Database: Kirishitan

The Japanese "kirishitan" is a transliteration of the Portuguese "cristao," [sic] meaning Christian. Christianity came to Japan in 1549 with the arrival of François Xavier, a Jesuit from Navarre, who preached the ideals of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Initially, Christianity's expansion was associated with Portuguese docking locations. But then some daimyō, particularly those in Kyushu, converted for religious conviction or personal interest.

Oda Nobunaga protected the Christian missions as a counterweight to Buddhist monasteries, whose influence he sought to curb. The missionaries founded Catholic seminaries to train Japanese priests and by the 1580s, there were over 150,000 Christians in Japan, and probably twice as many by the early 17th century. In 1582, a group of four young Japanese Christians was sent to Europe on a highly successful mission. They returned in 1590, bringing with them a metal-type printing press, the first of its kind in Japan.

However, Christianity began to be perceived as a threat by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. In 1587 and 1588 respectively, he ordered the expulsion of the missionaries and reclaimed the city of Nagasaki which had been offered to the Jesuits in 1580. The first execution of priests occurred in Nagasaki in 1597. When Tokugawa Ieyasu came to power, he held a more favorable attitude toward Christianity, until the arrival of the Protestant Dutch. Convinced that the missionaries were preparing an invasion by Spain, he banned Roman religion in all forms in 1612. The persecution intensified until Christianity was almost completely eradicated by the 1640s.