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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.
In 1541, 1542 or 1543 (sources differ) Portugal established contact with Japan. Japan was then involved in a long civil-war but since Ming China had officially cut relations with Japan meant that Portuguese merchants could serve as a profitable commercial intermediary between the two nations.
Thereafter, trade began between Portuguese Malacca, China and Japan, as the Portuguese took advantage of the Chinese trade embargo on Japan to act as middlemen between the two nations. In 1550, King John III of Portugal declared the Japanese trade a "crown monopoly", and henceforth, only ships authorized by Goa were allowed to make the journey.
Soon after, Portuguese ships started sailing to Japan as regular trade freighters, thus increasing the contact and trade relations between Japan and the rest of the world, and particularly with mainland China, with whom Japan had previously severed its commercial and political ties, mainly due to a number of incidents involving wokou piracy in ...
At the start of World War II in 1939, the Portuguese Government announced on 1 September that the 550-year-old Anglo-Portuguese Alliance remained intact, but since the British did not seek Portuguese assistance, Portugal was free to remain neutral in the war and would do so.
In 1543, Europeans reached Japan for the first time when a junk belonging to the Chinese wokou pirate lord Wang Zhi carrying Portuguese traders was shipwrecked at Tanegashima. The Portuguese introduced the arquebus to the Japanese during this chance encounter, which gave the Japanese, embroiled in the bloody Sengoku period at the time, a ...
[17] [18] Although Hideyoshi expressed his indignation and outrage at the Portuguese trade in Japanese slaves, he himself was engaging in a mass slave trade of Korean prisoners of war in Japan. [19] [20] Filippo Sassetti saw some Chinese and Japanese slaves in Lisbon among the large slave community in 1578, although most of the slaves were black.
The chief VOC trading post officer in Japan was called the Opperhoofd by the Dutch, or Kapitan (from Portuguese capitão) by the Japanese. This descriptive title did not change when the VOC went bankrupt and trade with Japan was continued by the Dutch Indies government at Batavia.