"and touched his garment" - Japan and Spain in 1611

Tokyo


Japan and Spain in 1611


In 1609, a Spanish ship was wrecked in the Pacific Ocean near Tokyo, then called Edo, while it was sailing from the Philippines to Mexico.

However,  Deputy Governor of the Philippines Rodrigo de Vivero y Velasco (1564 - 1636） and 360 sailors could reach the land on Japan, specifically a village in the Boso Peninsula.  Then they received very humane hospitality from Japanese farmers and samurais in the region.

This report reached Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543 - 1616), the head of the Tokugawa clan that governed Japan at the time.  So, Ieyasu invited Rodrigo de Vivero to his castle in Shizuoka, 200  km west of Edo.  In his way to Shizuoka, Rodrigo de Vivero paid a courtesy call to shogun Hidetada, a son of Ieyasu, who acted as samurai king of Japan.

At the time, Ieysau was not strongly against Christianity.  He rather wanted to promote trade with Spain, though trade with the Netherlands was already underway.  So, their meeting was successful.  Ieyasu gave a ship to Rodrigo de Vivero.  It was William Adams (1564-1620) that built this ship.  Adams was the first Englishman who came and stayed in Japan till his death.

Then in 1611, King Philip III of Spain (1578-1621) decided to send Sebastián Vizcaíno (1548-1615) to Japan as his official diplomat to consolidate the relationship between Japan and Spain.  Vizcaíno visited Shizuoka to see Ieyasu.  It was a friendly meeting, but the situation had been drastically changed.  The Tokugawa samurai regime had already decided not to establish diplomatic relationships with Spain as well as Portugal.  Japanese samurai leaders were afraid of Catholicism, since Catholic Japanese did not fully obey shogun and the Tokugawa leadership.  As the Netherlands, a Protestant country, did not try to be engaged in missionary work, the Tokugawa regime opted to maintain a diplomatic tie only with the Netherlands.

So, Sebastián Vizcaíno left Japan, but his ship was wrecked just off Japan.  He returned to Japan, but shogun did not provide a new ship for the Spanish diplomat.  But as a feudal lord in Northeast Japan planned to send his own mission to the Vatican, Vizcaíno joined their voyage to return to Mexico in 1613.       

When Vizcaíno met Ieyasu, he presented many gifts from Philip III to Ieyasu.  One of the gifts was a famous clock that had been built in Flanders in 1581.  It was still kept in Japan.  And recently recovery work was started with help from British Museum, since only 20 or so clocks made 400 years ago in Europe remain today and this is one of them in better condition.

Philip III of Spain sent a few more diplomats after Vizcaíno to Japan in his effort to do a trade with Japan, since Japan was at the time known to Europe as a country of gold.  Vizcaíno reported that there was a plenty of silver and high quality of gold in Japan.  Nonetheless the father of shogun Ieyasu did not even see these diplomats from Spain.  The Tokugawa regime was going to close the door of the nation to Westerners, except  the Dutch, to avoid influences of Christianity.

It is hard to tell which was better, that Japan established a diplomatic tie with Spain and the Vatican 400 years ago, or that Japan rejected Christian influences coming into the nation as it did.  Samurai leader Ieyasu was not moved by the clock, which is the only sure thing we can tell today.

The first Western diplomat in Japan 

Shipwrecked in 1609, Rodrigo de Vivero negotiated with the shogun on establishing relations 

BY ALICE GORDENKER 

At the time of the shipwreck, Mexico was called New Spain and was part of the Spanish empire. Rodrigo de Vivero, a member of one of the richest families in New Spain, was 44 when he was named interim governor of the Philippines, which was also a Spanish territory. 

During his tenure in Manila, de Vivero had official contact with Japan, including negotiations concerning Japanese residents of the Philippines accused of fomenting civil unrest, but there was no plan for him to actually visit Japan. 

He was in fact returning to New Spain, on a route that hugged the coast of Japan, when his ship was wrecked against a reef at what is now the town of Onjuku in Chiba Prefecture. Fifty men were lost, but de Vivero and several hundred other passengers made it safely to shore with the assistance of local villagers. 

Although European missionaries and merchants had been arriving since the 1540s, Vivero was the first European diplomat and administrator ever to enter the country.
Once it was understood who de Vivero was, he was taken on guided tours of Edo, Kyoto and other cities, and was received in audience by Tokugawa Ieyasu, who had stepped down as shogun but was still the most powerful figure in the country, and his son and incumbent shogun, Hidetada. 

De Vivero also met with senior government officials, and had dealings with the renowned English mariner William Adams, who had been living in Japan for nine years. During such meetings, de Vivero attempted to influence Japanese foreign policy, in particular urging that the Dutch be expelled from Japan, and negotiated a proposed framework for future diplomatic and trade relations. 

The Spanish government never ratified the treaty, as Ruiz-Cabanas explained in his lecture. Authorities in Manila objected on the grounds that direct communication and trade between Japan and New Spain would result in a loss of influence and revenue for them. Spanish sailors feared the Japanese would gain knowledge of long-distance shipbuilding, increasing the danger of a Japanese invasion of Spanish territories. 

But Ruiz-Cabanas said his personal view is that religious considerations probably played a bigger role. News of official opposition to Catholicism in Japan “was a cause of anxiety in Madrid and the Vatican,” he said, and it was unlikely that Spain was ready to formally recognize a non-European and non-Catholic country.
“At the time, no European power had recognized any Asiatic nation, including Japan and China, as equal,” the ambassador observed. 

Shortly thereafter, Japan adopted a policy of seclusion, greatly limiting contact with New Spain and most other countries for more than 200 years.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2009/10/03/community/the-first-western-diplomat-in-japan/#.U4Smjvl_suc

History is God.  We cannot change it, but we have to learn any lessons and know what we are before God.

Why did God send a wrecked Spanish ship to Japan in 1609?




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Mar 5:27 When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment.
Mar 5:28 For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole.
Mar 5:29 And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.