Name: The Samurai Who Became A Roman Citizen
Uploaded: 2026-01-31T16:56:06.000Z
Duration: 13 min 48 s
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For two months, they were in the Pacific.

The samurai, Hasakura Tsunenaga, the Franciscan friar Luis sotello, and

Past perfect

around 180 other Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish men, many of whom had never been in the open ocean before, had never experienced its great tempests and storms.

I guess there's a first time for everything.

The Kaicho Embassy, as it was called later, left Japan on October 28, 1613, heading east aboard the San Juan Batista.

On December 26, almost two months later, they finally sighted land at Cape Mendocino, 200 miles north of what is now San Francisco.

If they stopped here, they did so briefly to restock before continuing down the coast to their official destination, Acapulco, a vital port city in what is modern day Mexico, but

what was then a colony of Imperial Imperial Spain called New Spain.

By the time hasakura arrived in January 1614, the Spanish had controlled the region for almost a century, ever since the conquest of Hernan Cortez brought about the fall of the Aztec Empire.

Acapulco was an important part of a mature imperial system of trade, connecting New Spain to the Philippines, another Spanish colony.

But the administration of New Spain wasn't run from Acapulco.

It was run from Mexico City, further inland.

But before he disembarks, let's remind ourselves of the goals of this embassy.

Goals devised by the embassy's main sponsor, Date Masamune, the feudal lord of Sendai.

With the blessing of the Shogun and the help of Sotelo, they were twofold.

First, to get the Spanish king Philip III to authorize trade between Japan and New Spain.

And second, to get Pope Paul V to authorize the sending of more missionaries, Franciscan ones, if Sotelo had his way to to Date's domain now, achieving these goals was always gonna be an uphill battle.

As I showed in the previous video, Christianity was on the back foot in Japan.

When Tokugawa Ieyasu became Shogun in 1603.

He was initially pragmatically tolerant of the foreign religion, in part because he held out hopes for and worked toward a trading relationship with the Spanish.

But by the time the kaicho embassy left 10 years later, he had made little progress on the trade front, while becoming increasingly convinced that Christianity was a thing threat to his political control.

In 1612, he issued an edict prohibiting Christianity on Tokugawa lands, which comprised around a third of the country.

The fact that Iyasu sanctioned Date Masamune's embassy shows that he was still open to trade talks as late as 1613.

All that said, the two leaders of Date's embassy still had hope.

And they carried that hope first to Mexico City, where hasakura arrived in March 1614, then onto Veracruz, where a smaller group of around 30 boarded a Spanish ship and sailed into the Atlantic.

They stopped for a month in Cuba before reaching the Spanish port city of San Lucar de Barrameda in October.

From here, the embassy proceeded to Sevilla Sotelo's hometown, then to Madrid, where Hasakura was granted a formal audience with King Philip III on January 30, 1615.

By the time Hasakura arrived in Madrid, the king had already made up his mind about Date's proposals.

His embassy played an important part in that decision, just not in the way they thought.

As I said earlier, in the years before the Kaicho Embassy, the Shogun had made overtures to the Spanish court asking for direct trade with the port in Acapulco, as well as navigational and shipbuilding knowledge.

King Philip and his advisors were wary of these requests for a few reasons.

As it stood, Spain held an effective monopoly on trade in the Pacific, and

that trade ran exclusively through Acapulco and Manila.

It took them decades to figure out a safe route across the ocean, especially in the eastbound direction.

And this information was as tightly guarded as a state secret.

Giving Japan access to the Pacific would risk turning this exclusive imperial corridor into a shared commercial space.

It could potentially open the American coasts to new threats of piracy.

And it would set a precedent that Spain didn't want to set.

By engaging with Japan in a limited way, they could integrate the Japanese into the imperial system, maintaining control while expanding their global influence and boxing out European rivals like the English and the Dutch.

A direct route would also provide easier access for Catholic missionaries.

After long deliberations, Philip finally decided to allow one ship per year to make the round trip from Acapulco to Japan and back, but

It had to be crewed by only the Spanish, and

Japanese merchants would not be permitted to come to New Spain.

The King made his decision in the summer of 1613.

Just a few months later, a 500 ton Japanese merchant built ship showed up uninvited at Acapulco, partly crewed by Japanese sailors and carrying a number of Japanese merchants with Japanese goods.

As Joshua Batts notes, the arrival of the San Juan Batista vindicated all of Spain's anxieties.

What the members of the Kaicho Embassy couldn't know is that the first goal of their mission had already been achieved before they even left Japan, and

that the embassy itself would put that success in jeopardy.

Upon landing in Acapulco, a number of Japanese beat and stabbed one of their own Spanish passengers, Sebastian Vizcaino.

According to a local witness, Viscano was a colorful and prickly character, an explorer and diplomat who did not like Sotelo and proceeded to air his grievances.

In a scathing letter to King Philip, he accused the Japanese of stealing, stealing gifts from the shogun that he was personally entrusted to deliver to the king.

The Japanese alleged the opposite, that Viscayno tried to steal the gifts, and

In his letter, Viscaino warned the Spanish not to trust Sotelo and suggested that the embassy was just a pretense to send Japanese goods to Spain.

Spanish officials were confused and dismayed by these internal conflicts, and

that only soured their appetite for trade even more.

And to make matters even worse, worse, the arrival of the San Juan Batista also brought reports of increasing Christian persecution in Japan.

As Batt says, this fracture pointed to a deeper problem.

Even though the Kaicho Embassy was sanctioned by Ieyasu, Japan's ruler kept his distance from it.

The representatives were his, so were the gifts.

The Spanish knew that Date was not the ruler of Japan, so his ambassadors really didn't have the legitimacy or authority to make deals with a monarch.

Eventually realizing this, Sotelo shifted his strategy.

He leaned into the second goal and did everything he could to show that the Japanese were eager to join the Catholic faith.

In Mexico City, around 60 of the Japanese passengers were baptized.

Hasakura held back until he reached Madrid, where his own spiritual rebirth could have its greatest effect.

The samurai was eventually baptized on February 17, 17, 1615, in the church of the Discaus Nuns in the presence of His Majesty the King.

Was Hasakura's conversion genuine or opportunistic?

Did he really believe, or did he do it merely to help the mission achieve its economic goals?

I don't think we'll ever really know for sure, but

what we do know is that his conversion did not change Philip's mind.

The Spaniards were courteous to the Keicho Embassy, but

before before long, they were eager to be rid of them.

So the mission moved east again to Barcelona, where They boarded another ship and sailed first to Saint Tropez, then to Genoa, and

finally to Civitavecchia, the port of Rome, where they landed on October 18, 1615.

From here, they made their way inland to the Eternal city, arriving at 11:30pm on October 25, and

proceeded directly to the Kirinal palace of the Pope, where Hasakura kissed the feet of His Holiness sometime after midnight.

The embassy had made it to the heart of Christendom on Earth.

On October 29, two years and a day after they left Japan, Hasakura and his entourage processed on horseback through the streets of Rome in great fanfare and fancy dress, accompanied by Roman nobles through streets and piazzas filled with cheering crowds eager to see the ambassadors from the other side of the world.

And a few days later, Hasakura, the samurai from Japan, was made an official citizen of the Eternal City.

This papal march was the greatest triumph of the Kaicho Embassy, but it was a symbolic one.

In the end, symbolic successes were the only kind they could achieve.

The pope would not or could not make any official determination on the embassy's requests.

After what he'd seen, Philip shut down the possibility for direct trade and authorized a handful of more missionaries to be sent from Manila if, and

only if, the officials there deemed it worthwhile.

Oh, and Sotelo would not be made the Bishop of Japan.

What the embassy didn't know is that shortly after they crossed the Pacific In February of 1614, Iyasu issued a comprehensive expulsion edict ordering all missionaries to leave Japan and the destruction of all Christian institutions.

It was effectively the end of Christianity in the country and it dashed all of Sotelo's hopes.

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The Samurai Who Became A Roman Citizen

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