Japanese went to Mexico before the Portuguese did?
While looking into any information explaining how Japan got chili peppers, I stumbled across a peculiar map.
The map purports to show the sea routes and speculated land routes taken for the spread chili peppers from the New World, to Europe, Africa, then Asia. Note the speculative question marks in the map annotations.
http://m.nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/why-revolutionaries-love-spicy-food
- CHILI SPREAD: Christopher Columbus encountered the chili pepper in the Caribbean in the late 15th century. Soon after, Spanish and Portuguese traders, obsessed with controlling the spice market, spread the chili around the globe. The red lines and dates chart the chili’s path from country to country.
Again, it does not add up that if the “Spanish and Portuguese traders, obsessed with controlling the spice market” then “spread chili around the globe.” Quite contradictory and self defeating if controlling the spice market meant making bundles of money by greedy monopoly to just give bundles of peppers away making no money.
Nonetheless, the map showing the hypothesized spread of chili in the essay has what appears to be an anomaly in regards to ancient Japan and Mexico.
What was peculiar was on the Pacific Ocean side, a note was inserted on the map:
- “Japanese went to Mexico well before Portuguese”
Then did Japan really have a chance to get chili peppers directly from the Spanish colonies in Mexico?
Japanese never figured out how to use two sails. The lanteen forward sail allows sailing obliquely upwind, something Koreans figured out in the 4th century AD whereas it took Europeans until the 8th century AD.
As well noted in the late 16th century Imjinwaeran invasion of Korea by Japan, Japanese shipbuilding was pretty basic with iron nails corroding from contact with seawater and flimsy cedar wood cut thin (no special shaping techniques needed, just bend the flexible thin board) to make rush-and-board attack transports more than sturdy battleships in the modern sense.
In contrast, ancient Koreans during the Goryeo Dynasty developed the first modern application of naval cannons mounted and fired from warships in the 14th century well before the Europeans in the 16th century, leading to the supremely sturdy Joseon Korean naval cannon mounted panokseon battleship and world’s first iron covered turtle ship (also bristling with cannons, smoke projector, spiked iron roof covering), the geobukseon.
Moreover, there is the historic trip that a Japanese monk Ennin attempted to reach Tang China by means of Japanese sailors and ship revealing underdeveloped shipbuilding and navigation.
Japanese sailing across open waters involved grabbing some naked homeless guy that would agree to sit onboard chanting on the ship mired in his own stench and filth for the whole trip. The purpose was to become a magnet to attract misfortune, so the boat would make a successful long distance journey across open seas. If successful, the filthy man would be given treasure, wine, and women. If unsuccessful, he would be blamed for causing the misfortune of a ruined sea voyage and killed (but likely just perish along with the doomed crew and passengers lost at sea). Such was the extent of Japanese “navigation” across open seas.
What happened was that the Japanese monk’s ship crashed short of his Tang China destination and he was stranded. After somehow making it back to Japan, the disgruntled monk wound up just quietly hitching a ride with a crew from Korean Silla’s Jang Bogo’s fleet to transport him to Tang China as a passenger. Japanese history speaks volumes about this Ennin monk’s trip to Tang China but not how he got there safely by confident Korean Silla shipbuilding and navigation.
Japanese may have eventually mastered hugging the coastline from earlier waenom “dwarf” pirating to get as far as the Philippines. But on open waters, Japanese navigation skills were deplorably superstitious and unscientific.
It turns out that in 1906, someone heard about this bizarre sounding claim that Japanese somehow wound up in Mexico soon after the Tokugawa clan wrested control through another civil war from the Hideyoshi clan. The Spanish conquistadors were in Mexico pillaging gold from the Incas, Mayans and Aztecs at the time. It seems the Japanese wanted to join the Spaniards to have access to technology and wealth through trade relations, if the Tokugawa era Japanese and Spanish documents are true.
Thinking Japanese were seafaring people, the author’s oriental romanticism envisioned the crossing was made from Japan across the Pacific to Mexico with exotic Japanese “junks” at the start of the essay to perk initial reader interest, a catch line. Yet by the end of the essay, the author documents otherwise.
At the time, the Japanese lacked such ship building, ship technology, and navigational skills to even consider crossing the vast Pacific Ocean. Perhaps another Westerner’s fantasy stemming from Meiji Japan modernization misleadingly projected backwards that ancient Japanese mastered all the technological advances that Koreans and even Chinese mastered. Japanese “junks” could just make it to the Philippines for trade, but cross the whole Pacific Ocean?
I remember reading a paper a while ago about how during the Imjinwaeran invasion that Kato Kiyomasa sent a European merchant ship that Hideyoshi somehow acquired to sail out to the Philippine Islands to secure desperately needed gunpowder and lead shot from the Spanish. (Perhaps the Portuguese were gouging Hideyoshi mired in the Imjinwaeran conflict, prompting a quest for a new arms supplier.) The paper never explained how Hideyoshi and Kato wound up with a European sailing vessel and I never read about such a sailing incident in any other Imjinwaeran studies. Most likely the ship was led astray during a storm and captured.
The 1906 investigation briefly explains that Hideyoshi seized a Spanish trade ship which straggled near Japan. Apparently, the non-Japanese crew must have been kept intact to operate the ship, as there is no way the Japanese could have figured out how to operate the European methods of rigging and multiple sails to travel against the trade winds.
This seized Spanish ship set the precedent for the Spaniards to be initially leery of any dealings with the Japanese. When Hideyoshi, stressed out by the victories of Yi Sun Sin victoriously gaining absolute control of the sea lanes destroying his plans of continental conquest, vaingloriously croaked from his ruined health, the Tokugawa clan that took over Japan eventually kicked out the invasive Portuguese slave traders and tried to reach out to the Spanish on the Philippine Islands colony instead.
The 1906 paper looks into Tokugawa era and Philippine documents and other historical references about the Japanese “expedition” to Mexico.
Apparently, before the Mexico trip, sizable numbers of Japanese traders wound up living in the Philippines eventually. Unsurprisingly, once their numbers grew, the unappreciative Japanese traders soon became arrogant towards their hosts, wearing out their welcome, and tried twice to take over the islands with uprisings. Japanese backstabbing arrogance even attempted a similar uprising takeover in 1510 on the southern coast of Joseon, where the rampaging Japanese got a taste of Korean seokjeon stone throwing martial arts practiced as a folk game for defending against foreign invaders. Regrettably, everywhere ancient Japanese went, disdain and arrogance eventually would come out when a critical mass was allowed to accumulate.
So, it seems the Japanese had already wanted to seize the Philippines long before the expulsion of lackadaisical MacArthur during the Pacific War hundreds of years later.
Yet, Wikipedia does not mention anything about Japanese making it to Mexico before Portuguese. Spanish also did slave trade, and Japanese would have been brought as slaves.
Asian Latin Americans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Lat … cans#Japan
The first Asian Latin Americans were Filipinos who made their way to Latin America (primarily to Cuba and Mexico and secondarily to Colombia, Panama and Peru) in the 16th century, as sailors, crews, prisoners, slaves, adventurers and soldiers during the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. For two and a half centuries (between 1565 and 1815) many Filipinos sailed on the Manila-Acapulco Galleons, assisting in the Spanish Empire’s monopoly in trade. Some of these sailors never returned to the Philippines and many of their descendants can be found in small communities around Baja California, Sonora, Mexico City, Peru and others, thus making Filipinos the oldest Asian ethnic group in Latin America.
Tokugawa ordered that any Japanese involved in subsequent Philippine uprisings can be killed by the Spanish like dogs. So once rounded up, if deported back to Japan, the riotous Japanese would be killed brutally by the Tokugawa shogunate. Likely, the Japanese begged to be spared and sent off as part of the Filipino slave contingent to Mexico instead.
If any ancient Japanese were found trustworthy enough by the Spaniards, they must have accompanied their hosts by Spanish galleon to the Mexico colonies of Spain.
Apparently, this was what happened. Japanese did not sail in their own atakabune “junks” all the way to Mexico, but instead a contingent accompanied an overly ambitious friar looking for brownie points with the Vatican and thus went by Spanish ship.
After a negotiation process, gifts, some set backs, the newly appointed governor of the Philippines was trying to establish normalized trade with Tokugawa, to gain recognition with the king and queen of Spain by expanding the sphere of Spanish trade. Hosted in Japan, there were banquets for the Spanish delegates, who in turn even provided a display by armed conquistadors firing volleys of muskets at the request of curious Japanese hosts; the explosive noise frightened the horses so badly and threw the display of mounted samurai to the ground, much to the hilarity of the Spanish guests laughing their heads off.
Arrangements were even made to build Spanish galleons in Japan, but the Japanese laborers proved to be slow and lazy and ineffective (likely to cover up lack of technical skill), but eventually it seems one ship was built.
But despite the efforts of the Philippine governor to establish trade from Mexico to Philippine to Japan, at the last moment, an ambitious, overzealous friar swooped in and commandeered the ship by papal authority, to sail to Mexico with a contingent of converted Japanese. Supported by a converted daimyo, the friar planned to take about 200 Japanese and proclaimed it proof of heathens acknowledging the superiority of illustrious Spain. The Japanese contribution was backstabbing yet again the Philippine governor who like a fool patiently tried to trade with the Japanese.
So, according to documents, a group of almost 200 Japanese converts accompanied the friar to Acapulco, Mexico. A grand welcome was prepared throughout Mexico. It might sound as if the Japanese were dignitaries, but they also served as trophies to European and papal superiority, which helped put the friar on the map so to speak and gain recognition with the Vatican. To dazzle the delegation representing royal and papal authorities and the Japanese trophies as well, a description was given of carpet lining the streets and gold tossed on the covered path, since the Spanish pilfered so much gold from the enslaved Aztecs, Incans, and Mayans, dazzling the Japanese with stolen opulence in the name of Spain. The ostentatiously decorated church cathedrals seemed to have bedazzled the Japanese that they immediately accepted baptism on the spot.
But it looks like after that, nothing much was made of the voyage. It appears even the Japanese have forgotten and not bothered to edit the history into the Wikipedia entry.
After Iyeyasu died, the next in line as shogun Tokugawa Iyemitsu expelled all meddling foreigners, so it seems the dealings with the Spanish also ended abruptly thereafter (notwithstanding later the Dutch at Nagasaki port also seeking Joseon style ceramics the Japanese could now supply after kidnapping whole Korean potter villages during the Imjinwaeran invasion).
The Spanish supposedly did not spread chili peppers, but Japanese could have picked some up directly from Mexico for the return trip (if they did return), at least in theory. At least that is what the map I first stumbled across indirectly suggested as a possibility. But Japanese make no mention of any records of transporting chili peppers back from Mexico, and instead theorize getting pepper came from either Portugal or from Korea during the Imjinwaeran invasion.
But what is most strange is why Japanese never mention any historic delegation accompanying the Spanish to Mexico? Was it something fabricated, the documents all made up to impress the papal authorities and Spanish court?
The Earliest Historical Relations between Mexico and Japan:
From the Original Documents Preserved in Spain and Japan
By Zelia Nuttall
University of California Publications
American Archaeology and Ethnology
April 1906
https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/ … 04–002.pdf
It is strange but true, that whereas for many years past much has been said and written about the hypothetical transmission of Asiatic influences to Mexico and Central America by means of the ship-wrecked crews of Japanese junks, the precise date when official relations first established between Japan and Mexico has only just been ascertained.
To them it will doubtless be a matter of surprise, as it was to me, to learn that it was no less a personage than Tokugawa Iyeyasu, surnamed “The Illustrious,” who in 1598, took the first steps towards establishing official relations with Mexico. Iyeyasu is known to have inaugurated the policy of exclusion and isolation, which was perfected by his grandson, Iyemitsu, and to have organized the form of government which secured to Japan a peace of two hundred years.
{p. 7}
[In a letter to Iyeyasu] He states, immediately afterwards, that a number of turbulent characters having promoted sedition and made disturbances in the Japanese colony at Manila, he had adopted the course of sending them back to Japan. According to Father Steichen not less than two hundred Japanese were thus expelled from Manila. Governor Vivero adds that their troublesome behavior would certainly not prevent him from receiving any peaceful Japanese merchants who might come to the Philippines.
{p. 9}
In the following year a change of governor took place in the Philippines, and Don Juan de Silva, the new governor, hastened to announce to Iyeyasu his arrival in Luzon, and his intention to continue to send vessels to Japan. He seized this opportunity, however, to inform the emperor that a number of Japanese residents in the Philippines were fomenting revolt and disturbing the peace.
{p. 13}
From Viscaino’s report we learn that the relations between the Japanese merchants and the Spanish crew of the “San Francisco” were decidedly strained. He relates that, at the beginning of the voyage, the Japanese gave trouble on account of their haughtiness and rudeness to the sailors — especially “concerning matters in the kitchen,” and by their high-handedness. The general put an end to this state of affairs by ordering that no Spaniard was to interfere with a Japanese, nor lay hands on him, nor give occasion for dispute, under penalty of death. The same threat was made to the Japanese, and they were enjoined to be civil, and to come to him whenever any difficulty presented itself, and to avoid all disputes and quarrels with the sailors.
Viscaino likewise threatened that if any Japanese were insolent, he would have him hanged from the yardarm, and would report him to the Japanese emperor, of whom it was known that he did not like his vassals to be insolent — especially when they were being treated to such a good voyage. Whereupon, it is recorded, the Japanese were so filled with fear that they “restrained their pride and haughtiness, became more docile than lambs,” and gave no cause for complaint during the remainder of the voyage.
{p. 40}
It was not until the 26th of October, 1613, that the vessel was ready for the voyage. Viscaino complains of having had great trouble with the Japanese, and of suffering much from constant interference of “a friar who had persuaded the Japanese to help him to further a plan he had in mind.” At the last moment, Visciano relates, “the friar took entire command of everything, embarked as many Japanese as he wanted, and constituted himself Governor and Captain General of the vessel.” The friar was no less a personage than Friar Luis Sotelo, whose previous expedition as the shogun’s ambassador had ended so disastrously.
They were provided with letters not only to the viceroy of Mexico, but also to the King of Spain and to Pope Paul V.
Viscaino pathetically records that he protested in vain, and finally, in order to avert a great disaster, was forced “to disimulate and to embark as a mere passenger” upon the ship he and his men had built. He adds that the humor of the Japanese was such that they actually would have killed him had he attempted to do otherwise.”
{p. 41}
Friar Sotelo’s arrival in Mexico as the ambassador of the Protector of Christianity in Japan, and with a flock of would-be converts, was regarded as a triumph of the church and particularly of the deservedly much loved Franciscan order. At Acapulco, the town officials determined to honor the members of an embassy to the viceroy, the king and the pope with extraordinary honors, and greeted it with salutes of artillery. Its members were escorted with music to luxuriously appointed lodgings, and the festivities were crowned by a gala bull-fight. The viceroy sent orders that provisions for the journey to the capital were to be provided, and a large mounted and armed escort was to accompany the embassy on its long and somewhat perilous journey. In all villages, towns and cities along their route the travelers were received with military music and triumphal arches. Carpets strewn with pieces of gold were spread on their pathway, and they were lodged in a palace near the Convent of San Francisco, where they were at once visited by the archbishop, the judges and officers of the inquisition and the high nobility and gentleman of Mexico.
GochuTruth 