The Samurai Who Became A Roman Citizen

Last year, we featured here on Open Culture the story of how a samurai ended up in the unlikely setting of seventeenth-century Venice. But as compellingly told as it was in video essay form by Evan Puschak, better known as the Nerdwriter, it ended just as things were getting interesting. We last left Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga as he was setting out on a mission to Europe in order to meet the Pope and facilitate the brokering of a deal for his feudal lord, Date Masamune. Having struck up a friendship with a Japanese-speaking Franciscan friar called Luis Sotelo, whose missionary hospital had saved the life of one of his concubines, Date got it in his head that he should establish a direct relationship with the mighty Spanish empire.

Of course, in 1613, it wasn’t quite as easy as catching a flight from Tokyo (or rather, in those days, Edo) to Rome. Making the long passage by ship were about 180 Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish men, many of whom had never been out on the open ocean before. After two less-than-smooth months, they landed 200 miles north of what we now call San Francisco, then made their way down the coast to Acapulco, then a city in what was known as the colony of New Spain. From there, Date’s embassy went inland to the power center of Mexico City, then to Veracruz on the east coast, from whose port it could take another ship all the way across the Atlantic from New Spain to old.

The Spanish king Philip had his reservations about opening trade relationships with Japan, as granting that distant land “access to the Pacific would risk turning this exclusive imperial corridor into a shared commercial space.” The prospect of limited integration, controlled by the hand of Spain, had appealed to him, but the disruption caused by the embassy’s arrival soured him on even that idea. To Hasekura’s mind, the way forward lay in bolstering Japanese Catholicism. Though baptized in 1615 in Philip’s presence, the samurai retainer found that he could prevail upon the king no further. Onward, then, to the Eternal City, where, on the night of October 25th, 1615, Hasekura managed to kiss the feet of the Pope.

A few days thereafter, Hasekura was officially made a citizen of Rome. Alas, the Pope proved either unwilling or unable to help establishing the desired trade links, and meanwhile, back in Japan, the new shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu had expelled all missionaries from Japan and ordered the destruction of all the institutions they’d built. Hasekura, it turns out, never actually made it to Venice; his letters, whose discovery opened part one of this series, had just been sent there in a futile appeal for funds. After the embassy’s return to Japan, Sotelo fulfilled his expectation of achieving martyrdom there. How Hasekura lived out the rest of his unusual life back in his homeland is only sketchily known, but one suspects that, whatever happened, he never imagined himself becoming an object of worldwide fascination four centuries after his death.

Related content:

The Mystery of How a Samurai Ended up in 17th Century Venice

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. He’s the author of the newsletter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Summarizing Korea) and Korean Newtro. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.