[Sca-cooks] Japanese Leaving Japan

[Barbara Nostrand]

Lord Elric!

Greetings from Solveig!

><< Again I also am not rabid about it but folks use the term "anyone who
>Europeans could have had contact with between 600 and 1600"  And we get all
>these Janpanese personas. Oh we are visiting or traveling or whatever.  I
>would think that if you were going to go that route the first thing you
>might do is read a bit about Japanese Culture and the Country.  The Japanese
>DID NOT visit Europe, it was against the Japanese Law for anyone to leave
>Japan. Punishable by death.  The Japanese are the worlds greatest zenophobes
>and racists. They did not go to Europe:)  The Chinese probably did but the
>Chinese are not Japanese. Out of era for us the Porteguese did bring
>Japanese to Europe, mostly the monks converted by the church, the were
>brought as "trophies" as it were. Oh well guess I would rather have Japanese
>personas (no ninjas please) than the folks with horns, tails, wings, fangs
>etc.

I recommend that you follow your own adivice and start by reading Sansom's
history of Japan and follow it with reading the Cambridge History of Japan.
While fervently believed, your assertions about the closure of Japan are
simply counterfactual. Japan was not closed until the seventeenth century
under as I recall the third Tokugawa Shogun. Among other things, we know
that Japanese visited the pope in Rome during the sixteenth century.
You can read about this in Sansom. The pope specifically insisted that they
enter the city rather regally sitting astride horses wearing Japanese dress.

Other excursions outside of Japan involve several Korean campaigns over
a period of centuries, a Japanese adventurer seizing an Indochinese country
and making himself king, lots of monks studying in China, &c.

As for means for getting to Europe. As I recall, there was at least one
Japanese expedition to Europe which began with a trans-Pacific voyage on
a Japanese owned ship which was partially crewed by Europeans in Japanese
employ. They crossed Nuvo-Espania and took passage on a European ship and
reached Europe.

As for Chinese reaching Europe, I already posted a note about that. You
can of course quibble as Raban Sauma was not a member of the Han ethnic
group, but belonged to a Turkic ethnic group. However, what is now
Beijing was his home from which he departed.

					Your Humble Servant
					Solveig Throndardottir
					Amateur Scholar

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| Barbara Nostrand, Ph.D.         | Solveig Throndardottir, CoM, CoS  |
| deMoivre Institute              | Carolingia Statis Mentis Est      |
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