1495 - 1516 (No America)

 1493-5, the Japanese Invasion of the Azores 

The Japanese did not take a long time to realize that outsiders have arrived at their coast. The local Daimyo commanded his soldiers to take him prisoner and take him before the Tenno. The court commanded them, to torture their men until some of them gave up and revealed the way to travel to Europe.

Then, the Shogun Ashikaga Yoshitane organized his troops in Kyoto, prepared to travel to Europe and "make the white men response for their invasion to the motherland". In April 1494, the fleet arrived in the Azores. The Shogun was hopeful that he would be the first Japanese to conquer land in Europe, which would give him the recognition he was looking for, and no one would defy the Shogunate again.

Before July, the Japanese conquered Corvo, and at the end of that month, they controlled the archipelago from Flored to Terceira. The governor sent a letter from São Miguel, urging on the King to send reinforcements. The letter arrived Lisbon at the middle of March, while the Japanese were besieging the last resistance on the island of Santa Maria; specifically, the port of Plata Hermosa.

The King of Portugal, by this time John II of Avis, ordered to recover the Azores from the Ashikagas as soon as possible. At the end of August, the troops set sail from Setubal, at the command of James, 4th Duke of Braganza. They landed a week later, taking Vila do Porto and forcing the Japanese to retreat and refuge themselves from the Portuguese offensive.

 Longer Term Japanese Response 

In Japan, Hosokawa Masamoto, deputy of the Shogun, proclaimed Ashikaga Yoshizumi as his puppet Shogun. The loyalist Hatakeyma Masanaga attempted to stop the coup d'état, but he was betrayed by a faction of his own clan. With enemies everywhere, Yoshitane returned home with most of his army, leaving a part on Azores to fight Braganza's armies.

Knowing the news of the land of the Rising Sun, through spies and prisoners, James thought that it may be a good idea try to ally with the enemies of Yoshitane. He was busy commanding the campaign to recover the archipelago, so he sent his brother Denis. Denis arrived the coasts of Japan in July. He was received by the Tenno Tsuchimikado II. While Masamoto was fighting a rebellion in Yamashiro province, Denis decided to sign an alliance with the Tenno, and then he went to Yamashiro to help the deputy.

At the beginning of 1495, the archipelago of Azores was Portuguese from Santa Maria to Faial (the King wasn't really friend of the Duke of Braganza, so he left him with the troops he already had, and the campaign was long and expensive, but the Duke got popularity and wealth with it, eventually).

Masamoto's faction controlled the half of Japan, with the help of Denis, and the only supporter of Yoshitane was the king of Ryukyu, Shō Shin.

In 1496, both, the king Ferdinand II of Aragon and the Queen Elizabeth I of Castille heard the news about what was happening in Japan, and claimed the wealth stolen from Columbus. Also, John II died, and a relative of him, Manuel I, became king. He was related to the House of Braganza, so he sent some help to the campaign of both James and Denis.

Denis was named Duke of Azores, while Masamote was proclaimed supreme overlord of Japan, banishing Yoshitane of China, under the protection of the Emperor Hongzhi.

1497 was a peaceful year for the Oceanic civilization. The duke Denis I of Azores wrote (or started writing) this year Crônica do Japão, a large book that offered a résumé of the "Japaneses continent" and its outskirts (Ryūkyū, China, Manchuria, Korea, etc...) to the European philosophers. Some terms were changed by Denis himself to make them more understandable to the European civilization. For example, the term "samurai" was changed by "knight", "shogun", by "king", "daimyo", by nobility titles, commonly "duke" or "lord", and the figure of the Tenno (Emperor of Japan) was seen as a kind of Pope (Denis many times referred him as the "Pope in Tokyo").

Another work written by him in cooperation with Hosokawa Masamoto and some Japanese philosophers was Historia Regum Nihonniæ, another large work that didn't sum up the culture and geography of Japan, but the history. The main objective was legitimate the access of Ashikaga Yoshizumi to the throne, following the typical European succession laws.

The trade between Europe and Asia was mainly a monopoly between both Portugal and Japan until some Japanese merchants in 1497 started trading with the Catholic Monarchy, and later the Chinese finally passed the blockade imposed by Japan and started trading with Europe. Even this was hard, because the Portuguese and Spanish were allies of Japan, and they wanted to preserve their monopoly. They also wanted China to avoid breaking it, so the Emperor Hongzhi saw an opportunity trading with the Kingdom of Fez, giving the Wattasid Dynasty the monopoly of Chinese trading.

With the wealth that this monopoly gave them, the Wattasid felt encouraged enough to conquer the rest of the independent principalities of the zone, like the Saadi dynasty, and creating the Sultanate of Fez. Abu Abdallah al-Sheikh Muhammad ibn Yahya became the first African in visit Japan as ambassador and foreign head of state. By 1514 the entire Morocco were Wattasid.

Another important core of trading was Ireland. In 1501 the Japanese outlaw merchants arrived in Ireland and started trading with the local clans, which made them wealthy. It also encouraged them to defy the English presence in their island.