page_title: Hasekura Tsunenaga
section_title: Second visit to Spain
hierarchical_section_title: Hasekura Tsunenaga / Mission to Europe / Second visit to Spain
caption_attribution_description: Letter from the king of Spain to Date Masamune (1616).
context_page_description: Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga was a kirishitan Japanese samurai and retainer of Date Masamune, the daimyō of Sendai of Japanese imperial descent with ancestral ties to Emperor Kanmu.
  In the years 1613 through 1620, Hasekura headed a diplomatic mission to Pope Paul V. Crossing the Pacific aboard the San Juan Bautista, a ship built for the purpose by Masamune, Hasekura transited New Spain and visited Spain and various other ports-of-call in Europe on the way. This historic mission is called the Keichō Embassy, and follows the Tenshō embassy of 1582. On the return trip, Hasekura and his companions re-traced their route across New Spain in 1619, sailing from Acapulco for Manila, and then sailing north to Japan in 1620. He is conventionally considered the first Japanese ambassador in the Americas and in Spain.
  Although Hasekura's embassy was cordially received in Spain and the Vatican, it happened at a time when Japan was moving toward the suppression of Christianity. European monarchs such as the King of Spain thus refused the trade agreements Hasekura had been seeking.
context_section_description: For the second time in Spain, in April 1616 Hasekura met again with the King, who declined to sign a trade agreement, on the ground that the Japanese Embassy did not appear to be an official embassy from the ruler of Japan Tokugawa Ieyasu, who, on the contrary, had promulgated an edict in January 1614 ordering the expulsion of all missionaries from Japan, and started the persecution of the Christian faith in Japan.
  Two years later, after their trip around Europe, the mission left Seville for New Spain (Mexico) in June 1616. Certain registration documents indicate that some Japanese could have stayed in Spain, which is possible given that they made their last stop in villages near Seville (Espartinas and Coria del Río). Curiously, to this day, Spaniards with "Japón" as a last name are found not only in this region, but all over Spain.
caption: Letter of the King of Spain to Date Masamune (1616). The letter is friendly and asks for the support of the Christian faith, but does not mention trade, in spite of Date Masamune's own request (draft, preserved in the Seville archives, General Archive of the Indies).
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