The events of the battles are obscure and disputed due the contemporaneous sources lacking details and often disagreeing with each other, and given the cultural sensibilities involved, you will find often defenders of each trying to make wild statements about what actually transpired, rarely with more objectivity than enthusiasm. The real truth is impossible to know, the only evidence being that the Philippines were attacked by Asian pirates of probable Japanese majority (Spaniards were already accustomed to trade with Japanese and other nearby peoples and should have been perfectly capable to tell them apart), that some clash with Spanish forces under the listed commanders happened in 1582, and that pirate activity diminished shortly after, with Spanish imperial letters reflecting on the warlike audacity of the pirates. This, by the way, should be considered nothing more than another day for the Capitanía General de Filipinas, where understaffed battles against various locals, covered by prosaic chronicles and letters, were the rule and not the exception.
A few pop culture articles claim it to have been a battle of "Japanese samurai vs. Spanish tercios", which at the very best is a half-truth in both sides. On one hand, while Japanese Rōnin certainly made up a significant part of their pirate crews and probably did in this case, their quality and organization should be expected to be inconsistent, not to mention they came mixed with civilian pirates and petty thugs of many origins. On the other hand, the Spanish contingent was not a tercio at all, as those famed companies were stationed in Europe and never required to be deployed overseas; the combatants featured here, although vaguely similar in tactics and gear, were mostly adventurers enlisted in Mexico, the majority of them Tlaxcaltecs and mestizos rather than Europeans, whose battlefield experience often amounted solely to tribal skirmishes against Mexican Chichimecs and local islanders. Those Hispanics were also probably supported by a body of Filipino militiamen, more lightly armed yet surely fierce, but media tends to ignore those (even although "Kenjutsu vs. Eskrima" would make a fascinating topic on its own).
The story starts in 1573, well after the Spanish Conquest of the Philippines and the establishment of trading routes between the Spaniards and varied Asian merchants who came to exchange gold and silver. While initially a peaceful coexistence (as peaceful as a western province at the other side of the world can be, anyways), conflict arose in 1580 when a lord of wako or Asian pirates attacked the colonies and forced the region of Cagayan (in the northeast of the island of Luzon) into submission. Those pirates, who frequently included some numbers of Japanese bandits and ronin, and whom some Spaniards suspected could be actually privateers for Toyotomi Hideyoshi, were already well-known in the Philippines, as they came every time they heard about a chance to grab for free what they originally had to pay for. They were indirectly helped at this by the Portuguese, who disputed sea commerce with Spain and had provided Japan with modern guns and gunpowder, turning their banditry activities into a potential danger. When the indigenous peoples subjected to Spain failed to repel the attacks, they asked for help to the Capitanía, which commissioned veteran captain Juan Pablo de Carrión to solve the situation.
For what we can ascertain from the varied sources, Carrión made a grand entrance into the conflict by intercepting a pirate ship in the South China sea and forcing it to flee by cannon fire, which had the effect of stirring up the local wako community. The pirate lord in charge, recorded in the chronicles as Tay Fusa (probably a Spanish misunderstanding of the term taifu-sama, meaning commander or chieftain), gathered a fleet of 18 sampan boats carrying around 1000 crewmen, while Carrión did the same with what he could find in Manila, embarking 60 Hispanic soldiers and marines on seven ships of varied sizes. Spanish sources omit the number of sailors who manned their fleet and Filipino warriors who probably filled their ranks, both of which undoubtedly made the contingent much higher than the mentionted 60, but it is generally implied that the pirate fleet was still much more numerous. The two fleets eventually met near the coast of Cagayan, where the Spaniards were investigating a recent pirate incursion, marking the beginning of the battles.
As Carrión and his fleet entered the Cagayan river, they encountered a wako junk ship which might have been the perpetrator of the attack. The Spanish captain detached his galley flagship from the fleet, as it was the fastest boat, and intercepted the junk, intending to board and capture what seemed an easy prey. The mission immediately went sour for the Spanish when the junk was revealed to carry many more fighters than their galley, which led to the Asians counter-boarding them and forcing Carrión's men to fight for their lives. Only after executing an improvised land formation on the deck (and by the timely arrival of the rest of the Spanish fleet) they turned the tide on the pirates. Unwilling to surrender, many of the Japanese jumped to the sea and most of them drowned due to their armors. Free to continue, Carrión and his men continued down the river, where the main Japanese fleet was located.
The fleets finally met in what is now Lal-lo, where Tay Fusa's pirates had built a fort. The two forces exchanged cannon fire, which gave the advantage to the Spaniards thanks to their larger guns and better artillery crews. After overpowering the pirate fleet, Carrión apparently ordered for the men to disembark, move the cannons to the riverside, build a trench and continue harassing the Japanese. After a particularly harsh exchange, with around 200 men lost, Tay Fusa initiated negotiations in an attempt to get a ransom for withdrawing, but the Spaniards characteristically told them to go to hell, so the pirates opted for a last-ditch effort attack with their remaining 600 fighters in hopes to overwhelm them by sheer numbers. The Spanish trench suffered three increasingly wild Japanese assaults through the day, but they managed to hold the lines and inflict them heavy losses through their tactical superiority, after which the pirates finally decided to abandon the battle and run away.
Pirate activity persisted only sparsely compared to the times previous to the battle, while commerce and local development increased. The Spanish Empire established official peaceful trade with the Japan regency in 1584, even attracting many Japanese mercenaries that became an usual component of Spanish Philippine armies. At some point, there were crazy plans with lord Konishi Yukinaga to invade the Ming dynasty China with a combined Japanese-Filipino-Iberian army. However, later Hideyoshi saw it fit to demand from Manila tribute to fund his 1592 invasion of Korea, and upon their refusal, a Japanese invasion of Manila was considered a possibility at several points, moving the Spaniards to look in 1597 for an alliance with China instead. Plans to invade Manila were inherited by Tokugawa Ieyasu under the advice of the Dutch East India Company, archenemies to Spain and Portugal, but they never went anywhere and Japan eventually isolated itself from the Iberians in 1639.
In fiction:
- The Spanish 2016 comic book Espadas del fin del mundo by Ángel Miranda and Juan Aguilera portrays those battles.
- Francisco Narla's historical novel Ronin (2013) mention both this battle and the second Battle of Manila as part of its background.
