Visiting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met Japanese people connected with two crucial events in Japan-Turkey relations in Tokyo on Tuesday.

Erdogan listened to the stories of descendants of Japanese who rescued Turkish sailors in a maritime disaster in 1890, along with a Japanese man ferried out of a war zone by a Turkish pilot nearly a century later.

When the Ottoman navy frigate Ertugrul sank off the coast of Wakayama Prefecture in September 1890, people from the coastal town of Kushimoto rescued 69 sailors, while 587 died.