faith and Power in Feudal Japan · +46 more
The fishing village Ōmura Sumitada opened to the Portuguese ship in 1571, ceded to the Jesuits in 1580, and confiscated by Hideyoshi in 1588 — 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 theater.
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: 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 · 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 Pardon That Came Too Late: Life, Status and Killing in Japan, 1543–1700 · The Words Between Them: How Portuguese and Japanese Communicated, 1543–1673 · +97 more
The fan-shaped artificial island built in Nagasaki harbor 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.
The Fan Without Its Ribs: Dejima and the Three Acres That Held the West, 1634–1859 · 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 · The Words Between Them: How Portuguese and Japanese Communicated, 1543–1673 · Where the Churches Had Been: Traces of Christianity in Japan, 1549–1873 · 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 · Portuguese Words in Japanese: A Linguistic Archaeology · +22 more
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 Castle That Was Already a Ruin: Hara-jō, the Siege of 1637–1638, and What the Excavators Found · The Shimabara Rebellion: The Siege That Sealed Japan
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 · Through Barbarian Eyes: How the Japanese Saw the Portuguese · The Words Between Them: How Portuguese and Japanese Communicated, 1543–1673 · Sailing from Lisbon to Nagasaki: The Deadliest Journey in the World · The Christian Century: Faith and Power in Feudal Japan · Where the Churches Had Been: Traces of Christianity in Japan, 1549–1873 · +43 more
The harbor at the southern tip of the Shimabara Peninsula, in Arima territory, which housed the headquarters of the Jesuit Japan mission from 1564 to 1567 and landed the Visitor Alessandro Valignano on 25 July 1579. A sheltered anchorage the pilots rated above Ōmura's own made it a sound place to hold a laden carrack through the typhoon season; but Nagasaki's sheltered approaches and settled administration took the trade, and in 1616 the shogunate confined European shipping to Nagasaki and Hirado.
Much the Better Port: Kuchinotsu, the Harbor That Sheltered the Japan Mission, 1562–1638 · The Nau do Trato: Portugal's Great Ship to Japan · The Visitor: Alessandro Valignano and the Remaking of the Japan Mission
Also appears in: The Man Who Stayed: Cosme de Torres and the Long Decade of the Japanese Mission · The Surgeon’s Capital: Luís de Almeida in Japan, 1552–1583 · 40 Seconds at Shitaragahara: The Battle of Nagashino, 1575 · The Man the Jesuits Never Named: What the Sources Actually Say About Yasuke, 1579–1582 · Jan Huyghen van Linschoten: The Spy Who Sank an Empire
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
Also appears in: The Dandy Who Learned Japanese: Juan Fernández and the Tongue of the Mission · Francis Xavier and the Jesuit Mission in Japan · The Portuguese in Yamaguchi · Brother Lourenço of Hirado: The Blind Minstrel Who Built a Church · The Surgeon’s Capital: Luís de Almeida in Japan, 1552–1583 · The Sword Was at Hand: Konishi Yukinaga, the Merchant’s Son Who Refused Seppuku, c. 1555–1600 · The Visitor: Alessandro Valignano and the Remaking of the Japan Mission · The Paper War: How the Catholic Mission to Japan Tore Itself Apart · +1 more
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
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 · Tanegashima, 1543: First Contact and the Gun that Changed Japan · Brother Lourenço of Hirado: The Blind Minstrel Who Built a Church · The Surgeon’s Capital: Luís de Almeida in Japan, 1552–1583 · The Sword Was at Hand: Konishi Yukinaga, the Merchant’s Son Who Refused Seppuku, c. 1555–1600 · The City at the Edge of Empire: A History of Portuguese Macau · The Nau do Trato: Portugal's Great Ship to Japan · +24 more
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
Also appears in: From Ashikaga to Azuchi: Japan’s Road to the Sengoku Period · The Tokugawa Persecution of Christians, 1617–1640: How the Shogunate Learned to Manufacture Apostates
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
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 · Tanegashima, 1543: First Contact and the Gun that Changed Japan · Where the Churches Had Been: Traces of Christianity in Japan, 1549–1873 · Number of Christian Converts in Japan, 1549–1700 · 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 City at the Edge of Empire: A History of Portuguese Macau · +47 more
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
Also appears in: 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 Christian Century: Faith and Power in Feudal Japan · Where the Churches Had Been: Traces of Christianity in Japan, 1549–1873 · Number of Christian Converts in Japan, 1549–1700 · Julia and Tokuan Naitō: The Abbess and the Lord of Tanba · The Portuguese in Yamaguchi · The City at the Edge of Empire: A History of Portuguese Macau · +53 more
The mountain northeast of Kyoto crowned by Enryaku-ji, headquarters of Tendai Buddhism and, for centuries, of its warrior-monks — the capital's other great power. Nobunaga burned the complex in 1571, killing thousands; the destruction broke Buddhist military power in the capital region, and the missionaries preached into the space it left.
The Demon King and the Monks: Oda Nobunaga’s War on Buddhist Power · 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 Christian Century: Faith and Power in Feudal Japan · Brother Lourenço of Hirado: The Blind Minstrel Who Built a Church · The Man Who Walked into Kyoto: Gaspar Vilela and the Mission to the Imperial Capital · The Chronicler: Luís Fróis and the 34-Year Report · Lord Fool to Demon King: The Life and Personality of Oda Nobunaga · The Soldier Who Would Not Bend: Francisco Cabral and the Battle for Japan’s Soul · Takayama Ukon: The Samurai Who Chose God Over Japan · +3 more
Nobunaga's castle town on Lake Biwa, raised 1576–79 as the showpiece of his new order — seven stories of gold and lacquer above the rice plain. The Jesuits received a plot for a church and seminary there, and in 1579 the castle hosted the religious debate that confirmed the mission in Nobunaga's favor. Castle and town burned weeks after his death in 1582.
The Azuchi Debate: Nobunaga's Rigged Trial and the Golden Age of Christian Japan · From Ashikaga to Azuchi: Japan’s Road to the Sengoku Period
Also appears in: The Dandy Who Learned Japanese: Juan Fernández and the Tongue of the Mission · 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 · 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 Chronicler: Luís Fróis and the 34-Year Report · Lord Fool to Demon King: The Life and Personality of Oda Nobunaga · +8 more
Castle town of Date Masamune, capital of the great northern domain. At Tsukinoura on its coast the galleon San Juan Bautista was built and launched in 1613, carrying the Keichō embassy toward Mexico and Rome — the only Japanese-built ship of the century to cross the Pacific twice.
The Keichō Embassy: A Samurai in the Court of the Spanish King
Also appears in: Where the Churches Had Been: Traces of Christianity in Japan, 1549–1873 · The Scattered Kingdom: The Japanese Diaspora of the Iberian World · The Governor in the Surf: Rodrigo de Vivero, the San Francisco, and Spain's Best Offer to Japan, 1609–1610 · The Surname That Means a Country: Hasekura Tsunenaga's Afterlife and the Japón of Coria del Río, 1620–2013
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
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 · 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 · Sailing from Lisbon to Nagasaki: The Deadliest Journey in the World · Francis Xavier and the Jesuit Mission in Japan · The Portuguese in Yamaguchi · Brother Lourenço of Hirado: The Blind Minstrel Who Built a Church · +44 more
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
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 · The Words Between Them: How Portuguese and Japanese Communicated, 1543–1673 · The Topsy-Turvy Kingdom: How the Portuguese Saw the Japanese · The Alvares Report: Europe’s First Portrait of Japan · Number of Christian Converts in Japan, 1549–1700 · Francis Xavier and the Jesuit Mission in Japan · +36 more
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
Also appears in: The Poet Ambassador: Song Hui-gyeong's 1420 Journey to Japan · 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 · 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 · +83 more
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
Also appears in: An Offering Refused: Buddhism, Kami, and Christianity in Japan, 1500–1700 · A Complete Timeline of Portuguese-Japanese Exchange, 1543–1650 · Sailing from Lisbon to Nagasaki: The Deadliest Journey in the World · 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 · O Desejado: Dom Sebastião and the Ghost That Haunted Two Empires · The City at the Edge of Empire: A History of Portuguese Macau · +41 more
The Siamese royal capital and free port on the Chao Phraya, one of the great destinations of the red-seal trade — home to a Japanese quarter 1,000 strong and a Portuguese settlement beside it. There, in 1628, a Spanish galleon's seizure of a shogunal-licensed junk set off the diplomatic crisis that hardened Japan against Manila.
Also appears in: Tanegashima, 1543: First Contact and the Gun that Changed Japan · A Nanban Kitchen: Period Recipes from the Portuguese-Japanese Culinary Exchange · 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 Red Seal: How Japan Licensed an Ocean · William Adams and the Protestant Disruption · Prize of War: The Dutch Captures of the Santo António · A Title from Siam: Yamada Nagamasa and the Japanese Quarter of Ayutthaya, 1621–1630