The Progress Of Christianity In Japan

The fact that such a realm as that of Japan existed remained unknown in

Europe until about six centuries ago, when Marco Polo, in his famous

record of travel and adventure, first spoke of it. He knew of it,

however, only by Chinese hearsay, and the story he told contained far

more of fable than of fact. The Chinese at that time seem to have had

little knowledge of their nearest civilized neighbor.



"Zipang "--the name he gives it--is, he says, "an island in the Eastern

Ocean, about fifteen hundred miles [Chinese miles] from the mainland.

Its people are well made, of fair complexion, and civilized in manner,

but idolaters in religion." He continues, "They have gold in the

greatest abundance, its sources being inexhaustible. To this

circumstance we are to attribute the extraordinary richness of the

sovereign's palace according to what we are told by those who have

access to the place. The entire roof is covered with a plating of gold,

in the same manner as we cover houses, or more properly churches, with

lead. The ceilings of the halls are of the same precious metal; many of

the apartments have small tables of pure gold, of considerable

thickness; and the windows have also golden ornaments. So vast, indeed,

are the riches of the palace that it is impossible to convey an idea of

them. In this island there are pearls also, in large quantities, of a

pink color, round in shape and of great size, equal in value to, or even

exceeding, that of the white pearls. There are also found there a number

of precious stones."



This story is as remote from truth as some of those told by Sindbad the

Sailor. Polo, no doubt, thought he was telling the truth, and knew that

this cascade of gold and pearls would be to the taste of his readers,

but anything more unlike the plainness and simplicity of the actual

palace of the mikado it would be hard to find.



For the next European knowledge of Japan we must step forward to the

year 1542. Columbus had discovered America, and Portugal had found an

ocean highway to the spice islands of the East. A Portuguese adventurer,

Mendez Pinto by name, ventured as far as China, then almost unknown,

and, with two companions, found himself on board a Chinese junk, half

trader, half pirate.



In a sea-fight with another corsair their pilot was killed, and soon

after a fierce storm blew them far off shore. Seeking to make the

Loochoo Islands, they lost them through lack of a pilot, and were tossed

about at the ocean's will for twenty-three days, when they made harbor

on Tane, a small island of Japan lying south of Kiushiu. Pinto, after

his return to Europe, told so many marvellous stories about Japan that

people doubted him as much as they had doubted Marco Polo. His very

name, Mendez, was extended into "mendacious." Yet time has done justice

to both these old travellers, who either told, or tried to tell, the

truth.



The Portuguese travellers were well received by the islanders,--who knew

not yet what firebrands they were welcoming. It took a century for

Europeans to disgust the Japanese so thoroughly as to force the

islanders to drive them from the land and put up the bars against their

return. What interested the Japanese even more than their visitors were

the new and strange weapons they bore. Pinto and his two comrades were

armed with arquebuses, warlike implements such as they had never before

seen, and whose powers filled them with astonishment and delight. It was

the era of civil war in Japan, and the possession of a new and deadly

weapon was eagerly welcomed by that martial people, who saw in it

visions of speedy success over their enemies.



Pinto was invited to the castle of the daimio of Bungo, whom he taught

the arts of making guns and gunpowder. The Japanese, alert at taking

advantage of the discoveries of other people, were quick to manufacture

powder and guns for themselves, and in the wars told of in our last few

tales native cannon were brought into use, though the razor-edged sword

continued the most death-dealing of their weapons.



As for the piratical trader which conveyed Pinto to Japan, it sold its

cargo at an immense profit, while the three Portuguese reached China

again rich in presents. This was not Pinto's only visit to Japan. He

made three other voyages thither, the last in 1556, as ambassador from

the Portuguese viceroy in the East. On this occasion he learned that

the islanders had made rapid progress in their new art of gun-making,

they claiming to have thirty thousand guns in Fucheo, the capital of

Bungo, and ten times that number in the whole land of Japan.



The new market for European wares, opened by the visit of Pinto, was

quickly taken advantage of by his countrymen, and Portuguese traders

made their way by hundreds to Japan, where they met with the best of

treatment. Guns and powder were especially welcome, as at that time the

power of the Ashikaga clan was at an end, anarchy everywhere prevailed,

and every local chief was in arms to win all he could from the ruins of

the state. Such was the first visit of Europeans to Japan, and such the

gift they brought, the fatal one of gunpowder.



The next gift of Europe to Japan was that of the Christian faith. On

Pinto's return to Malacca he met there the celebrated Francis Xavier,

the father superior of the order of the Jesuits in India, where he had

gained the highest reputation for sanctity and the power of working

miracles. With the traveller was a Japanese named Anjiro, whom he had

rescued from enemies that sought his death, and converted to

Christianity. Xavier asked him whether the Japanese would be likely to

accept the religion of the Christians.



"My people will not be ready to accept at once what may be told them,"

said Anjiro, "but will ask you a multitude of questions, and, above all,

will see whether your conduct agrees with your words. If they are

satisfied, the king, the nobles, and the people will flock to Christ,

since they constitute a nation that always accepts reason as a guide."



Thus encouraged, Xavier, whose enthusiasm in spreading the gospel was

deterred by no obstacle, set sail in 1549 for Japan, accompanied by two

priests and Anjiro, the latter with a companion who had escaped with him

in his flight from Japan.



The missionary party landed at Kagoshima, in Satsuma. Here they had

little success, only the family and relatives of Anjiro accepting the

new faith, and Xavier set out on a tour through the land, his goal being

Kioto, the mikado's capital. Landing at Amanguchi, he presented himself

before the people barefooted and meanly dressed, the result of his

confessed poverty being that, instead of listening to his words, the

populace hooted and stoned him and his followers. At Kioto he was little

better received.



Finding that a display of poverty was not the way to impress the

Japanese, the missionary returned to the city of Kioto richly clothed

and bearing presents and letters from the Portuguese viceroy to the

emperor. He was now well received and given permission to preach, and in

less than a year had won over three thousand converts to the Christian

faith.



Naturally, on reaching Kioto, he had looked for the splendor spoken of

by Marco Polo, the roof and ceilings of gold and the golden tables of

the emperor's palace. He was sadly disenchanted on entering a city so

desolated by fire and war that it was little more than a camp, and on

beholding the plainest and least showy of all the palaces of the earth.



Returning to the port of Fucheo for the purpose of embarking for India,

whence he designed to bring new laborers to the virgin field, Xavier

preached with such success as to alarm the Buddhist bonzes, who made

futile efforts to excite the populace against him as a vagabond and an

enchanter. From there he set out for China, but died on the way thither.

He had, however, planted the seed of what was destined to yield a great

and noble harvest.



In fact, the progress of Christianity in Japan was of the most

encouraging kind. Other missionaries quickly followed the great Jesuit

pioneer, and preached the gospel with surprising success. In less than

five years after the visit of Xavier to Kioto that city possessed seven

Christian churches, while there were many others in the southwest

section of the empire. In 1581, thirty years after Xavier's death, there

were in Japan two hundred churches, while the number of converts is

given at one hundred and fifty thousand. Several of the daimios were

converted to the new faith, and Nobunaga, who hated and strove to

exterminate the Buddhists, received the Christians with the greatest

favor, gave them desirable sites for their churches, and sought to set

them up as a foil to the arrogance of the bonzes.



The Christian daimios went so far as to send a delegation to the pope at

Rome, which returned eight years afterwards with seventeen Jesuit

missionaries, while a multitude of mendicant friars from the Philippine

Islands and elsewhere sought the new field of labor, preaching with the

greatest zeal and success. It is claimed that at the culminating point

of proselytism in Japan the native Christians numbered no less than six

hundred thousand, among them being several princes, and many lords, high

officials, generals, and other military and naval officers, with

numerous women of noble blood. In some provinces the Christian shrines

and crosses were as numerous as the Buddhist shrines had been before,

while there were thousands of churches, chapels, and ecclesiastical

edifices.



This remarkable success, unprecedented in the history of Christian

missionary work, was due in great measure to certain conditions then

existing in Japan. When Xavier and his successors reached Japan, it was

to find the people of that country in a state of the greatest misery,

the result of a long era of anarchy and misrule. Of the native

religions, Shintoism had in great measure vanished, while Buddhism,

though affecting the imaginations of the people by the gorgeousness of

its service, had little with which to reach their hearts.



Christianity came with a ceremonial more splendid than that of Buddhism,

and an eloquence that captivated the imaginations of the Japanese.

Instead of the long series of miseries of Buddhist transmigration, it

offered admission to the glories of heaven after death, a doctrine sure

to be highly attractive to those who had little to hope for but misery

during life. The story of the life and death of Christ strongly

impressed the minds of the people, as compared with the colder story of

Buddha's career, while a certain similarity between the modes of

worship of the two religions proved of the greatest assistance to the

advocates of the new creed. The native temples were made to serve as

Christian churches; the images of Buddha and his saints were converted

into those of Christ and the apostles; and, aside from the more

attractive doctrines of Christianity, there were points of resemblance

between the organization and ceremonial of the two religions that aided

the missionaries in inducing the people to change from their old to the

new faith.



One of the methods pursued in the propagation of Christianity had never

been adopted by the Buddhists, that of persecution of alien faiths. The

spirit of the Inquisition, then active in Europe, was brought to Japan.

The missionaries instigated their converts to destroy the idols and

desert the old shrines. Gold was used freely as an agent in conversion,

and the Christian daimios compelled their subjects to follow them in

accepting the new faith. In whole districts the people were ordered to

accept Christianity or to exile themselves from their homes. Exile or

death was the fate of many of the bonzes, and fire and the sword lent

effect to preaching in the propagation of the doctrine of Christianity.



To quote a single instance, from Charlevoix's "History of the

Christianizing of Japan," "In 1577 the lord of the island of Amacusa

issued his proclamation, by which his subjects--whether bonzes or

gentlemen, merchants or traders--were required either to turn

Christians, or to leave the country the very next day. They almost all

submitted, and received baptism, so that in a short time there were

more than twenty churches in the kingdom. God wrought miracles to

confirm the faithful in their belief."



Miracles of the kind here indicated and others that might be quoted were

not of the character of those performed by Christ, and such methods of

making proselytes were very likely to recoil upon those that indulged in

them. How the result of the introduction of European methods manifested

itself in Japan will be indicated in our next tale.