ABSTRACT
In fact the first Japanese with whom Francis Xavier, the great Jesuit missionary, came into contact at Goa and through whose counsel he decided to come to Japan, was a fugitive who had left his home on account of a crime, Paul Yajiro (or Hanshiro), of Satsuma. The tenacious hold which the indigenous deities had upon the people's mind in conjunction with patriotic motives caused many to take a stand against the exclusive and jealous deity of Christianity. The edict of 1587 thus proved but a nominal prohibition, yet it was the first proclamation against Kirishitan propaganda and was later to be executed more thoroughly by Taiko's successors and to be consummated in its extermination. An intermediate stage lasting about thirty years, from 1587 to 1614, was a period of the further progress of Kirishitan missions, which, however, began to suffer by internal dissension between the Jesuits and the other missionary bodies appearing on the stage.
