Coria del Río

Coria del Río stands beside the Guadalquivir River near Seville, in the lowland corridor through which the great Andalusian river approaches the sea. Its history is tied to that river setting and to an unusually distant diplomatic encounter. Early in the seventeenth century, Date Masamune of Sendai sent a delegation led by Hasekura Tsunenaga to Europe.

In 1613 the travellers visited the court of King Philip III in Spain and went on to the Vatican. An embassy was established, and six samurai stayed in Spain. The memory of that mission became local and genealogical. Families who took the surname Japón, originally Hasekura de Japón, claimed descent from the first official Japanese embassy to Spain; the name already appeared in an official document in 1646.

Coria del Río’s identity therefore joins the watery landscape of the lower Guadalquivir with a documented exchange that crossed oceans.