Background
Harada Kiemon was born in 1555.
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Harada Kiemon
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Early in his life he and his assistant Harada Magoshichiro, whose Christian name was Gaspar, engaged in trade with the Philippines. On the basis of the experience so acquired, he urged Toyo- tomi Hideyoshi, through the latter’s close advisor Hasegawa Sojin, to undertake the conquest of the Philippines.
In 1592, when the envoy from the Philippine government, a Franciscan named Father Juan Cobos, was leaving Japan to return to Luzon, Harada went along in a separate ship, heading the second Japanese mission to the Philippines urging the government there to acknowledge Japanese sovereignty and submit tribute, a similar mission having been dispatched the previous year. Because Cobos’ ship was wrecked on the way, however, Harada returned to Japan without carrying out his mission.
The following year, he was ordered by Hideyoshi to undertake a visit to Taiwan, though the aim of this mission was apparently to establish friendly relations with that region. Presumably because of the merit ac-quired through these activities, Hideyoshi granted him a domain in the province of Satsuma in Kyushu.
Religion
He was baptized and took the Christian name Paulo.
