When San Furanshisuko Saberyusu, as the Japanese called the Spanish Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier, landed at Kagoshima in 1549, he was not quite the first Westerner to enter Japan. But the Portuguese merchants who had arrived before him were viewed with well-bred distaste by the Japanese. What could one make of such odd-colored, hairy, round-eyed barbarians? "I do not know whether they have a proper system of ceremonial etiquette," one Oriental lord wrote of the Namban-jin, or "people from the south." "They eat with their fingers instead of chopsticks as we do. They...
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