The region symbolizes Japan's earliest contact with the outside world.

Other early contacts were afraid to be associated with the religion.

But if silence had a part in his making, so, too, did the early contact into which he came with the moving currents of American life.

Despite this early commercial contact, neither side showed much interest in diplomatic activity with one another until the twentieth century.

There is no genetic or linguistic evidence for earlier contact along this route.

His job was to make early contact with the enemy.

His father was a sailor, and he had an early contact with Hawaiian music.

This happened more obviously to the southern tribes that had earlier contacts with foreigners.

But to date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship.

The earliest significant contact of the island with Spain occurred in 1565.