ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an account, by the Japanese travellers, of the journey, with a description of Lisbon, capital of the kingdom of Portugal. Afonso I Henriques became king of Portugal in July 1139 and in 1147 seized Santarém and Lisbon. In the 16th century it was believed that Ulysses had founded Lisbon. Most of what the Japanese saw in Lisbon was destroyed in the great earthquake of 1755. During the late Middle Ages the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula (the Five Kingdoms, viz. Portugal, Leon, Castile, Aragon and Navarre) called themselves Hispaniae, after the Spanish provinces of the Roman Empire. After the union of Aragon and Castile in 1479 and, disregarding Portuguese protests, the joint monarchy’s appropriation of the name Spain for the unified kingdoms, the Portuguese began to style themselves Lusitanians, after the Roman province Lusitania.
