444 Part VI: European Empires in Asia
Coast, a city that still retains its Portuguese flavor and was the very last spot in
India to be relinquished 450 years later. From here the Portuguese controlled
the pilgrim route to Mecca and could interfere with the spice trade from South-
east Asia. In 1511 Albuquerque captured the crucial city of Malacca, and
Macao was founded after Portuguese traders were expelled from Guangzhou.
With coastal trade fortresses in India, Ceylon, Southeast Asia, and China,
Prince Henry of Portugal was soon one of the richest princes in Europe,
enhanced by another source of wealth: pirating Arab ships in lonely waters.
At mid-century, three Portuguese sailors who had taken passage in a Chi-
nese junk were stranded by a typhoon off the coast of Japan. The Japanese wel-
comed them with curiosity and friendliness. The Japanese were particularly
interested in the weapons of the Portuguese castaways; very soon there were
Japanese copies of them, which would transform the war culture of the samu-
rai. Before long, both traders and missionaries were making their way to Japan.
Francis Xavier and two other members of the Order of Jesus, known as the
Jesuits, having just left Goa, landed in 1549 in early Tokugawa Japan and
immediately began making converts. At first Christianity seemed to the Japa-
nese to be another form of Buddhism; Christ was a saving Bodhisattva, as lov-
ing and merciful as Amida or Kannon. The daimyo were given to understand
that the price of lucrative trade was allowing the Jesuits to preach, a deal they
were willing to make. But the intolerance of Christianity, which was gearing up
for the Inquisition back in Europe, especially Xavier’s insistence that anyone
who died without being a Christian would burn in hell forever, made enemies
among the Buddhist monks. For people who revered their ancestors and had
never really believed in hell, despite all the Buddhist iconography of hell, this
was a shocking doctrine.
Jesuits were received by the powerful Japanese daimyo Nobunaga in 1568
with courtesy that astonished people who knew him; he invited them to private
suppers and listened to their religious views even while remaining a Tendai
Buddhist. The samurai admired the Jesuits because they shared values of ascet-
icism, loyalty, learning, and a certain aristocratic arrogance. And the Jesuits
introduced material items the Japanese came to desire: tobacco, clocks, globes,
maps, musical instruments, bread (still called by its Portuguese name, pan),
rosaries, and European clothes. Perhaps most significant of all were the castle-
fortifications, which the daimyo began to build in the Portuguese style. Hideyo-
shi’s castle at Osaka is the most beautiful example.
But when Spanish Franciscans arrived, the two Catholic orders began to
intrigue against one another. The Dutch and English arrived next and gave
Tokugawa Ieyasu (the founder of the last shogunate) a Protestant view of
Christianity. These foreigners also described the ambitions of European mon-
archs, while Spanish armadas arriving in the Philippines vividly illustrated the
dangers. There were a great many Christian converts, perhaps as many as
300,000 at the peak, along with a number of daimyo, and these, it was feared,
might align themselves with a foreign power against the shogun. Acting on his