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.