Christianity made its way to Japan in 1549 when Jesuit missionaries landed in Kagoshima. At first, people were pretty confused about the new religion, but the missionaries tried different approaches and started to gain some traction. Unfortunately, by 1650, Christianity had pretty much disappeared from public life due to Japan’s isolationist policies, which led to a lot of suppression and persecution.
Anjirō & Francis Xavier
You could say that the first Jesuits who landed in Japan might not have had the same level of success if it weren’t for Anjirō (or Yajiro), a Japanese guy who was both a big help and a bit of a challenge for their mission. He was on the run from murder charges and snuck onto a Portuguese ship, bringing along two friends—one of whom might have been his brother. Leaving everything he knew behind, he ended up in Macao, China, which was a major trading spot for the Portuguese Empire. In less than a year, Anjirō picked up Portuguese and got really interested in Christianity. Wanting to learn more, he and his friends sought out the famous Francis Xavier, who was working in Portuguese Malacca, Malaysia. Anjirō impressed Xavier with his curiosity, leading the Jesuit priest to remark:
If all the Japanese are as eager to know as is Anjirō, it seems to me that this race is the most curious of all the peoples that have been discovered (quoted in Dougill, 13).
After meeting Xavier, he suggested that Anjirō and his buddies head to Portuguese Goa, India, to dive deeper into the faith, where they became the first Japanese Christians. Later, Xavier asked a Portuguese captain for info about the Japanese people and, along with Father Cosme de Torres, Brother Juan Fernandes, an Indian helper, and the three new Japanese converts, set off for Japan. This trip turned out to be a wild experience for both the locals and the foreigners.
Apostle of the East
Xavier was all about missionaries getting to know the local culture, picking up the language, and training local preachers—pretty forward-thinking for his time.
Saint Francis Xavier (1506-1552) co-founded the Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits. He was super active in spreading the faith in places like India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, and China, focusing a lot on Japan because he thought the message would catch on fast there. Over his travels, he managed to convert around 30,000 people, making him one of the biggest advocates for the Catholic faith.
He really believed that missionaries should dive into the local culture, learn the language, and help train native preachers, which was quite rare back then. Sadly, he passed away from a fever on Shangchuan, an island near China. He was beatified in 1619 and canonized in 1622. Now, we celebrate his feast day on December 3rd, and his relics can be found in various places around the world.
The Portuguese first hit India in 1498 and took over Malacca in 1511. This city became a key stop for traders heading from the Indian Ocean to China and Japan. With control over Malacca, the Portuguese solidified their status as a major trading power, making it tough for other nations to break into the area. Soon after they captured Malacca, missionaries showed up, setting up churches and schools and trying to spread the word with mixed results.
First Contact & Language Barrier
Even though Xavier never really got the hang of Japanese, he did ask the church in Europe to send over priests who were good at picking up the language (Taida, 15). Later on, he even set up a school in Yamaguchi to train local interpreters so they could preach more effectively. He admired his fellow Jesuits who managed to learn and speak Japanese fluently because he knew that was the best way to share their message, even though he and other high-ranking Jesuits in Japan (like Cosme de Torres, Francisco Cabral, and Alessandro Valignano) always needed an interpreter.
Despite their attempts to learn the language, the early Jesuit priests didn’t manage to convert many locals. To turn things around, Xavier decided to focus on preaching to the influential and wealthy folks in society, like the local daimyo (lords). They took a page from the Buddhists’ book by dressing in flashy clothes and bringing along a big entourage. While this might have raised eyebrows back in Europe, it was pretty normal for religious groups in Japan. Their strategy worked; when a daimyo converted, a lot of his followers did too. Some of these new converts were genuinely interested in the faith, while others saw potential trade opportunities with the nanban, especially as firearms became more common in local conflicts.
Christianity Mistaken for Buddhism
So, like I mentioned earlier, Xavier often found himself in debates with Buddhist monks. These monks thought the Jesuits were pretty poor because they avoided all things extravagant in the beginning. The records show that these monks actually had a decent grasp of Christian theology and could argue their points logically against Xavier. He respected the Japanese for their smarts but also believed that an evil force had twisted the monks’ understanding of Christianity and the world, thinking they learned it from the Devil.
One time, after Xavier shared his Christian beliefs, a monk surprised him by saying they shared similar views. This really threw Xavier off. Plus, even the image of the Buddhist goddess Kannon holding her child looked a lot like the pictures of Mother Mary and baby Jesus that Xavier used when he was preaching.
It didn’t help that Anjirō decided to call the Christian God Dainichi, which could easily be mistaken for another name for Buddha. Plus, he referred to the missionaries with a term that sounded like it belonged to a Buddhist monk and claimed they came from India, Buddha’s birthplace. This, along with the Jesuits’ struggle to clearly explain Christianity, led most Japanese folks to view it as just another form of Buddhism.
To tackle these issues within a decade, they started introducing new ideas and terms, like Deus (God). They wanted to make sure that Christian ministers weren’t called the same names as Buddhist or Shinto priests, so they went with padres. However, since the Japanese found that hard to say, they ended up using bataren. Followers of Christianity were called Kirishitan, which included kanji symbols for happiness and prosperity. They also focused on training local interpreters, translating sacred texts, and learning Japanese themselves.
Christian Schools & the Printing Press
In 1551, Xavier set off for Kyoto to meet the Emperor of Japan and get his blessing for the missionaries. But when he got there, he found out that the imperial court was closed to outsiders. Even though he didn’t achieve his goals on this trip, later on, Alessandro Valignano met with shogun Oda Nobunaga, who allowed him to open a Christian school in Azuchi. Valignano went on to establish more schools across Japan, including in Nagasaki, Yamaguchi, and Kyoto, where students learned about Christianity as well as regular subjects.
The first printing press to hit Japan was brought by Valignano, and it was used to create all sorts of texts in different languages, including Japanese. Local craftsmen were hired to make printing blocks for the Japanese language. This press churned out catechisms, Bibles, and even educational materials on math and history.
By the end of the 16th century, Japan had the largest Christian population outside of Europe, which made Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Nobunaga’s successor, pretty anxious. He took measures to curb the religion’s spread. At that time, Japan was dealing with a lot of conflict and social unrest, which might have seemed like a prime opportunity for European countries to expand their influence. Plus, Hideyoshi was concerned about daimyo who were loyal to the Pope instead of him, and he worried about how these newcomers could impact Japanese culture and traditions.
Suppression & Persecution
After Japan unified under the Tokugawa shogunate, it pretty much shut itself off from the rest of the world. They put strict rules in place: Japanese people couldn’t leave the country, and only a few foreigners could come in if they had permission from the government. The Dutch were allowed to trade but had to stay on a small, guarded island near Nagasaki. During this time, any signs of Christianity were heavily suppressed, except in some remote areas. Public
To keep their faith under wraps, the Kakure Kirishitan (or Hidden Christians) got pretty creative. You might spot a cross in the beams of a house or see a statue of Mother Mary disguised as Kannon, a Buddhist goddess who sometimes holds a child. Even stone lanterns could have Christian symbols carved into them, but those were usually buried under dirt. Just like those lanterns, these hidden Christians had to appear as model Japanese citizens on the outside while keeping their true beliefs secret.
Over time, Christianity in Japan became really varied, with different villages having their own unique interpretations of the faith, even though they all claimed to follow the same religion. Without guidance from the padres and being wary of writing things down for fear of getting caught, the older generations passed down prayers, rituals, and teachings orally. Since Christians couldn’t gather together, what the elders said became the accepted truth.
Today, many descendants of those hidden Japanese Christians still practice their faith quietly. It’s not so much about fearing consequences anymore; it’s more about the ritual of secrecy itself being just as meaningful as the Gospel message they hold dear.
The Shimabara Rebellion
The persecution of Christians in Japan really escalated in Kyushu, the southernmost of the three main islands, leading to the Shimabara Rebellion. This uprising was sparked not just by the harsh treatment from the bakufu but also by a recent famine and some nasty local daimyo. The people of Shimabara and nearby areas, like the Amakusa Islands, decided to revolt. They were supposedly led by a 16-year-old named Amakusa Shiro (or Jerome Amakusa), and tens of thousands of rebels started attacking castles and clashing with local forces. The shogunate sent a much larger army to crush the rebellion, forcing Jerome and his followers to take refuge in Hara Castle. Eventually, the shogunate’s troops, along with some Dutch sailors who joined in, wore down the defenders and broke into the castle. After a brutal few days of fighting, during which Jerome Amakusa was killed, the rebellion came to an end.
Conclusion
Under pressure from Western countries, the Japanese government finally took action in 1873. The Meiji leaders announced a religious tolerance policy that made practicing Christianity legal again. However, the number of Christians had dropped significantly from around 600,000 at their peak to just about 30,000. Western churches were happy to hear that Christianity had survived tough times, but when they looked closer, they realized that the faith practiced by Japan’s hidden Christians was pretty different from what Francis Xavier introduced over 300 years earlier. Many of these hidden Christians actually rejected the doctrines of the churches because they didn’t want to lose the beliefs of their ancestors. So, their faith ended up being more similar to Japanese folk religions than to traditional Western Christianity.
Nowadays, only about 1-2% of people in Japan identify as Christian. This can be linked to the historical suppression of the religion, the isolationist policies that lasted until 1853, the strong connection between traditional Japanese religions and national identity, and the rapid urbanization in Japan, which often leads to a more secular lifestyle.
