So ive got a task for school where i'm supposed to write about a travel from Portugal to Japan in the 15th century. A few keypoints is how long time these travels would take with boat and what kind of boats they would be using. Ive searched the internet and have found little to nothing about it. Anyone here with this knowledge or some good sources where I could read about it? I know that the Portuguese had established a trading route from Goa in India to Nagasaki in Japan, bud what kind of resources were they trading? Any help from you Historians would be greatly appreciated!
Here are some suggestions for you to look up. (I won't answer this in full, since that would mean doing your homework for you.)
Portuguese ship ca 1500-1600: I would look up Galleon or Carrack
Portuguese ships sailed down the western coast of Africa and probably stopped at Luanda, Angola to refuel. They would then round the Cape of Good Hope and sail up the eastern coast of Africa and rest at Mozambique. From there they would travel to Goa, India. From Goa they could sail to Malacca in Southeast Asia. From Malacca they could go directly to Japan or stop at Macau before going to Japan.
For the length of the journey I suggest looking at some well known journeys such as Ferdinand Magellan's and then trying to figure out on your own how long a journey actually took from point A to point B. And then making your own estimates.
For trading goods between Japan and Portugal I would research "Nanban" trade. That's the Japanese word for the Portuguese in the 16th and 17th centuries.
I wish I had school tasks this cool.
It worked like this: Trade between the portuguese and the japanese started almost immediately after the first portuguese traders "discovered" Japan by shipwrecking there in 1543, starting about one year later. Initally traders assembled in Malacca and sailed for Japan, but after the Portuguese settled definitely in Macau in around 1557, all journeys towards Japan would stop there first.
Now, if you were in Lisbon and wanted to go to Japan, the carracks would leave the city to India in around March/April and take the (in)famous India Run (the Cape Route, known for being very treacherous) towards India and arrive in Goa in around September. When there, you'd have to wait until April/May of the next year to sail to Malacca, a journey that would take about one month, finally arriving in Macau in about August. Once there, traders would meet up with Chinese traders and Portuguese factors to buy goods to be sold in Japan, and decide what the deals would be for the next year. You'd stay in Macau some 10-12 months until the ship departed to Nagasaki the next year, and hopefully arrive there before July and avoid the storm season. In October/November or January/February it'd sail back to Macau.
Summed up, the journey would take you around 2 and a half years to complete! And this assuming there'd be no delays that'd require you to wait another year in whatever city you were at!
The ships used by the portuguese engaged in trade were mostly carracks, know for their very large sizes for their time, sometimes over 1000-1500 tons. Since only one ship arrived in Nagasaki per year, they were very large and became known in Japan as the "Black Ship", for they were painted with pitch (for water-tightening).
Japanese depiction of a Portuguese Black Ship.
Merchandise included indian cloth, clocks, glass and cristal objects, and portuguese wine. Sometimes other more exotic goods were taken as offerings for the japanese lords, but the most important merchandise of them all was Chinese silks, extremely valuable in Japan since the Chinese had cut all trade relations with the Japanese. Aquired in Macau in large numbers, and then sold in Japan for japanese silver, which would then be used back in Macau again to buy silks for the next year.
