While Spaniards from Mexico established their political base in Manila and carried on their transpacific trade of Chinese and other Asian luxury goods for silver from Mexico and Peru, an intense power struggle broke out with Emperor Hideyoshi’s death in 1598 between his heirs and the challenger Tokugawa Ieyasu, a feudal lord with a lot of political, military and economic clout. In 1600, a victorious Tokugawa in the Battle of Sekigahara seized imperial power  and closed Japan to the outside world while his clan ruled for two hundred years. 

We know that our two Japanese migrants were born around those years and in these unstable times: Luis de Encío, probably around the year 1595, and Juan de Páez, in 1608. On the basis of this information, we speculate that Encío and Páez might have come to Mexico in one of the following voyages: Rodrigo de Vivero y Velasco’s return trip from Japan in 1609; Sebastián Vizcaíno’s return trip from Japan which accompanied the aforementioned Hasekura mission; Friar Diego de Santa Catalina’s return trip from Japan on the annual voyage of the galleon from Manila to Acapulco. Let’s take a closer look at these possibilities. 

Rodrigo de Vivero y Velasco had been the interim governor of Las Filipinas in 1608. On his return voyage to New Spain in 1609, sailing from Manila with three galleons--the Santa Ana, the Santiago and the San Francisco, they ran into bad weather, with Vivero traveling aboard the San Francisco that was shipwrecked off the Japanese coast near Chiba. Rescued by fishermen and taken on land, Rodrigo de Vivero in an opportunistic gamble introduced himself to Tokugawa as the Spanish ambassador to his kingdom. In August 1610, after some appropriate diplomatic gestures, Vivero sailed from Uraga harbor in Tokyo Bay towards New Spain on board the San Buenaventura, a Spanish ship built at the behest of the Japanese government. Scholars who have researched and studied this episode agree that twenty-three Japanese from Osaka were also on board, traders who were under the command of Tanaka Shôsuke.[7] Their arrival in Mexico took place at the end of October of that same year when they stopped at Matanchén (in the present-day state of Nayarit).[8] From there, Vivero sent a letter to the King of Spain in which he presented the results of his embassy to Japan, and extolled the virtues of trade with Japan, preceded, of course, by the all-important work of missionaries. 

 

Sebastián Vizcaíno in turn, was appointed by the Mexican authorities to carry out a new diplomatic embassy in Japan, as a follow-up to actions already undertaken by Vivero. In particular, he was charged with returning the twenty-three Japanese from Osaka who had sailed to Mexico with Vivero, and with demarcating the Japanese coastline in order to update their charts, while also looking for two islands reportedly rich in gold (Rica de Oro) and silver (Rica de Plata) just east of Japan. Leaving Acapulco in March of 1611, Vizcaino’s party arrived in the Japanese port of Uraga two-and-a-half months later. A few days after his arrival, he had an interview with the highest Japanese authorities. During his exploratory voyages, he took the opportunity to stop and visit several feudal lords from the coastal villages near which he was passing; his visit to Date Masamune, the Sendai daimyô, was one of the most important. This feudal lord was a highly influential figure in the Tokugawa court, due to some familial relationships with Ieyasu’s children. Date Masamune was very interested in having Catholic missions set up in his territory, prelude to attracting European traders. He held an audience with Friar Luis Sotelo, a Franciscan who had already been in Japan for a while and had joined Sebastián Vizcaíno’s delegation.

Vizcaíno stayed in Japan for two years, during which time he witnessed an increase in Christian persecution. To top it all off, his ship broke down in his quest for the mythical Rica de Oro and Rica de Plata islands. Thus, in 1613, Vizcaíno accepted Date Masamune’s offer to join the embassy led by Hasekura Tsunenaga Rokuyemon, a samurai at Date’s service whose mission was to introduce himself to the Spanish court in Madrid and the Pope in Rome. Vizcaíno and his men, along with Friar Luis Sotelo, Hasekura and some one hundred and fifty or one hundred and eighty additional Japanese, sailed for Acapulco at the end of October of 1613 aboard Masamune’s ship, christened the San Juan Bautista. Once on the open sea, Luis Sotelo, with the support of the Japanese, commandeered the ship and confined Vizcaíno to his cabin as a simple passenger. Three months later, they landed on the Mexican coast of Colima, and a few days later (end of January 1614) they reached Acapulco, with a very sick Vizcaina. [IMAGE of Hasekura and his embassy, or delegation; also Vivero, Vizcaino and Sotelo; map of Mexico with the routes from Acapulco to Mexico City, and down again to Veracruz on the Atlantic side]

Hasekura and Sotelo headed for Mexico City with approximately eighty Japanese, the rest staying behind in Acapulco to await their return. While in Mexico City for several months, the Japanese were all baptized except for Hasekura, who wanted to wait until Madrid. With a small group of thirty countrymen, Hasekura left Mexico for Spain from the Atlantic port of Veracruz in June 1614, with orders to the rest of his delegation to return to Acapulco on the Pacific coast. Once in Europe, he went through Seville to Madrid, where he was finally baptized. In November 1615, he was received by the Pope Paul V, and he returned to Mexico in 1617. There, in Acapulco, Hasekura found out that many, if not the majority, of the Japanese had already returned to Asia, others had married and had children in the port city, while still others had moved into the interior of Mexico in search of a new life, perhaps because they had been converted and because they heard how difficult the situation was for Christians from passengers on the galleons arriving from Manila. It appeared that approximately a dozen Japanese stayed in Spain.[9] In April 1618, Hasekura and a few Japanese set sail for Manila. They had to wait in that city until 1620 to return to a Japan in the heat of anti-Christian persecution. Of course, Hasekura had to renounce his Christian faith in order to be able to enter Japan again.

As to Friar Diego de Santa Catalina’s embassy, it was sent by the Spanish King and the Council of the Indies to answer a letter that Ieyasu Tokugawa had sent to the King with Alonso Muñoz, who had traveled in 1610 with Vivero on his return voyage to New Spain. In that letter, Ieyasu requested expert miners to be sent to Japan, as well as access to transpacific navigation, which was practically controlled by Spaniards. Diego de Santa Catalina sailed from Acapulco in 1615. As for Diego, unfortunately he had to convey the bad news of the Spanish King’s refusal to grant the Japanese the transpacific route. In addition, he was accompanied by an embassy of Franciscan missionaries, who were not welcomed in Japan, and hence sent back to Mexico under Japanese custody. The missionaries took the opportunity to load their vessel with goods to trade in Acapulco and Mexico City.

Friar Diego de Santa Catalina actually had orders not to bring any more Japanese traders on his return to Mexico, but he ignored them. To top it all off, the return voyage aboard the San Juan Bautista met with natural calamities. While making an intermediate stopover on the Colima coast at the end of February, 1617, Diego de Santa Catalina sent a report on what had happened his mission. This letter went first through the Guadalajara Real Audiencia (the Royal Court), to reach Marqués de Guadalcázar, the viceroy in Mexico City, who finally remitted the information to the King. No doubt that was the end of relations between Japan and Spain, which would have to wait to resume until better times much later on.

Finally, the last option the Japanese could have had to travel to Mexico was offered by the Nao de China, that is, the Manila Galleon, given the presence of a considerable Japanese colony in Manila. Let us remember that the galleons made yearly round-trip voyages from Manila to Acapulco. We must also keep in mind that before the galleon arrived in Acapulco, it made a stopover on the coast covered by the present-day states of Nayarit, Jalisco and Colima, which we find important to point out due to its proximity to Guadalajara. Moreover, between 1612 and 1623, a large number of Christian Japanese who fled their country ended up in Manila. Further bolstering this argument are data showing the number of licensed vessels that made the voyage from Japan to Manila, all of them crowded with Japanese, mostly Christians fleeing anti-Christian persecution: in 1615 there were five ships, in 1617 one, in 1618 three more and in 1619, one again. [10] This number does not include those that sailed without permission from the Japanese government.

If the above case were to apply to our Japanese gentlemen, it means that they first traveled from Japan to Manila, and once there, embarked on the Manila Galleon on their way to Mexico; furthermore, we can speculate that they arrived specifically in Nueva Galicia, on a possible intermediate stopover on the coast of the present-day State of Nayarit.

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