A Japanese Mission to Seventeenth-Century Rome: Date Masamune’s Cosmopolitan Dream

Through essays on its key players, detailed original maps, and a narrative drawn from contemporary Italian and Latin sources never before translated into English, A Japanese Mission to 17th Century Rome: Date Masamune’s Cosmopolitan Dream presents a nuanced history of the Keicho Mission (1613-1620), a little-known embassy sent to Europe by Masamune Date, the wealthy and ambitious Lord of Oshu (northeastern Japan) seeking to establish trade and cultural ties with Spain and the Roman Catholic Church. Kathryn M. Lucchese describes how the Mission crossed the Pacific, New Spain, and the Atlantic, toured Spain and Italy and paraded in triumph across Rome before making the long return to Sendai. Though its full success was doomed by unfriendly forces in Europe and unfolding policies in Japan, the Mission did open a brief period of trade with New Spain and earned papal support for a Diocese of Japan, leaving traces of its passing in the form of Japanese settlers in Spain and Mexico and the cosmopolitan soul of modern Sendai.

Kathryn M. Lucchese is a retired lecturer in Human Geography at Texas A&M University.