Father Luís Fróis arrived in Japan in 1563 and spent the better part of three decades documenting Sengoku-period Japanese society with an ethnographic precision unmatched by any European of his time. His Historia de Japam and comparative treatise on European and Japanese customs remain primary sources for historians of the period. Portugal's commemorative program of the 1990s issued heavily in gold for the collector market, and this piece falls squarely within that run — the INCM producing multiple denominations and compositions for the same subjects simultaneously.
Fróis witnessed the campaigns of Oda Nobunaga firsthand and corresponded directly with him — a rare point of contact between Jesuit mission records and one of Japan's most consequential warlords.
Father Luís Fróis arrived in Japan in 1563 and spent the better part of three decades documenting Sengoku-period Japanese society with an ethnographic precision unmatched by any European of his time. His Historia de Japam and comparative treatise on European and Japanese customs remain primary sources for historians of the period. Portugal's commemorative program of the 1990s issued heavily in gold for the collector market, and this piece falls squarely within that run — the INCM producing multiple denominations and compositions for the same subjects simultaneously.
Fróis witnessed the campaigns of Oda Nobunaga firsthand and corresponded directly with him — a rare point of contact between Jesuit mission records and one of Japan's most consequential warlords.