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.