information:extraction, linguistic:paraphrasing, stylistic:style_transfer
Samurai as diplomatic ambassadors

In 1582, three Kirishitan daimyō, Ōtomo Sōrin, Ōmura Sumitada, and Arima Harunobu, sent a group of boys who were their own blood relatives and retainers to Europe as Japan's first diplomatic mission to Europe. They had audiences with King Philip II of Spain, Pope Gregory XIII, and Pope Sixtus V. The mission returned to Japan in 1590, but were forced to renounce, be exiled, or be executed due to the Tokugawa shogunate's suppression of Christianity.

In 1612, Hasekura Tsunenaga, a vassal of the daimyo Date Masamune, led a diplomatic mission and had an audience with King Philip III of Spain, presenting him with a letter requesting trade, and he also had an audience with Pope Paul V in Rome. He returned to Japan in 1620, but news of the Tokugawa shogunate's suppression of Christianity had already reached Europe, and trade did not take place due to the Tokugawa shogunate's policy of sakoku. In the town of Coria del Rio in Spain, where the diplomatic mission stopped, there are 600 people with the surnames Japon or Xapon as of 2021, and they have passed on the folk tale that they are the descendants of the samurai who remained in the town.

At the end of the Edo period (Bakumatsu era), when Matthew C. Perry came to Japan in 1853 and the sakoku policy was abolished, six diplomatic missions were sent to the United States and European countries for diplomatic negotiations. The most famous were the US mission in 1860 and the European missions in 1862 and 1864. Fukuzawa Yukichi, who participated in these missions, is most famous as a leading figure in the modernization of Japan, and his portrait was selected for the 10,000 yen note.