Japanese history books record that, in the early years of the 15th century, their mariners made voyages to Australia. One of the most pirates admirals, Yama da Nagamasa, with a fleet of forty ships, navigated by Koreans and crewed by Japanese, explored every land from Japan to Australia between 1620 and 1633. The Japanese texts of that time referred to the great southern continent as 'Sei-Yo' meaning "The Great Southland"; and also 'Sei-tso', "The South Land of Pearls".

These adventurers must have been familiar with the Darwin area, as well as Torres Strait, where, until recent times pearls were rich in supply. Yama da Nagamasa's expedition explored along the northern Australian coast, on through Torres Strait, and down our east coast, eventually to reach the north coast of Tasmania, where his men carved a number of memorial stones which they left to record their visit.

These stones were found in 1931, but the inscriptions were far too faded to be deciphered. Japanese claims of Australian landfalls date back over 2,000 years. However, as I about to show, an earlier people who preceded them on the Japanese islands, voyaged here centuries before. Japanese and other Asian pearlers were frequent visitors to the Wessel Islands off Arnhem land in pre-British times and about 1425 a Japanese vessel is recorded as possibly having reached the Western Australian coast near Broome.

And there is the "knight in armour, a human figure rock engraving at Sturt Creek Station in the Kimberly, which shows a helmet and breastplate, in the style of an ancient Samurai warrior. A second rendition of the same figure is located as a rock shelter etching nearby. He is linked with the Aboriginal being Djarula, who passed through the area from the south-east in the long ago Dreamtime, introducing song-cycles and palm trees.

Compared with other, more advanced maritime peoples of Asia, the Japanese entered the Pacific much later than, say the Chinese as we have already seen. The Japanese would have probably of learnt of lands in the Australasian region from their myths and legends, passed down from a very remote period, which had their origin with the earliest inhabitants of old Nippon; and also from Chinese and other Asian peoples with whom they traded.

Japanese history becomes vague the further back it extends in time, until it becomes shrouded in the mists of fabulous legend. Modern Archeology however, is beginning to reveal an hitherto 'lost' past of maritime history.