Japan–Portugal relations are the current and historical diplomatic, cultural and trade relations between Japan and Portugal. The history of relations between the two nations goes back to the mid-16th century, when Portuguese sailors first arrived in Japan in 1543, and diplomatic relations officially restarted in the 19th century with the Treaty of Peace, Amity and Commerce.
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to reach Japan, blown ashore the Ōsumi Archipelago, in the Tanegashima island. During the 16th century, upon first contact with the Japanese, Firearms and other technological advancements were introduced, leading to mercantilism, known as Nanban trade, having subsequently shaped the unification of Japan and economic development during the Sengoku and early Edo periods. The Portuguese legacy in Japan, among many, includes depictions of the East and West in Nanban art, with subsequent influences in gastronomy, such as tempura, in language, reflected in several dozen Portuguese loanwords in the Japanese language, geography, religion and everyday culture.Fernando Cristóvão (ed.): Dicionário Temático da Lusofonia. Texto Editores, Lisbon/Luanda/Praia/Maputo 2006 (ISBN 972-47-2935-4), pp. 827ff. The Portuguese heritage in Japan is still present in the consciousness of modern Japanese society."Everyone in Japan knows that the Portuguese introduced the rifle here and that words like Pan or “Koppu are of Portuguese origin," interview in the newspaper Diário de Notícias with the Japanese ambassador on 12 February 2020, accessed on 15 February 2020
Both nations are members of the World Trade Organization. Since 2014 Japan has had associate observer status in the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. In 2016, 440 Japanese citizens were registered in PortugalOfficial Portuguese foreigner statistics by district, Portuguese Foreigners and Border Authority SEF, accessed on 30 August 2017 and 589 Portuguese were registered in Japan.Portuguese website on Japanese-Portuguese migration, accessed on 30 August 2017 Japan has an embassy in Lisbon. Portugal has an embassy in Tokyo.
History 16th century
Trade and commerce
The first affiliation between Portugal and Japan started in 1543, when Portuguese explorers landed in the southern archipelago of Japan, becoming the first Europeans to reach Japan. They arrived on Tanegashima, ruled by Tanegashima Tokitaka, who quickly acquired Portuguese firearms and ordered local smiths to copy them, beginning the spread of guns throughout Japan. As soon as the first Portuguese arrived in 1543, Portuguese traders and merchants began looking for trading opportunities in Japan. This period of time is often entitled Nanban trade, where both Portuguese and Japanese would engage in mercantilism and cultural exchange.
The Portuguese at this time would found the port of Nagasaki, through the initiative of the Jesuit Gaspar Vilela and the Daimyo lord Ōmura Sumitada, in 1571, where the annual trade ships arrived from then on. Sumitada, who converted to Christianity in 1563, was the first daimyō to do so and strongly supported Portuguese trade and Jesuit missionary activity. In 1580 he granted Nagasaki to the Jesuits, helping make it the principal Portuguese trading center in Japan.
The expansion for commerce extended Portuguese influence in Japan, particularly in Kyushu, where the port became a strategic hot spot after the Portuguese assistance to Daimyo Sumitada on repelling an attack on the harbor by the Ryūzōji clan in 1578. Portuguese influence in Kyushu was also strengthened through alliance with the powerful Christian daimyō Ōtomo Sōrin, who welcomed missionaries and merchants into his domains. Sōrin converted to Christianity in 1578 under the name Dom Francisco and became one of the leading supporters of Portuguese interests in Japan.
The cargo of the first Portuguese ships (called kurofune, "Black Ships", by the Japanese) upon docking in Japan were basically cargo coming from China (silk, porcelain, etc.). The Japanese craved these goods, which were prohibited from contacts with the Chinese by the Emperor as punishment for the attacks of the Wokou piracy. Thus, the Portuguese acted as intermediaries in the Asian trade. Many products and cultural aspects flowed into the Japanese market from Portugal, while silver and other goods from Japan circulated into the Portuguese kingdom.
In 1592 the Portuguese trade with Japan started being increasingly challenged by Chinese smugglers on their reeds, in addition to Spanish vessels coming to Manila in 1600, the Dutch in 1609, and English in 1613.
One of the many things that the Japanese were interested in were Portuguese guns. With the arrival of the first Europeans in Japan in 1543, Portuguese traders António Mota, Francisco Zeimoto disembarked in Tanegashima, where they introduced firearms to the local population. These muskets would later be known as Tanegashima, receiving the name after its location.
Because Japan was in the midst of a civil war, an era marked by the Sengoku period, the Japanese heavily purchased Portuguese artillery, such as guns (arquebus) and cannons (breech-loading swivel gun), and adopted Portuguese full plated armour, opposed to tight leather. Oda Nobunaga, a famous daimyō who nearly unified all of Japan, made extensive use of guns, which played a key role in the Battle of Nagashino in 1575. Nobunaga also tolerated Jesuit missionaries and Portuguese merchants, partly because they weakened the influence of Buddhist institutions hostile to him. Within a year, Japanese smiths were able to reproduce the mechanism and began to mass-produce the Portuguese firearms. Early issues due to Japanese inexperience were corrected with the help of Portuguese blacksmiths. The Japanese soon worked on various techniques to improve the effectiveness of their guns and even developed larger caliber barrels and ammunition to increase lethality. Within 50 years, Nobunaga's armies were equipped with a large number of such weapons, changing the way war was fought on the islands. These weapons played a key role in the unification of Japan under Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, as well as in the invasions of Korea in 1592 and 1597. Apart from weapons, the Portuguese also traded clocks, glass and glassware, soap, tobacco, and other unknown products, in addition, they introduced bread and wine and the cultivation of tomatos, bananas and pumpkins, etc. in Feudal Japan.
Jesuits in Japan
While working in Malacca in December 1547, Francisco Xavier met Anjirō. A former samurai on the run for murder, Anjirō had heard about Xavier's work and left Japan specifically to learn Catholicism from him. The two became friends, exchanging knowledge of their cultures while working together for a year in Goa. Then, with Anjirō as his translator, Xavier traveled through Japan between 15 August 1549 and 15 November 1551, starting in Kagoshima. He laid the foundation for the Jesuits' missionary activity and thus introduced Christianity to Japan. Other Portuguese Jesuits like Francisco Cabral and Gaspar Coelho visited Japan in 1570 and continued to carry out Christian missionary activities in Kyushu, later leading several lords of the region to Christianize. Tenshō envoys were also sent to Europe in the late sixteenth century. The Jesuits initially missionized exclusively, then in competition with other Christian monastic orders, but also significantly promoted cultural, scientific, institutional, business and diplomatic exchange.
In addition to their religious activities, Portuguese merchants introduced a wide range of European cultural practices to Japan. They taught Western techniques in fields such as art, music, theater, and painting, and produced printed materials in Latin, Portuguese, and romanized Japanese, helping to disseminate European knowledge. Jesuit schools and workshops became centers for instruction in subjects including cartography, astronomy, medicine, metallurgy, Western-style military science, entertainment, and cuisine.
European leisure activities also took root in Japanese society during this period. Card games such as karuta, derived from Portuguese playing cards, later known as hanafuda developed into popular pastimes and eventually became embedded in Japanese cultural traditions. In culinary, the Jesuits cooking methods also influenced the development of tempura and nanbanzuke, which evolved into some of Japan’s iconic dishes. Local confectioners in Nagasaki also adopted Portuguese techniques to create sweets such as keiran somen (fios de ovos), konpeitō, and castella cake, all of which became enduring elements of Japanese gastronomy.
Portuguese Jesuits also played a role in writing several works about the Japanese language and society. Publications include the first Japanese-to-Portuguese dictionary and Japanese grammar, the latter by João Rodrigues, in the early 1600s, which took more than four years to compile and have become valuable resources for philological studies of Japanese and Portuguese today. Other important works include the books "The First European Description of Japan" and "Historia de Iapam" by Luís Fróis and "História da Igreja do Japão" (also by João Rodrigues) on the history of Japan.
In 1556 Jesuit Luís de Almeida, who disseminated surgical and other medical knowledge from Europe to Japan, founded the first European hospital of Western medicine in Japan, a leprosy ward and a kindergarten in Ōita. He built the hospital in Funai with the permission of the daimyō Ōtomo Sōrin. This hospital was able to accommodate about 100 patients. Initially, Almeida was in charge of the surgical department, and internal medicine was in the hands of converted Japanese doctors, who were so successful in applying Chinese-Japanese therapies that some of them were singled out by name.Michel 1993. The hospital had departments for surgery, internal medicine, and leprosy, and was the first hospital in Japan where Western medicine was introduced. He also began medical education in 1558, training doctors.
With the decree against Christianity in Japan in 1587 and the expulsion of missionaries from 1614 onwards, the persecution of Christians in Japan began, which ended in 1639 with the expulsion of the Jesuits and the Portuguese from Japan. As early as 1625, Francisco Pacheco, head of the Jesuit mission in Japan, was executed at the gates of Nagasaki. The Portuguese missionary Cristóvão Ferreira, who arrived in Japan in 1610, contributed to the tense situation on the issue with his varied role until he was executed there around 1650. The Buddhist monks in Japan, who feared for their power, also pushed for the expulsion.
20th century In World War I, Portugal and Japan participated together in the war on the Allied side. After the war, nine countries, including Japan and Portugal, attended the Washington Naval Conference of 1922, where they both ratified the Nine-Power Treaty.
During the Second World War, both countries had a complicated relationship. Portugal was officially neutral; while it was aligned more closely with the Allies, it adhered to strict neutrality in East Asia, to protect its territories of Macau and East Timor. Initially, Japan respected the neutrality of both territories. Macau, in particular, become a haven for Allied civilian refugees. To varying degrees, however, both Macau and East Timor later came under de facto control of Japan, until the end of the war. During this time, diplomatic relations were temporarily disrupted.