Release date is 2026-01-06

Carol Brown, Carla Foust and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

"The earliest historical relations between Mexico and Japan" by Zelia Nuttall is a historical study written in the early 20th century. Drawing on Spanish and Japanese archives, it reconstructs the first official contacts between New Spain and Tokugawa Japan, focusing on embassies, trade overtures, shipwrecks, and the diplomatic actors who shaped them. The work follows figures such as Tokugawa Ieyasu, Hidetada, William Adams, Don Rodrigo de Vivero, Sebastián Vizcaíno, and Friar Luis Sotelo, and it explains how hopeful exchanges gave way to Japan’s isolation. It will appeal to readers interested in early modern diplomacy, maritime trade, and cross-cultural encounters.

The opening of the study explains how newly uncovered Japanese documents, identified through the efforts of C. A. Lera and collaborators, clarify the true start of official Japan–Mexico relations and complement earlier Mexican and Spanish sources. It then narrates Ieyasu’s initial invitations to Manila’s authorities around the turn of the 17th century, Spanish caution after earlier maritime seizures, and the 1608 renewal of talks driven by Governor Vivero and the English pilot William Adams, leading to Uraga’s opening and formal safe-passage. A pivotal episode follows: Vivero’s shipwreck in Japan and the notable Japanese hospitality, which spurred the Viceroy of Mexico to dispatch Sebastián Vizcaíno with thanks, returned Japanese merchants, and unstated aims to survey ports and seek rumored “gold and silver” islands. The account details Vizcaíno’s protocol standoff and audiences with Hidetada and Ieyasu, the exchange of gifts (notably a European clock), his petitions to survey and build a ship, his denunciation of the Dutch and clash with Adams, and the simultaneous rise of anti-Christian measures after court intrigues. It summarizes Vizcaíno’s coastal surveys and setbacks, Masamune’s patronage of a new embassy led by Friar Sotelo and Hasekura, and the mission’s celebrated reception in New Spain and onward to Spain and Rome—foreshadowing, even in this opening portion, the forces that soon drove Japan toward isolation. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Berkeley: The University Press, 1906