Tanaka Shōsuke

Japanese trader and diplomat

Tanaka Shōsuke (田中 勝介) was a Japanese merchant in the early Edo period. He is the first recorded Japanese to have travelled to the Americas in 1610 (although some Japanese, such as Christopher and Cosmas, are known to have sailed across the Pacific on Spanish galleons as early as 1587). Returning to Japan in 1611, he again went to North America in 1613, with the embassy of Hasekura Tsunenaga. In total, he accomplished two round trips between Japan and North America and helped establish trade and diplomatic relations between Japan and the Spanish Empire. According to Sumpu ki, he was a representative of the great Osaka merchant Gotō Shōsaburō.

Before the travels of Tanaka Shōsuke, Japan had few contacts with the Spanish, and had instead relied upon the Portuguese, the Chinese, and to a much lesser extent the Dutch and the English for her foreign trade during the first part of the "Nanban trade period". Japan had also been very active sailing red seal ships throughout Asia, original Japanese ships that were broadly similar to Chinese junks, but incorporating various Western techniques and designs (such as square and lateen sails), but had never ventured as far as the Americas. The shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu was eager to develop trade with foreign nations, and was particularly looking forward to an opportunity to develop trade with the Spanish Empire. He had already asked William Adams to exchange trade proposals with the Philippines in 1608, without great success. An opening finally came when the former interim governor of the Philippines Rodrigo de Vivero y Aberrucia was shipwrecked on the coast of Japan in 1609. Rodrigo de Vivero y Aberrucia remained in Japan for 9 months, and took the opportunity to negotiate the first treaty of exchanges between Japan and New Spain, involving offering extraterritorial privileges for a Spanish shipyard and a Naval base in the eastern Japan in exchange for transpacific trade and Mexican silver mining technology.