CHAPTER XXVIII

THE PERIOD OF THE CATHOLIC MISSIONS

HAD St. Francis Xavier and his associates been acquainted with Nichiren's apocalyptic interpretation of the Hokekyu, it is possible that they might have been tempted to apply to themselves the fulfilment of the prophecy, and to claim that they and theirs constituted the multitude headed by the four great Bodhisattvas who should appear in the middle of the last Buddhist Millennium, for the purposes of preaching salvation to a world that was forgetting the Law.

The Buddhism of Japan, in the course of its long development since the time when the Chinese Emperor Ming-ti had had his epoch-making dream, had on more than one occasion rubbed shoulders with Christianity. But it had either been the Christianity of the Nearer Orient, the vague syncretism of Gnostics and Manichaeans; or the dull apathy of the Nestorians, deprived of vigour in consequence of their estrangement from the main body of their co-religionists. When the Franciscans reached Pekin in A.D. 1300, and when, in 1549, the Jesuits landed at Kagoshima, the Mahayana of the Far East found itself confronted for the first time with the militant Christianity of Europe, which had gone half round the globe to challenge it to mortal combat.

It is not my intention to write even a sketch of the history of the Catholic Missions of the sixteenth century.

[paragraph continues] Others have done this at considerable length and with carefully weighed judgment. My task is somewhat different. It is to trace the movements, if any, that were going on in Buddhism during this period, and the effects, if any, that the Jesuit Missions had on the native faiths of Japan. In doing this, I shall be obliged frequently to mention the Christian propaganda, though without intending to make it the main purpose of this chapter.

Here let me say, by way of introduction, that none of the Histories, not even that of Murdoch, who is no great friend of the Jesuits, can establish anything against the personal uprightness or probity of the Jesuits, who had the lion's share of the Christian evangelization of that time, and who have had to bear more than their proper share of the hatred and ill-will which has, ever since the seventeenth century, clung to the Catholic name in Japan. That they made mistakes is quite evident; but the best of men may do that. They came to the Far East without having shaken off the traditions and atmosphere of the Far West. They brought with them what I may call the "Walls-of-Jericho" theory of Christian Missions--the theory that they had only to blow the Gospel Trumpet long and loud, and to! the walls erected by inveterate error and falsity would fall down in a moment, and leave the way open for the hosts of Light to make a triumphant entrance into the beleaguered city. They were, consequently, in a very great hurry with their