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Nanban (南蛮 Lit. “Southern barbarian”) is a Japanese word which originally designated people from South Asia and South-East Asia. It followed a Chinese usage in which surrounding “barbarian” people in the four directions had each their own designation.

In Japan, the word took on a new meaning when it came to designate Europeans, the first of whom started to arrive in Japan in 1543, first from Portugal, then Spain, and later Holland and England. The word Nanban was thought naturally appropriate for the new visitors, since they came in by ship from the South, and their manners were considered quite unsophisticated by the Japanese.

A contemporary Japanese account relates: "They eat with their fingers instead of with chopsticks such as we use. They show their feelings without any self-control. They cannot understand the meaning of written characters" (from Boxer, “Christian century”).

Even prominent European observers of the time seemed to agree that the Japanese "excell not only all the other Oriental peoples, they surpass the Europeans as well" ( Alessandro Valignano, 1584, "Historia del Principo y Progresso de la Compania de Jesus en las Indias Orientales).

1 The Nanban episode

The Japanese were not very impressed with the cultural, or even technological level of their visitors. Japan had grown into a sophisticated feudal society with a high culture and a strong pre-industrial technology.

Japan was more populated and urbanized than any Western country (in the 16th century, Japan had 26 million inhabitants against 16 million for France and 4.5 million for England). She had Buddhist “universities” larger than any learning institution in the West, such as Salamanca or Coimbra.

Her copper and steel were the best in the world, her weapons the sharpest, her military strength recognized: "A Spanish royal decree of 1609 specifically directed Spanish commanders in the Pacific ‘not to risk the reputation of our arms and state against Japanese soldier’" (“Giving up the gun”, Noel Perrin).

Her paper industries were unequaled: the Japanese were blowing their noses in disposable soft "tissue" papers made from washiWashi or Wagami is a type of paper made in Japan. Washi is commonly made using fibers from ganpi plant, mitsumata plant, or paper mulberry but also can be made using bamboo, hemp, rice, and wheat. Washi is generally tougher than paper made from wood pulp, when most people in the western world still used their sleeves.

One thing the Japanese were definitely interested in was barbarian guns. The first three Europeans to reach Japan were Portuguese and came on a Chinese ship to the southern island of TanegashimaTanegashima is an island lying to the south of Kyushu, south Japan. It is a long low stretch of land, carefully cultivated, and celebrated as the place where Mendez Pinto landed when he found his way to Japan in 1543. Until modern times firearms were coll, and they had arquebusesThe Arquebus (sometimes spelled harquebus or hackbut was a primitive firearm used in the 15th to 17th centuries. Like its successor, the musket, it was a smoothbore firearm although somewhat smaller than its predecessors, which made it easier to carry. and ammunitions with them. At that time, Japan was right in the middle of a huge civil war called the Sengoku periodThe Sengoku Period ( Sengoku jidai or "warring-states" period, is a period of long civil war in the History of Japan that spans through the middle 15th to the early 17th centuries. It started in the late Muromachi period in 1467 with the Onin War Onin no (Period of the country at war). Strictly speaking, the Japanese were already familiar with gunpowderGunpowder is a substance which burns very rapidly and is used as a propellant in firearms. There are two types: Black powder, which was discovered in the 9th Century and as the only known practical explosive was widely used until the 20th Century. However (invented by, and transmitted from China), and had been using basic Chinese guns and cannon tubes called Tetsuhoo (鉄砲 Lit.”Iron cannon”) for around 270 years before the arrival of the Portuguese. The Portuguese guns however were light, had a matchlockThe Matchlock was the first firearm to have a trigger mechanism for firing. Matchlock refers to the type of lock mechanism used for igniting the gun's powder. A further development of flashpan technology, the matchlock gun held a wick or slow match in a v firing mechanism and were easy to aim with.

Within a year, Japanese swordsmiths and ironsmiths managed to reproduce the mechanism and mass-produce the guns. Barely fifty years later, "by the end of the 16th century, guns were almost certainly more common in Japan than in any other country in the world", her army equipped with a number of guns dwarfing any contemporary army in Europe (Perrin).

The guns were strongly instrumental in the unification of Japan under Toyotomi HideyoshiToyotomi Hideyoshi (; 1536 September 18, 1598), was a Japanese general who united Japan. He succeeded his former liege, Oda Nobunaga. Later, he invaded Korea. He is known for a number of cultural legacies, including the restriction that only members of th and Tokugawa Ieyasu, as well as in the invasion of Korea in 1592 and 1597.

After the country was pacified and unified by Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1603 however, Japan closed itself to the southern barbarians (except for the trade outpost of Dejima in Nagasaki, for Holland, foreigners were subject to the death penalty), persecuted Christian converts, and almost completely eradicated guns to revert to the more "civilized" sword. Thence started a period of peace, prosperity and mild progress known as the Edo period.

The "barbarians" would come back more than 200 years later strengthened by industrialization, and end Japan's splendid isolation, with the forcible opening of Japan to trade by an American military fleet under the commandement of Commodore Perry in 1854.