page_title: Fernão Mendes Pinto
section_title: Japan
hierarchical_section_title: Fernão Mendes Pinto / Voyages / Malacca and the Far East / Japan
caption_attribution_description: English: Memorial To St. Francis Xavier, Hirado, Nagasaki, Japan Русский: св. Франциск Ксаверий
context_page_description: Fernão Mendes Pinto was a Portuguese explorer and writer. His voyages are recorded in Pilgrimage, his autobiographical memoir. The historical accuracy of the work is debatable due to the many events which seem far fetched or at least exaggerated, earning him the nickname "Fernão Mentes Minto". Some aspects of the work can be verified, particularly through Pinto's service to the Portuguese Crown and by his association with Jesuit missionaries.
context_section_description: Pinto claimed that his 1543 landing made him the first European to set foot in Japan. He also claimed to have introduced the arquebus to Japan. It is widely accepted now, however, that several Portuguese traders, including António Mota and Francisco Zeimoto, visited Japan a year earlier. The firearm was reproduced and used in the Japanese civil wars. It was known as the tanegashima.
  Pinto facilitated trade between the Portuguese and Japan. At one point, he was shipwrecked on the Ryukyu Islands. In 1549, Pinto left Kagoshima accompanied by a Japanese fugitive, Anjirō. He returned to Japan with Saint Francis Xavier, a Catholic missionary. In 1554, Pinto joined the Society of Jesus and donated a large sum of his trading wealth to the mission. In a letter, Ōtomo Yoshishige, daimyō of Bungo, offered his conversion and requested Pinto return to Japan. The letter arrived at the same time that Xavier's body was being displayed in Goa. Ōtomo did not convert at that time due to internal difficulties but did so later at the time Pinto was completing his autobiography. Between 1554 and 1556, Pinto returned to Japan with Xavier's successor. He became the Viceroy of Portuguese India's ambassador to the daimyo of Bungo on the island of Kyūshū. Despite Pinto's support of the Church in Japan, he left the Jesuits in 1557.
caption: Memorial to St. Francis Xavier, Hirado, Nagasaki
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