Coria del Río is a small town near

Seville Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Penins ...

, on the shores of

Guadalquivir river The Guadalquivir (, also , , ) is the fifth-longest river in the Iberian Peninsula and the second-longest river with its entire length in Spain. The Guadalquivir is the only major navigable river in Spain. Currently it is navigable from the Gul ...

History

Early in the 17th Century, ''

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and nominall ...

Date Masamune was a regional ruler of Japan's Azuchi–Momoyama period through early Edo period. Heir to a long line of powerful ''daimyō'' in the Tōhoku region, he went on to found the modern-day city of Sendai. An outstanding tactician, he was made ...

Sendai is the capital city of Miyagi Prefecture, the largest city in the Tōhoku region. , the city had a population of 1,091,407 in 525,828 households, and is one of Japan's 20 designated cities. The city was founded in 1600 by the ''daimyō'' Date M ...

sent a delegation led by

Hasekura Tsunenaga was a kirishitan Japanese samurai and retainer of Date Masamune, the daimyō of Sendai. He was of Japanese imperial descent with ancestral ties to Emperor Kanmu. Other names include Philip Francis Faxicura, Felipe Francisco Faxicura, and Phi ...

(1571–1622) to Europe. In 1613, Hasekura and the delegates visited the Spanish court of King Philip III and the

Vatican Vatican may refer to: Vatican City, the city-state ruled by the pope in Rome, including St. Peter's Basilica, Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museum The Holy See * The Holy See, the governing body of the Catholic Church and sovereign entity recognized ...

. An embassy was established and six

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They ...

stayed in Spain. Approximately 650 of Coria's 24,000 residents, as reported in 2003, use the surname ''Japón'' (originally ''Hasekura de Japón''), identifying them as the descendants of the first Japanese official envoy to Spain. The name first appeared on an official document in 1646. Some babies born within the town are known to display the

mongolian spot A Mongolian spot, also known as slate grey nevus or congenital dermal melanocytosis, is a benign, flat, congenital birthmark with wavy borders and an irregular shape. In 1883, it was described and named after Mongolians by Erwin Bälz, a German a ...

which is common in Asians. A statue of

was donated to the city by Japan in 1992 and stands watch over the river. Arco Torii y estatua de Hasekura Tsunenaga

The football club Coria CF hails from Coria del Río.

References

External links

"Coria del Río"
Municipalities of the Province of Seville Guadalquivir Japanese diaspora in Europe {{andalusia-geo-stub