Francis Xavier in Japan (1549): The First Christian Mission

Francis Xavier’s mission to Japan began when the Jesuit missionary landed at Kagoshima on 15 August 1549, bringing Christianity to Japan for the first time. Over the next two years he travelled from Kyushu to Kyoto, met powerful daimyo and founded small Christian communities. His mission opened nearly a century of intense religious and cultural exchange between Japan and Europe, which ended in persecution and closure.

Background: Xavier and the road to Japan

Francis Xavier (Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta, 1506-1552) was a Basque nobleman from Navarre who studied in Paris, where he met Ignatius of Loyola. He was one of the first companions with whom Ignatius founded the Society of Jesus, formally approved by the pope in 1540.

At the request of King John III of Portugal, Xavier sailed for Asia in 1541 and reached Goa, the Portuguese base in India, in 1542. He worked in southern India, Malacca and the Moluccas. Portuguese traders had reached Japan only a few years earlier, after the landing at Tanegashima in 1543, and reports of the country began to circulate among Europeans in Asia.

Anjirō and the decision to go

In Malacca in December 1547 Xavier met Anjirō, a Japanese man from Kagoshima who had fled Japan after killing a man and had sought out the priest. Xavier was impressed by his curiosity and intelligence. Anjirō was taken to Goa, studied at the Jesuit college there and was baptised in 1548 as Paulo de Santa Fé.

Anjirō’s descriptions convinced Xavier that the Japanese would be receptive to Christianity. In April 1549 Xavier left Goa with the Jesuits Cosme de Torres and Juan Fernández, Anjirō and two other Japanese converts. They sailed from Malacca in June aboard a Chinese junk and reached Kagoshima in August.

What happened in Japan

Kagoshima was the seat of the Shimazu clan. Xavier was received by the daimyo Shimazu Takahisa, traditionally at Ichiuji Castle near the city, in September 1549. The daimyo, hoping to attract Portuguese trade, gave permission to preach. With Anjirō’s help Xavier prepared a basic catechism in Japanese and won perhaps a hundred converts in Kagoshima.

The early translations caused confusion. Anjirō rendered “God” with Dainichi, the name of the cosmic Buddha of the Shingon school, so listeners took the missionaries for a new Buddhist sect. Once Xavier realised the problem, he switched to the Latin word Deus, rendered in Japanese as Deusu.

When Portuguese ships went to Hirado instead of Kagoshima, Shimazu support cooled. In 1550 Xavier moved to Hirado, then to Yamaguchi, seat of the powerful Ōuchi Yoshitaka, and on to Kyoto, hoping to win permission to preach from the emperor and shogun. He reached the capital early in 1551 but found it battered by civil war and the central authorities nearly powerless, and he could not gain an audience.

Xavier changed his approach. Returning to Yamaguchi, he appeared in fine clothes as an envoy of the Portuguese viceroy and presented gifts, including a clock and other European objects. Ōuchi Yoshitaka granted permission to preach, and the Yamaguchi community grew to several hundred. Among the converts was a half-blind travelling performer who became the Jesuit brother Lourenço, an important early Japanese preacher.

In September 1551 Xavier went to Bungo in eastern Kyushu at the invitation of the daimyo Ōtomo Sōrin, who later became a Christian. In November 1551 he sailed for India, leaving Cosme de Torres in charge of the Japanese mission.

Methods and challenges

Language was the greatest obstacle. Xavier never became fluent in Japanese and often read aloud from texts that Anjirō and Fernández had translated and written in Latin letters. Juan Fernández, who learned the language far better, frequently did the speaking, while Xavier answered questions through interpreters.

Japanese listeners raised hard questions. Buddhist monks debated the missionaries on the nature of the soul and the origin of evil. Many converts were distressed to learn that, by Catholic teaching of the time, their ancestors who had died without baptism could not be saved, a concern Xavier described in his letters.

Xavier also learned that appearance mattered. In Kyoto his shabby clothes and poverty won him little respect, while in Yamaguchi formal dress, letters of introduction and gifts opened doors. This lesson helped shape the later Jesuit policy of adapting to Japanese customs and social rank, developed further by Alessandro Valignano in the 1580s.

Key people

• Francis Xavier: Jesuit co-founder and leader of the mission, later canonised in 1622.
• Anjirō (Paulo de Santa Fé): first known Japanese Christian, interpreter and translator.
• Cosme de Torres (1510-1570): Spanish Jesuit who led the mission for nearly twenty years after Xavier.
• Juan Fernández: Jesuit brother who mastered Japanese and preached in the streets.
• Shimazu Takahisa, Ōuchi Yoshitaka and Ōtomo Sōrin: daimyo whose patronage made preaching possible.

Xavier’s view of Japan

Xavier’s letters to Europe were widely copied and printed. He praised the Japanese warmly, describing them as the best people the Portuguese had yet encountered in Asia and noting their sense of honour and eagerness to debate. He also learned that Chinese learning carried great authority in Japan, and concluded that converting China would help win Japan.

Consequences

After Xavier, the Jesuit mission expanded rapidly, especially in Kyushu, where some daimyo converted and encouraged their subjects to follow. Nagasaki, opened to Portuguese ships in 1571, became a Christian city. Estimates suggest roughly 150,000 to 300,000 Japanese Christians by about 1600.

The relationship soured as Japan was reunified. Toyotomi Hideyoshi ordered missionaries expelled in 1587, and in 1597 twenty-six Christians were executed at Nagasaki. The Tokugawa shogunate banned Christianity in 1614, and after the Shimabara uprising of 1637-1638 it restricted contact with Europeans almost entirely in the policy known as sakoku.

Legacy

Xavier left Japan to prepare a mission to China but died of a fever on Shangchuan Island, off the coast of Guangdong, on 3 December 1552. He was canonised in 1622 and is a patron saint of missions. His body lies in the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Goa.

Historians see Xavier’s two years in Japan as short but formative. He did not create a large church himself, but he chose Japan as a priority for the Jesuits, established relations with daimyo and set the pattern of working through local rulers and Japanese assistants that his successors followed.

In Japan, monuments in Kagoshima, Hirado and Yamaguchi commemorate his visit, and many Catholic churches bear his name. The communities of hidden Christians who kept their faith in secret through more than two centuries of persecution trace their roots to the mission he began.

Timeline

• December 1547: Xavier meets Anjirō in Malacca.
• 1548: Anjirō is baptised in Goa as Paulo de Santa Fé.
• April 1549: Xavier leaves Goa for Japan.
• 15 August 1549: Xavier lands at Kagoshima.
• September 1549: Shimazu Takahisa grants permission to preach.
• 1550: Xavier moves to Hirado and then Yamaguchi.
• Early 1551: Xavier visits Kyoto but cannot obtain an audience.
• November 1551: Xavier leaves Japan from Bungo.
• 3 December 1552: Xavier dies on Shangchuan Island off China.

Why it matters

Xavier’s two years in Japan began the first sustained encounter between Japan and European Christianity. The mission he founded shaped Japanese politics, culture and trade for almost a century, and its suppression became a central reason for Japan’s long period of restricted contact with the West.