[Achill]

My name is Harald Rödl, I am 67 years old and a merchant in Vienna. Now I want tp post an article about the early European influence to Japan: In the year 1543 Portuguese landed from a Chinese ship on the island of Tanegashima, off the southern coast of Kyushu. These were the first Europeans to visit Japan. They introduced the musket, which soon modified Japanese warfare. Other Portuguese ships followed and entered into trade relations with the lords of western Japan. In 1549 St. Francis Xavier, the famous Jesuit missionary, introduced Christianity into Japan, proselytizing in the feudal domains of the west and also at Kyoto, but with no great success. On the whole he was well received and in some cases the feudal lords even encouraged conversations in the hope of attracting Portuguese trade. But the dogmatic intolerance of the missionaries soon earned them the bitter enmity of the usually tolerant Buddhist clergy and led to proscriptions of the new religion in certain fiefs. Xavier, leaving Japan, left behind two Jesuits and many Japanese converts, who formed the nucleus of the new church. In 1568 was the period of National Unification, usually called the Azuchi-Momoyama Period. This was unquestionably one of the most dynamic epochs of Japanese history. The Japanese traders were at their height and were active even in Siamese and Philipine waters. Excess national energy also expressed itself in a great invasion of Korea. Closer contacts with the Asiatic mainland and with Europeans resulted in an influx of new intellectual and artistic currents. Buddhismus was in decline, and its monasteries were being deprived of their military power, but militant christianity was at its height in Japan, and there was a revival of lay learning after the years of warfare. New skills and new products from the occident profoundly affected the economy of the land, and in these years of relative peace the wealth and productivity of the nation expanded rapidly. The private customs barriers which had hampered trade were abolished, and the old monopolistic guilds for the most part came to an end. It was an exuberant, expansive age. Refined simplicity had given way to ostentious pomp and faddism. Architecture, which perhaps most clearly expressed the spirit of the age, showed a love of gorgeous decoration and majestic size. Castles and palaces rather than monasteries were the typical structure of these days. In 1570 Nagasaki was opened to foreign trade by the local lord Omura. A hitherto unimportant fishing village, it soon became Japan's greatest port for foreign commerce.