34 Facts About Hasekura Tsunenaga

Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga was a kirishitan Japanese samurai and retainer of Date Masamune, the daimyo of Sendai.

Hasekura Tsunenaga was of Japanese imperial descent with ancestral ties to Emperor Kanmu.

Hasekura Tsunenaga is considered the first Japanese ambassador in the Americas and in Spain, despite other less well-known and less well-documented missions preceding his mission.

European monarchs refused the trade agreements Hasekura Tsunenaga had been seeking.

Hasekura Tsunenaga returned to Japan in 1620 and died of illness a year later, his embassy seemingly ending with few results in an increasingly isolationist Japan.

Hasekura Tsunenaga was the son of Yamaguchi Tsuneshige, who had ancestral ties with Emperor Kanmu.

Hasekura Tsunenaga was a mid-level noble samurai in the Sendai Domain in northern Japan who had the opportunity to directly serve the daimyo, Date Masamune, and received an annual stipend of 1200 koku.

Hasekura Tsunenaga spent his young adulthood at Kamitate Castle that was constructed by his grandfather Hasekura Tsunemasa.

Hasekura Tsunenaga's fief was confiscated, and his son should normally have been executed as well.

Hasekura Tsunenaga was settled in a house next to the Convent of San Francisco, and met with the Viceroy.

Hasekura Tsunenaga explained to him that he was planning to meet King Philip III to offer him peace and to obtain that the Japanese could come to Mexico for trade.

Hasekura Tsunenaga waited for his travel to Europe to be baptized there:.

Chimalpahin explains that Hasekura Tsunenaga left some of his compatriots behind before leaving for Europe:.

Hasekura Tsunenaga had to leave the largest parts of the Japanese group behind, who were to wait in Acapulco for the return of the embassy.

Hasekura Tsunenaga headed the Keicho Embassy, a diplomatic mission to Pope Paul V and Europe from 1613 through 1620.

Hasekura Tsunenaga visited various other ports-of-call in Europe on the way.

Hasekura Tsunenaga is conventionally considered the first Japanese ambassador in the Americas and in Spain.

Hasekura Tsunenaga remitted to the King a letter from Date Masamune, as well as offer for a treaty.

Hasekura Tsunenaga remitted to the Pope two gilded letters, one in Japanese and one in Latin, containing a request for a trade treaty between Japan and Mexico and the dispatch of Christian missionaries to Japan.

Besides the official description of Hasekura Tsunenaga's visit to Rome, some contemporary communications tend to indicate that political matters were discussed, and that an alliance with Date Masamune was suggested as a way to establish Christian influence in the whole of Japan:.

The embassy of Hasekura Tsunenaga was the subject of numerous publications throughout Europe.

In 1616, the French publisher Abraham Savgrain published an account of Hasekura Tsunenaga's visit to Rome: "".

Hasekura Tsunenaga stayed in Mexico for 5 months on his way back to Japan.

Hasekura Tsunenaga reported his travels to Date Masamune upon his arrival in Sendai.

Lastly, hopes of trade with Spain evaporated when Hasekura Tsunenaga communicated that the Spanish King would not enter an agreement as long as persecutions were occurring in the rest of the country.

The fate of his descendants and servants, who were later executed for being Christians, suggests that Hasekura Tsunenaga remained strongly Christian and transmitted his faith to the members of his family.

Sotelo, who returned to Japan but was caught and finally burnt at the stake in 1624, gave before his execution an account of Hasekura Tsunenaga returning to Japan as a hero who propagated the Christian faith:.

Hasekura Tsunenaga brought back to Japan several Catholic artifacts, but he did not give them to his ruler, and instead kept them on his own estate.

Hasekura Tsunenaga died of illness in 1622, but the location of his grave is not known for certain.

The privileges of the Hasekura Tsunenaga family were abolished at this point by the Sendai fief, and their property and belongings seized.

Hasekura Tsunenaga founded a Hasekura family line that continues to the present day.

The first to 10th heads of the Hasekura Tsunenaga Family lived in Osato-city, Miyagi Prefecture.

The very existence of the travels of Hasekura Tsunenaga was forgotten in Japan until the reopening of the country after the Sakoku policy of isolation.

In 1873, a Japanese embassy to Europe headed by Iwakura Tomomi heard for the first time of the travels of Hasekura Tsunenaga when shown documents during their visit to Venice in Italy.