Part 46

The story of the first Christian missionaries to Japan is told elsewhere (see § VIII. FOREIGN INTERCOURSE). Their work suffered an interruption for more than 200 years until, in 1858, almost simultaneously with the conclusion of the treaties, a small band of Catholic fathers entered Japan from the Riukiu islands, where they had carried on their ministrations since 1846. They found that, in the neighbourhood of Nagasaki, there were some small communities where Christian worship was still carried on. It would seem that these communities had not been subjected to any severe official scrutiny. But the arrival of the fathers revived the old question, and the native Christians, or such of them as refused to apostatize, were removed from their homes and sent into banishment. This was the last example of religious intolerance in Japan. At the instance of the foreign representatives in Tokyo the exiles were set at liberty in 1873, and from that time complete freedom of conscience existed in fact, though it was not declared by law until the promulgation of the constitution in 1889. In 1905 there were 60,000 Roman Catholic converts in Japan forming 360 congregations, with 130 missionaries and 215 teachers, including 145 nuns. These were all European. They were assisted by 32 Japanese priests, 52 Japanese nuns, 280 male catechists and 265 female catechists and nurses. Three seminaries for native priests existed, together with 58 schools and orphanages and two lepers' homes. The whole was presided over by an archbishop and three bishops.

The Anglican Church was established in Japan in 1859 by two American clergymen who settled in Nagasaki, and now, in conjunction with the Episcopal Churches of America and Canada, it has missions collectively designated Nihon Sei-Kokai. There are 6 bishops--2 American and 4 English--with about 60 foreign and 50 Japanese priests and deacons, besides many foreign lay workers of both sexes and Japanese catechists and school teachers. The converts number 11,000. The Protestant missions include Presbyterian (Nihon Kirisuto Kyokai), Congregational (Kumi-ai), Methodist, Baptist and the Salvation Army (Kyusei-gun). The pioneer Protestant mission was founded in 1859 by representatives of the American Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed Churches. To this mission belongs the credit of having published, in 1880, the first complete Japanese version of the New Testament, followed by the Old Testament in 1887. The Presbyterians, representing 7 religious societies, have over a hundred missionaries; 12,400 converts; a number of boarding schools for boys and girls and day schools. The Congregational churches are associated exclusively with the mission of the American board of commissioners for foreign missions. They have about 11,400 converts, and the largest Christian educational institution in Japan, namely, the Doshisha in Kioto. The Methodists represent 6 American societies and 1 Canadian. They have 130 missionaries and 10,000 converts; boarding schools, day schools, and the most important Christian college in Tokyo, namely, the Awoyama Gaku-in. The Baptists represent 4 American societies; have 60 missionaries, a theological seminary, an academy for boys, boarding schools for girls, day schools and 3500 converts. The Salvation Army, which did not enter Japan until 1895, has organized 15 corps, and publishes ten thousand copies of a fortnightly magazine, the _War Cry_ (_Toki no Koe_). Finally, the Society of Friends, the American and London Religious Tract Societies and the Young Men's Christian Association have a number of missions. It will be seen from the above that the missionaries in Japan, in the space of half a century (1858 to 1908), had won 110,000 converts, in round numbers. To these must be added the Orthodox Russian Church, which has a fine cathedral in Tokyo, a staff of about 40 Japanese priests and deacons and 27,000 converts, the whole presided over by a bishop. Thus the total number of converts becomes 137,000. In spite of the numerous sects represented in Japan there has been virtually no sectarian strife, and it may be said of the Japanese converts that they concern themselves scarcely at all about the subtleties of dogma which divide European Christianity. Their tendency is to consider only the practical aspects of the faith as a moral and ethical guide. They are disposed, also, to adapt the creed to their own requirements just as they adapted Buddhism, and this is a disposition which promises to grow.

VIII.--FOREIGN INTERCOURSE

_Foreign Intercourse in Early and Medieval Times._--There can be no doubt that commerce was carried on by Japan with China and Korea earlier that the 8th century of the Christian era. It would appear that from the very outset over-sea trade was regarded as a government monopoly. Foreigners were allowed to travel freely in the interior of the country provided that they submitted their baggage for official inspection and made no purchases of weapons of war, but all imported goods were bought in the first place by official appraisers who subsequently sold them to the people at arbitrarily fixed prices. Greater importance attached to the trade with China under the Ashikaga shoguns (14th, 15th and 16th centuries), who were in constant need of funds to defray the cost of interminable military operations caused by civil disturbances. In this distress they turned to the neighbouring empire as a source from which money might be obtained. This idea seems to have been suggested to the shogun Takauji by a Buddhist priest, when he undertook the construction of the temple Tenryu-ji. Two ships laden with goods were fitted out, and it was decided that the enterprise should be repeated annually. Within a few years after this development of commercial relations between the two empires, an interruption occurred owing partly to the overthrow of the Yuen Mongols by the Chinese Ming, and partly to the activity of Japanese pirates and adventurers who raided the coasts of China. The shogun Yoshimitsu (1368-1394), however, succeeded in restoring commercial intercourse, though in order to effect his object he consented that goods sent from Japan should bear the character of tribute and that he himself should receive investiture at the hands of the Chinese emperor's ambassador. The Nanking government granted a certain number of commercial passports, and these were given by the shogun to Ouchi, feudal chief of Cho-shu, which had long been the principal port for trade with the neighbouring empire. Tribute goods formed only a small fraction of a vessel's cargo: the bulk consisted of articles which were delivered into the government's stores in China, payment being received in copper cash. It was from this transaction that the shogun derived a considerable part of his profits, for the articles did not cost him anything originally, being either presents from the great temples and provincial governors or compulsory contributions from the house of Ouchi. As for the gifts by the Chinese government and the goods shipped in China, they were arbitrarily distributed among the noble families in Japan at prices fixed by the shogun's assessor. Thus, so far as the shogun was concerned, these enterprises could not fail to be lucrative. They also brought large profits to the Ouchi family, for, in the absence of competition, the products and manufactures of each country found ready sale in the markets of the other. The articles found most suitable in China were swords, fans, screens, lacquer wares, copper and agate, and the goods brought back to Japan were brocade and other silk fabrics, ceramic productions, jade and fragrant woods. The Chinese seem to have had a just appreciation of the wonderful swords of Japan. At first they were willing to pay the equivalent of 12 guineas for a pair of blades, but by degrees, as the Japanese began to increase the supply, the price fell, and at the beginning of the 16th century all the diplomacy of the Japanese envoys was needed to obtain good figures for the large and constantly growing quantity of goods that they took over by way of supplement to the tribute. Buddhist priests generally enjoyed the distinction of being selected as envoys, for experience showed that their subtle reasoning invariably overcame the economical scruples of the Chinese authorities and secured a fine profit for their master, the shogun. In the middle of the 16th century these tribute-bearing missions came to an end with the ruin of the Ouchi family and the overthrow of the Ashikaga shoguns, and they were never renewed.

With Korea.

Japan's medieval commerce with Korea was less ceremonious than that with China. No passports had to be obtained from the Korean government. A trader was sufficiently equipped when he carried a permit from the So family, which held the island of Tsushima in fief. Fifty vessels were allowed to pass yearly from ports in Japan to the three Japanese settlements in Korea. Little is recorded about the nature of this trade, but it was rudely interrupted by the Japanese settlers, who, offended at some arbitrary procedure on the part of the local Korean authorities, took up arms (A.D. 1510) and at first signally routed the Koreans. An army from Seoul turned the tables, and the Japanese were compelled to abandon the three settlements. Subsequently the shogun's government--which had not been concerned in the struggle--approached Korea with amicable proposals, and it was agreed that the ringleaders of the raiders should be decapitated and their heads sent to Seoul, Japan's compliance with this condition affording, perhaps, a measure of the value she attached to neighbourly friendship. Thenceforth the number of vessels was limited to 25 annually and the settlements were abolished. Some years later, the Japanese again resorted to violent acts of self-assertion, and on this occasion, although the offenders were arrested by order of the shogun Yoshiharu, and handed over to Korea for punishment, the Seoul court persisted in declining to restore the system of settlements or to allow the trade to be resumed on its former basis. Fifty years afterwards the taiko's armies invaded Korea, overrunning it for seven years, and leaving, when they retired in 1598, a country so impoverished that it no longer offered any attraction to commercial enterprise from beyond the sea.

With Occidental Nations.

The Portuguese discovered Japan by accident in 1542 or 1543--the exact date is uncertain. On a voyage to Macao from Siam, a junk carrying three Portuguese was blown from her course and fetched Tanegashima, a small island lying south of the province of Satsuma. The Japanese, always hospitable and inquisitive, welcomed the newcomers and showed special curiosity about the arquebuses carried by the Portuguese, fire-arms being then a novelty in Japan and all weapons of war being in great request. Conversation was impossible, of course, but, by tracing ideographs upon the sand, a Chinese member of the crew succeeded in explaining the cause of the junk's arrival. She was then piloted to a more commodious harbour, and the Portuguese sold two arquebuses to the local feudatory, who immediately ordered his armourer to manufacture similar weapons. Very soon the news of the discovery reached all the Portuguese settlements in the East, and at least seven expeditions were fitted out during the next few years to exploit this new market. Their objective points were all in the island of Kiushiu--the principal stage where the drama--ultimately converted into a tragedy--of Christian propagandism and European commercial intercourse was acted in the interval between 1542 and 1637.

Arrival of the Jesuits.

It does not appear that the Jesuits at Macao, Goa or other centres of Portuguese influence in the East took immediate advantage of the discovery of Japan. The pioneer propagandist was Francis Xavier, who landed at Kagoshima on the 15th of August 1549. During the interval of six (or seven) years that separated this event from the drifting of the junk to Tanegashima, the Portuguese had traded freely in the ports of Kiushiu, had visited Kioto, and had reported the Japanese capital to be a city of 96,000 houses, therefore larger than Lisbon. Xavier would certainly have gone to Japan even though he had not been specially encouraged, for the reports of his countrymen depicted the Japanese as "very desirous of being instructed," and he longed to find a field more promising than that inhabited by "all these Indian nations, barbarous, vicious and without inclination to virtue." There were, however, two special determinants. One was a request addressed by a feudatory, supposed to have been the chief of the Bungo fief, to the viceroy of the Indies at Goa; the other, an appeal made in person by a Japanese named Yajiro, whom the fathers spoke of as Anjiro, and who subsequently attained celebrity under his baptismal name, Paul of the holy faith. No credible reason is historically assigned for the action of the Japanese feudatory. Probably his curiosity had been excited by accounts which the Portuguese traders gave of the noble devotion of their country's missionaries, and being entirely without bigotry, as nearly all Japanese were at that epoch, he issued the invitation partly out of curiosity and partly from a sincere desire for progress. Anjiro's case was very different. Labouring under stress of repentant zeal, and fearful that his evil acts might entail murderous consequences, he sought an asylum abroad, and was taken away in 1548 by a Portuguese vessel whose master advised him to repair to Malacca for the purpose of confessing to Xavier. This might well have seemed to the Jesuits a providential dispensation, for Anjiro, already able to speak Portuguese, soon mastered it sufficiently to interpret for Xavier and his fellow-missionaries (without which aid they must have remained long helpless in the face of the immense difficulty of the Japanese language), and to this linguistic skill he added extraordinary gifts of intelligence and memory. Xavier, with two Portuguese companions and Anjiro, were excellently received by the feudal chiefs of Satsuma and obtained permission to preach their doctrine in any part of the fief. This permit is not to be construed as an evidence of official sympathy with the foreign creed. Commercial considerations alone were in question. A Japanese feudal chief in that era had sedulously to foster every source of wealth or strength, and as the newly opened trade with the outer world seemed full of golden promise, each feudatory was not less anxious to secure a monopoly of it in the 16th century than the Ashikaga shoguns had been in the 15th. The Satsuma daimyo was led to believe that the presence of the Jesuits in Kagoshima would certainly prelude the advent of trading vessels. But within a few months one of the expected merchantmen sailed to Hirado without touching at Kagoshima, and her example was followed by two others in the following year, so that the Satsuma chief saw himself flouted for the sake of a petty rival, Matsudaira of Hirado. This fact could not fail to provoke his resentment. But there was another influence at work. Buddhism has always been a tolerant religion, eclectic rather than exclusive. Xavier, however, had all the bigoted intolerance of his time. The Buddhist priests in Kagoshima received him with courtesy and listened respectfully to the doctrines he expounded through the mouth of Anjiro. Xavier rejoined with a display of aggressive intolerance which shocked and alienated the Buddhists. They represented to the Satsuma chief that peace and good order were inconsistent with such a display of militant propagandism, and he, already profoundly chagrined by his commercial disappointment, issued in 1550 an edict making it a capital offence for any of his vassals to embrace Christianity. Xavier, or, more correctly speaking, Anjiro, had won 150 converts, who remained without molestation, but Xavier himself took ship for Hirado. There he was received with salvoes of artillery by the Portuguese merchantmen lying in the harbour and with marks of profound respect by the Portuguese traders, a display which induced the local chief to issue orders that courteous attention should be paid to the teaching of the foreign missionaries. In ten days a hundred baptisms took place; another significant index of the mood of the Japanese in the early era of Occidental intercourse: the men in authority always showed a complaisant attitude towards Christianity where trade could be fostered by so doing, and wherever the men in authority showed such an attitude, considerable numbers of the lower orders embraced the foreign faith. Thus, in considering the commercial history of the era, the element of religion constantly thrusts itself into the foreground.

First Visit of Europeans to Kioto.

Xavier next resolved to visit Kioto. The first town of importance he reached on the way was Yamaguchi, capital of the Choshu fief, situated on the northern shore of the Shimonoseki Strait. There the feudal chief, Ouchi, though sufficiently courteous and inquisitive, showed no special cordiality towards humble missionaries unconnected with commerce, and the work of proselytizing made no progress, so that Xavier and his companion, Fernandez, pushed on to Kioto. The time was mid-winter; the two fathers suffered terrible privations during their journey of two months on foot, and on reaching Kioto they found a city which had been almost wholly reduced to ruins by internecine war. Necessarily they failed to obtain audience of either emperor or shogun, at that time the most inaccessible potentates in the world, the Chinese "son of heaven" excepted, and nothing remained but street preaching, a strange resource, seeing that Xavier, constitutionally a bad linguist, had only a most rudimentary acquaintance with the profoundly difficult tongue in which he attempted to expound the mysteries of a novel creed. A fortnight sufficed to convince him that Kioto was unfruitful soil. He therefore returned to Yamaguchi. But he had now learned a lesson. He saw that propagandism without scrip or staff and without the countenance of those sitting in the seats of power would be futile in Japan. So he obtained from Hirado his canonicals, together with a clock and other novel products of European skill, which, as well as credentials from the viceroy of India, the governor of Malacca and the bishop of Goa, he presented to the Choshu chief. His prayer for permission to preach Christianity was now readily granted, and Ouchi issued a proclamation announcing his approval of the introduction of the new religion and according perfect liberty to embrace it. Xavier and Fernandez now made many converts. They also gained the valuable knowledge that the road to success in Japan lay in associating themselves with over-sea commerce and its directors, and in thus winning the co-operation of the feudal chiefs.

Christian Propagandists.

Nearly ten years had now elapsed since the first Portuguese landed in Kagoshima, and during that time trade had gone on steadily and prosperously. No attempt was made to find markets in the main island: the Portuguese confined themselves to Kiushiu for two reasons: one, that having no knowledge of the coasts, they hesitated to risk their ships and their lives in unsurveyed waters; the other, that whereas the main island, almost from end to end, was seething with internecine war, Kiushiu remained beyond the pale of disturbance and enjoyed comparative tranquillity. At the time of Xavier's second sojourn in Yamaguchi, a Portuguese ship happened to be visiting Bungo, and at its master's suggestion the great missionary proceeded thither, with the intention of returning temporarily to the Indies. At Bungo there was then ruling Otomo, second in power to only the Satsuma chief among the feudatories of Kiushiu. By him the Jesuit father was received with all honour. Xavier did not now neglect the lesson he had learned in Yamaguchi. He repaired to the Bungo chieftain's court, escorted by nearly the whole of the Portuguese crew, gorgeously bedizened, carrying their arms and with banners flying. Otomo, a young and ambitious ruler, was keenly anxious to attract foreign traders with their rich cargoes and puissant weapons of war. Witnessing the reverence paid to Xavier by the Portuguese traders, he appreciated the importance of gaining the goodwill of the Jesuits, and accordingly not only granted them full freedom to teach and preach, but also enjoined upon his younger brother, who, in the sequel of a sudden rebellion, had succeeded to the lordship of Yamaguchi, the advisability of extending protection to Torres and Fernandez, then sojourning there. After some four months' stay in Bungo, Xavier set sail for Goa in February 1552. Death overtook him in the last month of the same year.

Xavier's departure from Japan marked the conclusion of the first epoch of Christian propagandism. His sojourn in Japan extended to 27 months. In that time he and his coadjutors won about 760 converts. In Satsuma more than a year's labour produced 150 believers. There Xavier had the assistance of Anjiro to expound his doctrines. No language lends itself with greater difficulty than Japanese to the discussion of theological questions. The terms necessary for such a purpose are not current among laymen, and only by special study, which, it need scarcely be said, must be preluded by an accurate acquaintance with the tongue itself, can a man hope to become duly equipped for the task of exposition and dissertation. It is open to grave doubt whether any foreigner has ever attained the requisite proficiency. Leaving Anjiro in Kagoshima to care for the converts made there, Xavier pushed on to Hirado, where he baptized a hundred Japanese in a few days. Now we have it on the authority of Xavier himself that in this Hirado campaign "none of us knew Japanese." How then did they proceed? "By reciting a semi-Japanese volume" (a translation made by Anjiro of a treatise from Xavier's pen) "and by delivering sermons, we brought several over to the Christian cult." Sermons preached in Portuguese or Latin to a Japanese audience on the island of Hirado in the year 1550 can scarcely have attracted intelligent interest. On his first visit to Yamaguchi, Xavier's means of access to the understanding of his hearers was confined to the rudimentary knowledge of Japanese which Fernandez had been able to acquire in 14 months, a period of study which, in modern times, with all the aids now procurable, would not suffice to carry a student beyond the margin of the colloquial. No converts were won. The people of Yamaguchi probably admired the splendid faith and devotion of these over-sea philosophers, but as for their doctrine, it was unintelligible. In Kioto the same experience was repeated, with an addition of much physical hardship. But when the Jesuits returned to Yamaguchi in the early autumn of 1551, they baptized 500 persons, including several members of the military class. Still Fernandez with his broken Japanese was the only medium for communicating the profound doctrines of Christianity. It must be concluded that the teachings of the missionaries produced much less effect than the attitude of the local chieftain.

Second Period of Christian Propagandism.