The fact that the Portuguese opened up the Far East to European maritime enterprise is well known, but the prosperity to which their trade attained in that region is less so, as historians have tended to dwell on the English or Dutch activities. The period of Luso-Japanese trade is therefore of interest in more ways than one, and in particular the first decade of the seventeenth century when Japan was being moulded by Tokugawa Iyeyasu and when the country was still open to foreigners regardless of their race or religion. This volume involved considerable research in four languages and most of the information is here presented to the English reader for the first time.

“An inherently fascinating, impressively well written, exceptionally informative, and meticulously detailed history” of Japanese overseas mercenaries (Midwest Book Review). The Lost Samurai reveals the greatest untold story of Japan’s legendary warrior class, which is that for almost a hundred years Japanese samurai were employed as mercenaries in the service of the kings of Siam, Cambodia, Burma, Spain and Portugal, as well as by the directors of the Dutch East India Company. The Japanese samurai were used in dramatic assault parties, as royal bodyguards, as staunch garrisons and as willing executioners. As a result, a stereotypical image of the fierce Japanese warrior developed that had a profound influence on the way they were regarded by their employers. While the Southeast Asian kings tended to employ samurai on a long-term basis as palace guards, their European employers usually hired them on a temporary basis for specific campaigns. Also, whereas the Southeast Asian monarchs tended to trust their well-established units of Japanese mercenaries, the Europeans, while admiring them, also feared them. In every European example a progressive shift in attitude may be discerned from initial enthusiasm to great suspicion that the Japanese might one day turn against them, as illustrated by the long-standing Spanish fear of an invasion of the Philippines by Japan accompanied by a local uprising. During the 1630s, when Japan chose isolation rather than engagement with Southeast Asia, it left these fierce mercenaries stranded in distant countries never to return: lost samurai indeed!

Based on more than two decades of research conducted on five continents, this monumental work focuses on the activities of members of the Society of Jesus from its foundation to the eve of its expulsion from the Portuguese world. A second volume will examine the Order’s expulsion, the fate of its members, and the disposition of its assets in Portugal and her empire from 1750 to 1808. The present volume begins with the Society’s introduction to Portugal and traces its expansion throughout what the Society defined as the Portuguese Assistancy, a vast complex of administrative units that included the kingdom of Portugal and her empire plus portions of the Indian subcontinent, Japan, China, the Indonesian archipelago, and Ethiopia. Though it fully describes the evangelical and educational activities of the Jesuits, the book emphasizes their political relations with Portuguese and indigenous leaders, the founding of their major training facilities, the development of their economic infrastructure, their activities as governmental administrators for the Portuguese in India and China, and their role in Portugal’s unsuccessful attempts to preserve her eastern empire and to revive Brazil after the Dutch occupation (1630-1654). Throughout, the author makes insightful comparisons between the Jesuits and their peers in various parts of the Portuguese Assistancy and between the Jesuits and their monastic predecessors in various parts of Europe, notably France and England.