Military History |
New World | Japan
Portuguese in Japan
Posted 25 Apr 2006
This is a place holder for some future project ...
In 1542 the three Portuguese became the first Europeans to visit Japan, when their ship sailed off course and reached the southern tip of Japanese Archipelago. This initiated the Nanban ("southern barbarian") period of active commercial and cultural exchange between Japan and the West. During the next century, traders from Portugal, the Netherlands, England, and Spain arrived, as did Jesuit, Dominican, and Franciscan missionaries. In 1639, Suspicious of Christianity and of Portuguese support of a local Japanese revolt, the shoguns of the Tokugawa period (1603–1867) prohibited all trade with foreign countries; only a Dutch trading post at Nagasaki was permitted. Western attempts to renew trading relations failed until 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry sailed an American fleet into Tokyo Bay.
Brief Timeline of the Nanban period (Japan Guide):
1542 Portuguese introduce firearms, Christianity and Tempura (!!) to Japan.
1568 Nobunaga enters Kyoto.
1573 The Muromachi Bakufu falls.
1575 The Takeda clan is defeated in the battle of Nagashino.
1582 Nobunaga is murdered and succeeded by Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
1588 Hideyoshi confiscates the weapons of farmers and religious institutions in the "Sword Hunt".
1590 Japan is reunited after the fall of Odawara (Hojo).
1592-98 Unsuccessful invasion of Korea.
1598 Death of Hideyoshi.
1600 Tokugawa Ieyasu defeats his rivals in the battle of Sekigahara.
1603 Ieyasu is appointed shogun and establishes the Tokugawa government in Edo (Tokyo).
1614 Ieyasu intensifies persecution of Christianity.
1615 The Toyotomi clan is destroyed after Ieyasu captures Osaka Castle.
1639 Almost complete isolation of Japan from the rest of the world.
The following pictures of off Vince Lody's 25mm Samurai.
