Place · port city & martyr site · Japan
Nagasaki
Also known as Nagasaki, Dejima, Twenty-six Martyrs
The Japanese port opened to Portuguese trade in 1571 and administered from Goa's ecclesiastical province, the eastern terminus of the Estado da India's carreira. Everything Portugal sent to Japan — missionaries, guns, Chinese silk bought with Japanese silver — was transhipped through Macau and originally through Goa.
- Function
- Trade & production
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 32.750, 129.878
Worth knowing
Twenty-six Christians were crucified on a hill above the city in 1597, among them Goncalo Garcia, born at Vasai near Bombay — the first person born in India to be canonised. The Japanese silver that paid for Chinese silk on this run is part of why Indian textiles found buyers across maritime Asia.
Connections (1)
- Maritime routeMalacca (Melaka)
The Portuguese carreira ran Lisbon to Goa, Goa to Malacca, Malacca to Macau and Macau to Nagasaki, and each leg waited for a monsoon. Indian cloth bought Southeast Asian spice, Chinese silk bought Japanese silver, and Goa's archbishop had jurisdiction over the whole chain. Gonçalo Garcia travelled the eastern half of it as a merchant before he was crucified at the end of it.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Nagasaki”. Charles Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan 1549–1650 (1951); Vatican records of the canonisation of the Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan.
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