Portuguese Reach Japan

In 1542 or thereabouts, Portuguese traders became the first Europeans known to reach Japan, opening a new chapter in the country's relations with the wider world. Their arrival brought firearms and, soon afterward, Christianity, and it set off a century of commercial and cultural exchange that reshaped Japanese warfare, trade, and religious life. The exact year is debated, since Japanese and Portuguese sources disagree, and 1543 is often given in Japanese accounts.

The background was Portugal's expansion eastward after Vasco da Gama reached India in 1498. The Portuguese had established bases at Goa and Malacca and by the 1510s were trading with China. Japan, meanwhile, was in the midst of the Sengoku, or "Warring States," period, a long era of conflict in which regional warlords known as daimyo competed for power while the central authority of the shogunate had largely collapsed. Chinese authorities restricted direct trade with Japan, which created an opening for intermediaries willing to carry Chinese silk and goods to Japanese buyers and Japanese silver back.

According to Japanese tradition, the first Portuguese arrived on the island of Tanegashima, south of Kyushu, aboard a Chinese vessel that had been blown off course. Among them were men carrying matchlock guns. The local lord, Tanegashima Tokitaka, is said to have been impressed enough to buy examples and have his swordsmith study them. Accounts differ on details, and some Portuguese writers credited different individuals with the discovery, but the broad outline of an accidental landing is widely accepted. Japanese smiths proved remarkably quick at copying the weapon, and firearms spread rapidly among the warring domains.

The consequences were considerable. Guns changed battlefield tactics, and by the later sixteenth century massed musket fire was used to notable effect by commanders such as Oda Nobunaga. Their precise role in unifying Japan is sometimes overstated, but they contributed to the changing nature of castle design and warfare. Trade flourished as well, with Portuguese ships, and later Spanish, Dutch, and English ones, calling at ports such as Nagasaki.

Religion followed commerce. In 1549 the Jesuit Francis Xavier arrived in Kagoshima, beginning Christian missionary work in Japan. Some daimyo converted, partly out of sincere belief and partly to gain trade advantages, and the Christian community grew to perhaps several hundred thousand people. Suspicion of missionaries and foreign influence eventually hardened into suppression. Toyotomi Hideyoshi issued expulsion orders in 1587, and the Tokugawa shogunate banned Christianity and, by the 1630s, severely restricted foreign contact in the policy later called sakoku. The Portuguese were expelled in 1639, but the early encounter had already left a lasting mark on Japanese history.