FLAIL!!!!!

First load of laundry is in. Goop is on hair. But I need more Rustoleum and I'm just going to do the whole gameboard top from scratch.  Pagano's didn't have small cans of Rustoleum. This stuff I bought is taking for freaking ever to dry, even with a high intensity worklight shining on it and a fan going.

Better image of the four Japanese emissaries found on the German version of Wikipedia: 

ACK! Timer went off. Must rinse hair!!!!

So, gurdymonkey , if you're writing up a timeline for a class on Japanese contact with the West in period, why does it keep going as far as 1854? Yes, the SCA period ends at 1600, a lovely, round number that allows those of you who insist on wearing Big Damn Clothes (TM) with lots of frippery to do so. However, context is everything, particularly on this subject, Portuguese traders, Jesuit missionaries, the Random English Guy with the ear of the Shogun. It doesn't just stop at 1600.  The important bits span only about 100 years: 1543 to 1641. But I had to stick 1854-1854 on the end, simply to illustrate just how adamantly Japan managed to resist the perils of outside influence for the next two hundred years.

Excellent scholarly article on the Jesuits in Japan. I can't even begin to get into their interpretations of Buddhism as described in letters home, but it does have a good chronology on the mission at the time: 
http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/redalyc/pdf/361/36100206.pdf

Google Books had a nice 30 page chunk of Tanegashima: the arrival of Europe in Japan available online.

Still feel like I'm scratching the surface, but at least I have some information organized that I can present if anyone takes the class.

And check out this well dressed samurai doing the Grand Tour of the courts of Europe in 1615. 
Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga, as painted by Claude Deruet.