Database: Alessandro Valignano

Alessandro Valignano was born in Italy in the Abruzzo region of Chieti. He began studying law at the University of Padua, one of the great centers of Italian Renaissance studies. After spending a few months in a Venetian prison in 1562-63, he entered the Jesuit novitiate in Rome, climbed the hierarchy, and in 1572 was given the charge for the Jesuits as Visitor of the East Indies. He arrived in Goa in 1574, then stayed in Malacca before arriving in Macau in 1578 and then Japan in 1579, where he landed at Kuchinotsu in Kyushu. At the time, Oda Nobunaga was at the height of his power.

Valignano visited the various Christian establishments in Japan and reorganized their mission, which he divided into three districts: Shimo, Bungo, and Miyako, the capital, where he went in 1581. He was received by Nobunaga in Azuchi. Valignano left Japan the following year for Europe with four young Japanese "ambassadors," sons of Christian daimyō where they would go to Rome to be received by the pope. Valignano accompanied them to Goa, where he stayed for 4 years as Provincial of the Indies. He returned to Japan in 1588 with the young Japanese delegates and the title of special envoy of the Viceroy of the Indies. However, while travelling from Macau he learned about the persecution affecting Christians, especially the expulsion order for missionaries promulgated by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Nevertheless, in 1591 Valignano embarked for the archipelago and was received by Hideyoshi at the Jurakudai palace in Kyoto. He returned to Macau and then came back to Japan from 1598 to 1603 for a third stay. He returned again to Macau, where he died in 1606.

Valignano was not a theologian but was an indefatigable worker, an organizer, and a shrewd politician. From his work in Japan remains his missionary report (Sumario) addressed to the pope in 1583, in which he shows the possibilities of expanding the mission in the archipelago after describing Japan as he saw it, "The Japanese are like us, except that they do not know God."