The engagement was part of a process of trial and error by the Portuguese traders to find a safe harbour for their carracks in Japan that eventually brought them to Nagasaki.

In 1543, Europeans reached Japan for the first time when a junk belonging to the Chinese wokou pirate lord Wang Zhi carrying Portuguese traders was shipwrecked at Tanegashima.

[6] The daimyo of Hirado, Matsura Takanobu, at first accommodated the missionaries due to their association with the Portuguese traders,[7] but became hostile once he felt they overdid their evangelization by burning books and destroying Buddhist images.

He was persuaded to head to another Ōmura anchorage at the bay of Fukuda, within present-day Nagasaki, accompanied by a small galleon belonging to Diogo de Meneses, the captain of Malacca.

Matsura promised to divide the booty with the Sakai merchants in return for the loan of eight to ten of their large junks and added up to sixty smaller Japanese boats to form a flotilla carrying several hundred samurai to sail to Fukuda.

The Japanese boats focused on boarding the larger carrack and, at one point, climbed aboard from the stern and shot a musket at Pereira, denting his helmet.

The cannons wrought such havoc on the frail Japanese boats that the Hirado forces, after losing three ships and over 70 men, in addition to over 200 wounded, withdrew to their base, crestfallen.

From 1571 onward, the Portuguese traders focused their activities on Nagasaki, turning it into the hub of Japan's foreign trade and its window to the West until the 19th century.