Yamada Torajirō was a Japanese businessman and tea master who is considered to have laid the foundation of Japanese-Turkish relations. He was one of the first Japanese people to convert to Islam and make the Hajj to Mecca, and he changed his name to Abdülhalil, later changing it to Yamada Sōyū after 1923.

Ertuğrul, launched in 1863, was a sailing frigate of the Ottoman Navy. While returning from a goodwill voyage to Japan in 1890, she encountered a typhoon off the Kushimoto coast of Wakayama Prefecture, subsequently drifted into a reef and sank. The shipwreck resulted in the loss of more than 500 sailors and officers, including Rear Admiral Ali Osman Pasha. Only 69 sailors and officers survived and returned home later aboard two Japanese corvettes. The event is still commemorated as a foundation stone of Japanese-Turkish friendship.