Portuguese Presence in Japan (1543–1600)

Abstract

Portuguese Jesuit letters from 1549, the Historia de Japam and the Treaty on Contradictions by Luis Frois brought early descriptions of Japan to Europe through Portugal. Accordingly, the focus of his books culminates in 1597 when Luis Frois passed away in Nagasaki. The Portuguese influence in Japan is still visible in small things such as words and recipes, and even in the original urban layout of Nagasaki, which spreads up the hill. By the same token, the Japanese influence in Portuguese culture is also manifested in the introduction of new words, the creation of new artistic objects in which the two cultures merged, and last but not least, in the importance of the “new” beverage known in Japan as Cha and in Portugal as Cha (tea)—long before tea became popular in Europe in the early-seventeenth century.