1549 · Kagoshima, Japan

Jesuits Arrive in Japan

In 1549, Francis Xavier landed in Japan with two companions, beginning a Catholic mission that would grow to hundreds of thousands of converts before being crushed by persecution in the early 1600s.

Francis Xavier reached Kagoshima on the southern island of Kyushu on August 15, 1549, the feast of the Assumption. He had already spent years evangelizing in India and Southeast Asia, but Japan was different from anything he had encountered. The Japanese were literate, culturally sophisticated, and genuinely curious about the foreign religion. Xavier was impressed. He wrote that the Japanese were 'the best people yet discovered,' a remark that reflected both his admiration and the assumptions of his era. Xavier spent about two years in Japan, learning enough of the language to preach basic doctrine and establishing small communities. After his departure, other Jesuits continued the work with remarkable success. Within a few decades, there were an estimated 300,000 Japanese Catholics, including several powerful feudal lords (daimyo) who converted and encouraged their subjects to do the same. Churches, seminaries, and even a Jesuit-run printing press appeared. It was one of the fastest-growing Catholic communities in the world. Then the political winds shifted. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was unifying Japan by force, grew suspicious of Christian influence. In 1587 he ordered the missionaries expelled, though the order was unevenly enforced. Persecution intensified under the Tokugawa shogunate after 1600. By the 1630s, Christianity was banned, missionaries were executed, and Japanese Christians faced torture and death if they refused to apostatize. The community was driven underground. Remarkably, when Japan reopened to the West in the 1850s, French missionaries discovered thousands of 'hidden Christians' (kakure kirishitan) in Nagasaki who had secretly maintained their faith for over two hundred years without priests or sacraments.

Why it matters

Launched one of the most successful and ultimately tragic Catholic missions in history, producing a large Japanese Christian community that was driven underground by persecution but survived in secret for over two centuries.