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Summary
Travel is an act for human beings to visit new places and experience different cultures and histories. Through travel, people can actually feel historical events and people’s lives by visiting historical places and cultural heritage sites, and can gain a deeper understanding of history and broaden their own perspectives.
In the previous issue, I described Hongo. This time, I will describe a trip to the islands of Hizen in Kyushu (Karatsu, Hirado, Sasebo, and Nagasaki) to visit the remains of the Nanban trade with the Netherland, United Kingdom, and Portuguese during the Age of Discovery.
The route of the trip starts from Fukuoka, entering Fukuoka Airport by airplane, and visiting the Genko Bastion and the Mongolian mound in Imazu, while thinking about the Mongolian invasion (Genko). Passing through Niji-no-Matsubara, he went to Yobuko and Tonotsu, thinking about the Matsuura party of maritime people. After staying in Karatsu, take a ferry from Hiradoguchi to Hirado Island and visit Hirado Castle, the ruins of the Dutch trading post, Xavier’s Monument, Matsuura Museum of History, Inzanji Residence, and the Anjin Miura Bone Monument, and think about the Dutch, British and Portuguese in the Age of Discovery. We will return to Hiradoguchi by ferry and stay overnight in Sasebo. Following in the footsteps of the Portuguese who left Hirado, we will head for Yokoseura and then south along Omura Bay to Nagasaki, where we will stay overnight. We visited Fukudaura, Shuntokuji Temple standing on the site of the Todos os Santos Association, and the ruins of the Nagasaki clan’s castle to recall Nagasaki in the days when it was Portuguese territory.
Fukuoka Airport is one of the few airports in Japan located within the city of Fukuoka.
Upon landing at Fukuoka Airport, Ryotaro Shiba and others first headed for “Mongol Mound”. Fukuoka was twice attacked by Kublai Khan of the Yuan dynasty, which had invaded Europe in the Kamakura period (about 900 years ago) (both times saved by a typhoon (kamikaze), according to the legend). The story of the Mongol invasion has been the subject of various novels and movies. For example, “Tokimune” by Katsuhiko Takahashi, who wrote the Tohoku Taiga series mentioned in “Kaido yuku – Mutsu no Michi” describes the Mongol invasion from the perspective of Hojo Tokimune, the regent at the time.
The “Angol More Genko Gassenki” series, which is a manga about the Genko itself, is also a recommended work as it depicts the attack on Tsushima and the battle in Fukuoka from the perspective of the Kamakura warriors who actually fought in the war.
This Genko Bastion remains in Ikumatsubara Coastal Forest Park, a short distance west of Hakata.
From there, head further west along the Karatsu Kaido (Route 202 battle) through Karatsu City in Saga Prefecture to buy a small but delicious-looking Shoro Manju, a specialty of Karatsu.
Next, we pass through Niji-no-Matsubara, one of the three largest pine groves in Japan, and enter Nagasaki Prefecture along the coast.
The first place we headed to after entering Nagasaki was Matsuura City. This was the base of a naval group called Matsuura party since ancient times, which was active in the Genpei wars and the Genko pirates, and after the Genko pirates, they were a family of seafaring adventurers who traded overseas and sometimes worked as pirates. The family was a family of seafaring adventurers who were active in the Genpei wars and the Genko pirates, and after the Genko invasion, they were said to have engaged in overseas trade and sometimes piracy.
For example, in “My Wife is a Kunoichi” by Machio Kazano, a samurai from the Matsuura-Hirato clan becomes involved in a conspiracy against the shogunate in Edo (present-day Tokyo).
The word “kunoichi” is a decomposition of the Japanese kanji for “woman” and refers to a female ninja. In this highly entertaining novel, an udatsu-born Hirado samurai falls in love with a female ninja who was a pawn of the Shogunate and becomes a loose-fitting ninja, which leads to a battle between the lord of the Hirado clan, a skilled swordsman, and the ninja of the Hirado clan, It was dramatized by NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) from 2013 to 2014.
Further west along the coast is the island of Hirado. This island was a hub for trade with China, Portugal, the Netherlands, and other foreign countries, and was the site of the first Portuguese trading post built by Francisco Xavier, as described in “Christianity in Japan and the Roads of Shimabara and Amakusa”
Both Portugal and Spain were Catholic, and since the church system (God’s world) was primary, religion and trade were one and the same. Therefore, from the perspective of ideological invasion, the rulers of the time, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, rejected them. In contrast, the Dutch and English were Protestant and oriented toward faith through individual effort, not the system of association, so trade and religion were separated and tolerated by the Japanese rulers, which ultimately led the Dutch and English to remain in Japan. (This was also influenced by the annexation of Portugal by Spain in the 1580s and the destruction of Spain’s invincible fleet by the British, which caused Spain/Portugal to lose its ability to move outward.)
In the late 1630s, the Shimabara-Amakusa Rebellion occurred, as described in “The Roads of Shimabara and Amakusa and Christianity in Japan” and Christians in Japan came to be regarded as dangerous insurgents. In response to these events, Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu tightened the isolationist regime, and the only overseas trading base was Dejima in Nagasaki, and all trading posts in Hirado were closed.
The maritime person who settled in Hirado at the same time as the Portuguese and Dutch were in the city became Wang Nao. Originally a trader, he became a pirate (wako) and set up his base in Hirado, ravaging the coastal areas. In Hirado, there is a bronze statue of Wang Naoshi and the remains of his residence.
Thus, until the early Edo period, Hirado was apparently an international city open to foreign countries. In addition to Hirado, there were Portuguese settlements in Yokose-ura in Sasebo and Fukuda-ura in Nagasaki, but these were also destroyed and they proceeded from Fukuda-ura to the depths of Nagasaki Bay, where the present Nagasaki was discovered. It is said that Nagasaki at that time was an empty, grassy coast.
Nagasaki was called the “Port of Don Paltromo” by the Portuguese, and became an international city connected to Europe at that time. With the Shogunate’s isolationist policy, such an open world was confined to the limited space of Nagasaki/Dejima.
In the next article, we will visit Nikolaido, Kanda Myojin, and the Kanda Jimbocho antiquarian bookstore district, and walk in the footsteps of Mori Ogai, Natsume Soseki, and others who lived and worked in this town.
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