Although both countries are in distant regions of the planet, Portugal and Japan can lay claim to a peculiar and littleknown relationship that began 400 years ago thanks to the boldness of Portuguese navigators.

“Japan was the Asian country that experienced the greatest impact and the greatest transformations because of Portuguese expansion,” says historian and university professor Joao Oliveira e Costa.

He is one of the authors of the book “História da Expansão e do Império Português” (“History of Portuguese Expansion and Empire”), recently published by Sphere dos Livros.

While the audacity of Portuguese navigators in the discovery of Brazil and the sea route to India inspired epics like “Os Lusiadas,” the impact the Portuguese ships had on Japan remains a poorly understood historical chapter, Oliveira e Costa maintains.

Portuguese colonialism started in 1415 with the conquest of Ceuta, after which the Portuguese empire expanded throughout Africa, Asia and South America.

The Japanese came into contact with Europeans for the first time when a group of Portuguese traders landed on Nipponese shores in 1543 and was followed by intense economic interactions as well as, social and religious ones.

Portuguese shotguns had the greatest impact on the Japanese people, who had no knowledge of firearms and usually fought with arrows and other bladebased sharp weapons.

“Japan was semiisolated until the Portuguese arrived. The relationship between the two countries contributed to a significant modernization of Western knowledge of the Japanese civilization,” says Oliveira e Costa.

His book has no precedent in capturing the relationship that lasted from the beginning of Portuguese maritime expansion in 1415 until the independence of the Chinese colony of Macao in 1999.

“The arrival of Portuguese ships, with people in weird clothing, bearing animals that had never been seen in Japan such as chickens, ducks or rabbits, and the black crew, with different customs, was captured by Japanese artists,” said the professor at Lisbon’s Nova University.

Another reflection of the interaction between the Japanese and European cultures is the Namban style of art which explores the relations between the civilizations in a fashion reminiscent of a picture album.

“There are several Japanese museums which show pieces associated with Namban culture, especially pieces with religious connotations, including paintings, flags and the weapons of Christians,” said the historian, who highlighted the lacquered furniture that so interests the West.

Namban culture left its mark not only on the visual arts but also on religious rituals, the performing arts and the scientific culture of both civilizations.

Other relevant cultural synergies were lost through political and religious conflicts, which even led to the persecution of Christians in Japan, who at one point were considered a dangerous manifestation of colonialism.

“Everything having to do with the Portuguese was eradicated, all churches were destroyed in the seventeenth century,” notes Oliveira e Costa.

Despite these tensions, the living proof of the centuriesold relationship that joined Japan and Portugal is the small colonial outpost of Macao, which quickly became a major gateway for trade between China, Europe and Japan after being settled by Portuguese merchants in 1557.

Macao, which has been dependent on Beijing since 1999 is a point of convergence for the Portuguese and Chinese identities, a bridge between Western and Eastern culture.

“The Portuguese changed the history of Japan, but the latter still retained its own civilization,” declared Oliveira e Costa, who explained the reason why their efforts at eastward colonization ended up having less weight, in historical terms, than the Portuguese conquest of Brazil in 1500.

Faced with a lowtech civilization, especially with regard to weaponry, the Portuguese easily established their technological dominance over locals in Brazil.

However, in the case of Japan, things were different.

“Everyone knew that the country of the samurai was impossible to conquer.”