Some Background on Japanese Missions (Part I)

"Basque Francis Xavier (1506-52) was to become the most famous of all Roman Catholic missionaries. To a passionate but disciplined nature, profound devotion, and an eager longing for the salvation of souls, Xavier added the wide outlook of the statesman and the capacity of the strategist for organization on a large scale.

Xavier, whose commission from king and Pope extended to the whole of the East, spent some months in this region (Malacca) in 1546 and 1547. But his eager mind was already ranging onwards, and was filled with thoughts of Japan.

Japan had for some centuries been unknown to the West only through the somewhat imaginative eyes of Marco Polo, who had never been there:

Chipangu is and Island towards the east in the high seas, 1,500 miles distant from the continent; and a very great Island it is. The people are white, civilized, and well-favoured. They are Idolaters and are dependent on nobody. And I can tell you the quantity of gold they have is endless.... Moreover all the pavement of the Palace, and the floors of its chambers, are entirely of gold, in plates like slabs of stone, a good two fingers thick; and the windows also are of gold, so that altogether the richness of this Palace is past all bounds and belief.

It seems that the first contact in historical times was made by a group of Portuguese mariners, who in 1542 were driven far out of their course by a storm and found themselves on the shores of the unknown land.

A certain Anjiro (Yajiro), who had killed a man in Japan, had escaped from justice and by devious ways had made his way to Goa (India). There Xavier met him in 1548, and learned from him something of the was of his country:

I asked him whether, if I went back with him to his country, the Japanese would become Christians, and he said that they would not do so, until they had first asked me many questions and seen how I answered and how much I knew. Above all they would want to observe if I lived in conformity with what I said and believed. If I did those two things, answered the questions to their satisfaction and so demeaned myself that they could find anything to blame in my conduct, then, after knowing me for six months, the king, the nobility, and all other people of discretion would become Christians, for the Japanese, he said, are entirely guided by the law of reason.

It is not surprising that the soul of Xavier became inflamed by the desire to preach the Gospel to this superior people. It was with high hopes that at last, on 15 August 1549, after many perils passed, he landed - together with two Jesuits and Yajiro and his Japanese attendants - at the port of Kagoshima, Yajiro's native town.

Mt. Kaimon-dake, Kagoshima, southern Japan

Yajiro proved indeed to be a broken reed: he had very little knowledge of his own country; he was not a highly educated man; his efforts at the translation of Christian terms into Japanese was to lead the missionaries into errors, which they were later to sorely rue, and his character was far from being altogether admirable. But the moment of the arrival of the missionaries was on the whole propitious. Japan was passing through a period of grave political disorder; there was no central authority, and the land was divided up among 250 daimyos, local rulers, each of whom claimed full authority in his own dominions. The country was open to the foreigner. The Japanese were eager for trade, and were especially interested in guns, which, once acquired, they set to work to copy in their own arsenals, with the remarkable Japanese capacity for imitation. Buddhism was in discredit; there was no strongly established form of national religion to resist the preaching of the Gospel, and there was genuine openness to new ideas." (127, 131-2)

Neill, Stephen. A History of Christian Missions. London: Penguin Books, 1990.