The Jesuits first landed in Kyushu, their labours in that island forming as it were the first chapter of their activities in Japan. Kyushu was at the time divided into several small principalities, practically independent kingdoms, which scarcely recognized the authority of Kyoto at all, and which were busily engaged in contests for supremacy within that island. Here, at first, the new-corners were eagerly welcomed, for wherever the priests went the merchants followed, with the guns and implements of war so dear to a warlike people, and the missionaries had their choice of many daimyates for their evangelization. Even the Buddhist bonzes spoke well of them, and received them kindly; for Christianity seemed to them to be but one more sect of the Buddhist faith, and, indeed, it was so described by Ouchi Yoshitaka, lord of Suwo, when Xavier crossed over the Straits of Shimonoseki into the territories of Yamaguchi. But it was soon found that the new religion was not in the least disposed to accept so humiliating a classification. The Jesuits were as intolerant of other creeds as were the Nichirenists themselves, and the kind sentiments of the Buddhist monks soon changed to feelings of suspicious hostility.

But before these feelings turned into acts of serious opposition, the Jesuit leaders had concluded that if the friendship of local daimyos, such as Otomo and Ouchi, was so advantageous to their cause, very much more might be expected from the favour of the Emperor and Shogun. They had accordingly made their way to Kyoto for the purpose of winning the ear of those potentates, little knowing that Emperor and Shogun counted for so little in those days that the reigning Emperor Go-Nara could not have been crowned, as one of his predecessors could not have been buried, had not one of his generous subjects paid the expenses of the coronation. The generous

subject in this case was Ouchi, the Daimyo of Suwo, and the friend of Xavier.

The Jesuits did not succeed so easily in gaining a footing in the Imperial City, though it ultimately became one of the chief seats of their activity. But their sojourns in Kyoto brought them into contact with Nobunaga, and thus ultimately with Hideyoshi, Iyeyasu, and Iyemitsu, and it is around these names that centres the religious as well as the political history of Japan during the eventful century of the Catholic Missions.