I said only that I was including a chapter on actual historical incidents of encounters.
BTW, as a historian of fencing, I have been investigating for some time any accounts of martial encounters between Europeans and Japanese during the Renaissance, and I am fairly well read on the major works on contacts available in English, as well as having a large quantity of notes provided by foriegn contacts.
Unfortunately, there has developed a ridiculous amount of modern folklore and urban myth surrounding imaginary encounters between Japanese samurai swordsmen and European (esp. Portuguese) fencers. On the Internet lately there persists the rumor that there exist in some Lisbon archives records of a purported series of demonstrations by Portuguese fencers for the Shogun. I have found no evidence but there very well could be something in Lisbon (or even in Japan). Both I and my colleagues within academia have been unsuccessful in locating any factual evidence of surviving records of Portuguese fencers dueling in Japan that have been rumored to exist. I have contacted scholars in both Lisbon and Japan and nothing has turned up. I suspect it is urban myth.
There are a few tales and myths about supposed sword duels between Europeans and Japanese (some of which I have even heard from ranking Japanese stylists in America) –--but given the damage such encounters would have had on sensitive trade and relations as well as the limited geographic area Europeans visited, I find these claims unlikely and I have only read of a few vague bar fights and occasional street brawls among sailors and low ranking bushi or commoners. (My personal feelings are that if such encounters really occurred, the Japanese would have gotten the worse end of it against a rapier---hence the reason we have not ever heard about it from them. If it had been the other way around I am sure they would never cease reminding us of it.) Additionally, these sources were ignorant of the actual documented incidents I have compiled, so I find their claims suspect right there.
There were a few incidents of drunken Dutch and English sailors getting in streetfights, but again, we have no reason to believe their opponents were true samurai rather than just armed commoners or low ranking footmen.
However, there indeed was hand to hand fighting on board ships on several occasions between actual samurai warriors (not just foot soldiers) and Portuguese sailors and soldiers (on one occasion a ship's captain killed with his sword and buckler several Japanese who boarded in abattle involving more than 2,000 attackers). There is also a letter from another captain who brags that after one other minor encounter in Nagasaki “the Japanese no longer considered the Europeans just tradesmen and priests, but knew now they were also warriors."
There were also occasions where Japanese mercenaries fought right along side Portuguese who besieged the Spaniards and their own Japanese mercenary allies in a fortress in the Philippines (!). What a fight that would have been (make a good movie, I am sure). But, sadly, no real details are available, at least not in English that I know of.
There was also a battle of Dutch and English against Portuguese and Japanese hold up in some South Seas island fortress as well. And most incredibly, an account survives where the shogun was actually negotiating a plan with the Portuguese to invade Formosa using their ships and cannon with his troops as a stepping-stone to a full invasion of China (!).
Finallly, I do know of one extraordinary account of a Spaniard who toured through several provinces with an armed entourage of halberdiers and armed black slaves, being honored as a guest by several warlords, no less. But no details survive of his adventures.
Details of all this will be in my extensive article.
JC
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