Acapulco and Japan

We will turn back 200 years. It was 1591 and Felipe de las Casas, then sixteen years old, was already obliged by his father to study in the College of San Pedro and San Pablo and to be interned in the Franciscan monastery at Santa Barbara, in Puebla. These religious settings turned him into first-rate silver-smith. He was then sent to the Philippines, to study trade. In Manila, Felipe returned to his religious path, in the monastery of Santa Maria de los Angeles.
He was assigned to read his first mass in Mexico City, so the Franciscan, now known as Felipe de Jesus, set sail from Cavite and headed for Acapulco, in June of 1596. A storm, however, threw his ship off course and he landed at Urando, a spot on the coast of Japan, where he was taken prisoner, along with twenty-five other Christians. They were taken to Nagasaki and there judged and sentenced to be hung from rude crosses, and then to be lanced until dead. Thus Felipe became the first Mexican saint. A mere fourteen years later, in 1610, a strange ship entered Acapulco harbor, on which Japanese sailors brought to Mexico the Governor of the Philippines, Rodrigo de Vivero. He had also embarked from Cavite but was shipwrecked, due to a fierce typhoon that set him face to face with the Empire of the Rising Sun. Japanese leaders, owing to an unforeseen caprice in their international policy, treated him in the best possible manner and in addition to everything else offered him a new vessel in order for him to continue his journey to Mexico. The picturesque crew, all Japanese, characteristically ceremonious and shy, were conducted with honors to the capital of New Spain. Then Don Luis de Velasco the Second named Sebastian Vizcaino the new Ambassador Extraordinary of the King of Spain and the Viceroy of New Spain in Japan. He set sail from Acapulco on March 19, 1611 and reached his destination two and a half months later.

For Acapulco there was still a new surprise in store. At the beginning of 1614 the ship that brought Vizcaino back to Mexico dropped anchor in the bay. With him was Captain Tsunenaga Rokuemon Hasekura, Ambassador of the Japanese Emperor to his Catholic Majesty the King of Spain, and His Holiness the Pope. From Mexico the new envoy sailed on to Madrid and then travelled to Rome. His family and an escort of 175 accom-panied him. The “Matsu Maru’ the ship on which he sailed to Acapulco, was curiously left to the charge of a Spanish missionary. Fray Luis Sotelo, by disposition of the Japanese authorities. A sick and broken Vizcamo had returned to Acapulco in the capacity of any simple passenger.