Francis Xavier in India and Japan

Francis Xavier sailed from Lisbon on 7 April 1541 and reached India on 6 May 1542, landing at Goa (Xavier, Letters, letter 10, Goa, 18 September 1542). A later letter finds him among the Christians of Comorin, who told him that they were Christians but knew nothing of the precepts and mysteries of their religion. He spoke Castilian and they “Malabar”, so with the help of men who knew both languages he had the catechism translated, learned it by heart, and went through the villages of the coast with a bell, gathering children and adults twice a day to repeat the Creed, the commandments and the prayers (Xavier, Letters, letter 14, Cochin, vol. 1, pp. 151–152). He writes that he often baptized whole villages in a day, until he could hardly use his hands (Xavier, Letters, letter 14, Cochin, vol. 1, p. 153). He wished he could go round the universities of Europe, Paris above all, crying out to learned men that souls were being lost through their fault (Xavier, Letters, letter 14, Cochin, vol. 1, p. 155).

At Malacca, he wrote in January 1548, a Portuguese merchant brought him a Japanese named Anger, Anjiro, who had come looking for him, troubled in conscience, and who spoke some Portuguese. Xavier was struck by his eagerness to learn. Anjiro told him that the Japanese would question a preacher closely and would watch whether his life agreed with his words (Xavier, Letters, letter 55, Cochin, 21 January 1548). A year later Xavier reported three Japanese students at the college of Santa Fe in Goa, the ablest of whom he calls Paul, and said that he had determined to go to Japan (Xavier, Letters, letter 63, to Ignatius, Cochin, 14 January 1549).

They landed at Kagoshima, Paul’s home, on 15 August 1549 and were well received (Xavier, Letters, letter 79, Kagoshima, 5 November 1549, vol. 2, p. 232). Xavier wrote that the Japanese surpassed in goodness any people lately discovered (Xavier, Letters, letter 79, vol. 2, p. 237), and that the lord of the place gave his subjects leave to become Christians (Xavier, Letters, letter 79, vol. 2, p. 259). He travelled on to Meaco, the capital, found it disturbed by war and could not see the sovereign (Xavier, Letters, letter 86, Cochin, 29 January 1552, vol. 2, pp. 335–336). At Amanguchi (Yamaguchi), by his account, about five hundred people were baptized in two months (Xavier, Letters, letter 86, vol. 2, p. 338).

Back in India, Xavier wrote that the Japanese had their doctrines from China and that he hoped to enter China that year, 1552 (Xavier, Letters, letter 86, vol. 2, pp. 347–348). His last letters are dated from the island of San Chan in November 1552; in them he complains that the commandant of Malacca had hindered his going to China (Xavier, Letters, letter 124, San Chan, 13 November 1552). He did not reach it. He died on the island a few weeks later, as the dating note explains. For the later history of the church in Japan see the Martyrs of Nagasaki and the Ban on Christianity in Japan.