For a time, there was the possibility of even more extensive contacts
between Tokugawa Japan and the West. Ieyasu, the first Tokugawa Shogun,
deliberately sought to make Japan a great center of international
trade. China, mindful of Hideyoshi’s Korean invasions, rebuffed him. He
then turned to the West--that is, to Spain, then the richest trading
nation of Europe. In 1610 Ieyasu concluded a commercial treaty with the
Spanish governor of the Philippines. In 1610 and 1614 Japanese envoys
crossed the Pacific and visited some of the Spanish possessions in
America. Then they went on across the Atlantic. In Madrid the Japanese
envoy had an audience with King Philip III on January 30, 1615; later,
he saw the Pope at Rome. The Spanish king, however, influenced by
the anti-Christian persecutions that had already occurred in Japan,
rejected Ieyasu’s request for a treaty establishing trade relations
with Spain and the Spanish-American possessions.