Today, in 1543, Portuguese trader António da Mota and several companions including Francisco Zeimoto and António Peixoto became the first Europeans in Japan.
First Guns in Japan, by Hokusai
They were traveling to Ningbo but were swept off course by a storm and ended up landing on the Japanese island of Tanegashima. Moto introduced guns to the Japanese. Japanese smiths would go on to study these and were soon mass-producing their own. Within a year not only was Japan producing guns of her own, but had improved them in many ways, adding better sights and cord protection, and using higher quality material.
Mota's ship was quickly repaired and he left, never to return. We don't know anything more about his life. But the influence of this event can't be understated. This is really one of those events in history that changes everything.
Guns would go on to have a huge role in Japan. Many regarded them as mere curiosities, but some like warlord Oda Nobunaga saw their true potential. He would go on to use guns to help him conquer most of the country. Arguably he wouldn't have had as much success as he did without guns. His successors, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu also made use of guns to help them finish Nobunaga's conquest of Japan.
Not long after Mota left, Portuguese slave traders moved in and purchased many Japanese slaves to sell in Europe. Their main trade seems to have been in sex slaves. This slave trade continued for some time until finally being banned by Portugal in 1595. The Jesuits also moved in and started spreading Christianity.
The Portuguese would remain connected to Japan until 1637 when the Christian Japanese started a rebellion against the Tokugawa Shogunate. The rebellion was crushed and Portugal was completely shut out of Japan until modern times.
Anyways, as you can see, this one event, Mota crash landing on a Japanese island, had far-reaching effects.
Today is Butsumetsu 仏滅, one of the rokuyō, the Buddhist horoscope. This is the most unlucky day of the horoscope. It symbolizes the day the Buddha died and it is considered unlucky to do just about anything today. Better just stay home and play video games. Incidentally, my streak of only picking butsumetsu days to do these Today in Japan posts seems to be continuing.... I should check the rokuyo first before deciding to do one.
(Read more about the rokuyō here)
On the old calendar, today would have been the twenty-eighth day of the seventh month. It is Cotton Flowers Bloom (綿柎開), the first microseason of Shosho (処暑). This is around the time that the summer heat is finally ending. Also we will start to see the cotton plants burst open to let their white balls of cotton out.
Here's a haiku from Bashō:
名月の花かと見えて綿畠
meigetsu no hana ka to miete watabatake
the full moon
has it flowered?
a cotton field
I don't think Bashō was actually confused here, he's just kind of turning norms on their head as usual. The normal autumn focus in poetry would be on the moon, particularly the full harvest moon. Bashō is instead starting with the moon but then pulling our focus down to the earth, to cotton plants, which definitely were not a traditional image for Japanese poetry.
At first I doubt if here Ningbo is the city in Zhengjiang province, China. After checking the map, I make sure that Ningbo refers to a place of China. (Please correct me if I am wrong.) I am intrigued to learn the history about Oda Nobunaga with great passion by this blog. Yeah, the data shows that he built his army and conquered his opponents by taking advantage of the European gun. However, very miserably he was killed by one of his subordinates who betrayed him. I've only learned about Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the school who once invaded Ming dynasty. I'm so happy now I have known all the details about this period of history. It turns out that Hideyoshi was also one of his subordinates. Without Oda Nobunaga's favor and promotion, it is impossible for Hideyoshi--a person from a low and poor farmer family to enter the high society. Thank you for your great blog!
Many times history can be changed completely by a very occasional and accidental thing, so can our own life! I never thought that the European gun first came into Japan in such a weird way.
Yep, that's right, the Chinese city. It really is amazing how a single accidental event like this can really have such a huge effect. If not for this one event Japanese history, and probably Asian history as a whole, would look completely different.
Nobunaga is not very well thought of in Japan. He was a bloodthirsty tyrant who would kill at the drop of a dime and butchered women and children. Very often in media today (games, movies), he is portrayed as the villain, even as a demon. Many think that his true ambition was to kill the emperor and start his own dynasty. He probably could have easily conquered the country if he hadn't been betrayed. But you're right—one of his few virtues is that he didn't care about social rank or class and he treated low people like Hideyoshi the same as high people.
Hideyoshi, at least when he was a young man, before he went crazy and decided to foolishly attempt to conquer China and Korea, has a much better image and is generally well liked, sometimes even more than Ieyasu, the man who came after him.
I'm glad you enjoy my writing 😃 I love history so it is fun to share it.