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It was early December 1547. Back from his missionary expedition to the Moluccas, Francis was at the time in Malacca waiting for a favourable monsoon to take him back to Goa, when one day he had an unexpected visitor. It was the Japanese Anjiro (perhaps Yajiro), accompanied by a servant and a third Japanese.
That visit would mean a brusque change of direction in Xavier's missionary endeavour. Anjiro was not a man of refined culture, much less an intellectual. Neither was he a nobleman but only a low-rank samurai. And yet, he had an acute moral sense, the sins of his youth--a murder among them--weighed heavily on his soul, and after fleeing Japan he had decided to meet Xavier in search of forgiveness and peace of soul. Francis could only talk with him for about a week, because he had to hurry back to Goa, but he became deeply impressed with the questions Anjiro put to him, with his eagerness to take notes of everything Xavier said and his devout composure while in church. What his guest told him in his stammering Portuguese impressed him even more. The Japanese people were highly educated and eager to learn. They were hard workers and respectful of authority. In their laws and customs they were led by reason, and, should the Christian faith convince them of its truth, they would accept it en mass.
Anjiro's words were for Xavier a clarion call to action. He immediately asked for a report on Japan of his friend Jorge Alvares, captain of the ship that had brought Anjiro from Kagoshima, his native land. This report was the last stroke that clinched Xavier's decision: within two years, either he himself or some other Jesuit would have to go to Japan to preach the Gospel.
Back in Goa, his acquaintance with Anjiro helped Francis mature his project. He himself would go to Japan with Fr. Cosme de Torres and Bro. Juan Fernandez, Spaniards both of them. By that time the Portuguese of Anjiro had improved noticeably. After some thorough preparation he and his companions received baptism on the 20th of May of 1548, taking himself the name of Paulo de Santa Fe and his friends those of Juan and Antonio. Their spiritual formation was completed with the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, practiced for twenty days. From the very beginnig Anjiro decided to join the missionary team still in the making, learned by heart the Gospel of St. Matthew and put down in writing the explanations given to him by Cosme de Torres. In addition to that, he supplied Fr. Lancilloto with the necessary material for a new report on Japan, which Francis himself translated into Spanish and Portuguese.
Waiting for a favourable monsoonAand the time needed to deal with all the work accumulated before leaving for Japan, postponed the teamLs departure from Goa until April 15, 1949. After a brief stop in Cochin Xavier proceeded to Malacca, where he arrived on the 31st of May. For three weeks he kept himself busy with his customary catechesis, while the captain of Malacca, Dom Pedro da Silva, tried to find for him a Portuguese ship bound for Japan. In the end no ship could be found, and finally, on the 24th of June, the group boarded a Chinese junk that would take them there. Not a single Portuguese was on board, something that far from displeasing Pablo de Santa Fe (Anjiro) looked rather providential to him. As he confided it to Xavier in his stammering Portuguese, the Christian missionaries spoke beautifully about Christianity and practiced what they taught, but the same could not be said of some Christian Portuguese, who were a stumbling block to those searching for Christ.
For almost two months the old junk coasted along the coast of China making numerous stops. It was a navigation rich in incidents, which Xavier describes wittily and good-humouredly in one of his letters. And so it came to be that on August 15, 1549, the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, Francis was finally able to land in Kagoshima, the birthplace of Anjiro in the southern tip of Japan. With him came ashore the Spaniards Cosme de Torres y Juan Fernandez, the Japanese Pablo de Santa Fe, Juan and Antonio, the Chinese servant Manuel and the Indian Amador. Xavier's missionary travelogue was about to open a new chapter.
Francis landed in Kagoshima on August 15, 1549, and left this town for good one year later at the end of August 1550. Fruit of his missionary zeal were about 150 new Christians, among them the family and close relatives of Anjiro and a small group living in the fortress of Ichiku, some thirty kilometers from Kagoshima. If we compare these numbers with the tens of thousands of baptisms in the Fishery Coast, Malabar and the Moluccas, a question rises immediately: what could be the reason behind such a sudden decrease in conversions?
It was obvious that Xavier was working now in an environment totally new. The military and commercial empire of the Portuguese was unknown here, and their western culture--at least for the time being--did not awaken any cultural complex. This being the case, to receive baptism did not imply any guarantees against the excesses of the feudal lords, nor did it bring with itself any hope of social promotion. To ask for baptism was now a totally personal decision, based only on faith, with no additional perquisites involved.
Catechetical approaches tried up to then were of little use in this new stage. Francis had always counted on local helpers who knew the vernacular well and gathered for him children and adults. He could also use popular catechetical texts that the audience would memorize and sing, and was surrounded by numerous catechumens that, for whatever the reasons, wanted to be instructed and be baptized. His only helper and interpreter here in Kagoshima was Anjiro, a soldier and not a scholar, neither a catechist nor a churchman, a run-of-the-mill Japanese who could read and write his own language without much sophistication, but whose knowledge of Buddhism was far from accurate. Under the circumstances, trying to evangelize the masses was for the time being out of the question. Xavier did not need much time to realize it and set out to decide new parameters for his missionary work.
Japanese society had at the time a rigid feudal structure. First of all, the daimyo--local duke--ruled unimpeded over lives and lands, and without his placet all missionary endeavours were bound to fail. In the second place, the (Buddhist) clergy--as it also happened in medieval Europe--were the only cultivated social class and their prestige with the masses--and consequent influence on the daimyo--could not be ignored.
A very important third point was the acceptance (at least in theory) of the Tenno--Emperor of Japan with residence in Kyoto--as the highest authority in the country. Such an acceptance was suffused with religious mysticism based on Shinto mythology, but in fact did not interfere with local government, especially in faraway regions such as Kagoshima. It took Francis more than one year to realize this fact. A fourth final point that could not be disregarded in a cultured country such as Japan was the intellectual apostolate, and in the missionary project of Francis both the universities of Kyoto (Hieisan) and Bando (Ashikaga College) were given a preferential place.
The parameters mentioned before imposed on Xavier a change of direction, and he immediately set out to work on it. On the 29th of September, St.Michael's day, his helper and interpreter Anjiro managed to obtain an audience with the daimyo of Kagoshima Shimazu Takahisa. The interview was extremely friendly. After an exchange of gifts Xavier was given official permission to preach and make converts. Without any doubt, Takahisa's attitude was partly influenced by his hope of having the Portuguese fleet anchor at Kagoshima harbour instead of Hirado, Funai (Oita) and other places in Kyushu.
After obtaining the daimyo's placet, Francis tried to win, if not the active support, at least the acquiescence of the local clergy. He developed a close friendship with Ninjitsu, abbot of the Zen monastery Fukushoji in Kagoshima, and with his immediate co-operators. They became deeply impressed by the sincerity of Xavier's faith and his total dedication to Jesus' message, even if that message might appear distorted by Xavier's inadequate language and the obvious limitations of his interpreters.
Xavier would not give up his project of having an audience with the emperor and visiting the universities of Kyoto. The daimyo Takahisa did not see eye to eye with Francis on this matter, but was kind enough to promise him a ship when the winds became favourable some time around April. The only thing left for Xavier was therefore to wait.
Waiting, however, did not mean for Xavier folding his arms and doing nothing. The three newcomers--Francis, Torres and Fernandez--gave themselves in earnest to the study of the dialect of Kagoshima, and Bro. Fernandez, the youngest of the three, was soon able to attain a conversational level that allowed him to understand and make himself understood. In addition, Xavier wrote a thorough presentation of Christianity deeply rooted in the Bible, which Anjiro--now helped by Bro. Fernandez--managed to translate into Japanese with Portuguese writing. And so it was that Xavier, the former professor of Paris University, climbed day after day the front steps of Fukukoji and read from his book the stories of the Creation of the World, Original Sin, the Passion and the Resurrection of Christ. Some passers-by looked at him with curiosity, others with scorn and some others as if he were out of his senses, but there were people too who could see in that foreigner, shabbily dressed and a bit emotional in his gestures and words, a man of God, always crucified and always risen, and allowed themselves to be conquered by him for Jesus Christ. That was the case of the lord of Ichiku castle, of Anjiro's family and a small group of people, a hundred and fifty altogether. Opposition to Xavier was not late to arise. Sexual morals in part of the Buddhist clergy were far from exemplary. Our Navarrese Francis was not a man to mince words when lashing at deviant behaviour, and this aroused much hatred among the bonzes. Add to this, that an increase in conversions to the new religion meant a decrease in alms to the traditional ones, and the negative reaction of the bonzes affected by it can easily be explained.
Takahisa was himself well disposed towards Francis, and in later times he showed himself friendly to the missionaries, but XavierLs stay in Kagoshima did not seem to lure the Portuguese merchants to his domains. To make things worse, the local clergy were becoming more and more prejudiced against the newcomers. Under the circumstances, Takahisa felt obliged to forbid Xavier all proselytizing and our Navarrese decided therefore to put an end to his stay in Kagoshima. Already in July 1550 he had made a short trip to the neighbouring Hirado, where some Portuguese ships were anchored at the time, to collect the mail that presumably had arrived from India. This presumption proved mistaken, but Xavier's plan for the future had already taken shape and he would abide by it. He would therefore leave Kagoshima at the earliest possible time and go to Kyoto, in order to have an audience with the emperor and visit the universities of the capital city of Japan.
