Hasekura Tsunenaga

Hasekura Tsunenaga was a Japanese samurai and retainer of Date Masamune, the daimyō of Sendai. He was of Japanese imperial descent with ancestral ties to Emperor Kanmu. He was the leader of the Keichō Embassy, a diplomatic mission to Spain and the Vatican that lasted from 1613 to 1620. He was the first Japanese ambassador in the Americas and Europe, and he established formal relations with Spain and the Holy See. He also visited various ports and cities in Europe, such as Acapulco, Mexico City, Havana, Seville, Madrid, Paris, Rome, and Venice. He met with King Philip III of Spain and Pope Paul V, and delivered letters from his lord, Date Masamune, seeking trade and inviting Catholic missionaries to Japan. He converted to Christianity and received baptism in Madrid, taking the name Don Felipe Francisco Hasekura. He also received Spanish citizenship and a coat of arms. He returned to Japan in 1620, after seven years of travel. However, he found that the political situation in Japan had changed drastically, and that Christianity was being suppressed by the Tokugawa shogunate. He was unable to achieve his goals of opening trade and promoting Christianity, and he died of illness in 1622, a year after his return. His descendants and servants were later executed for being Christians, and his embassy was largely forgotten until the nineteenth century, when his records were rediscovered in Europe. Hasekura Tsunenaga is remembered as a pioneer of Japanese diplomacy and a symbol of cultural exchange between Japan and the West.