Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/39

 them to their missionaries, the great Francis de Xavier landing at the chief Satsuma city, Kagoshima, in 1549.

It would take a volume in itself to describe the direct and indirect consequences of the arrival of the European trader and the European priest on Japanese soil. But the net results can be summed up in this way. At first, being desirous of trade, the Christian propagandists were accepted by some of the feudal chiefs, for trade and religion in those days marched hand in hand. A great number of converts were made on the island of Kyushu, and in spite of some friction all was seemingly well. But when the selfsame Hideyoshi in 1587, prior to his Korean expedition, had carried out the subjection of Kiushu [sic] and the Satsuma clans, he propounded the following five questions to the Jesuits:

"Why and by what authority the propagandists had constrained Japanese to become Christian converts? Why they had induced their disciples to overthrow Buddhist temples; why did they persecute the bonzes; why they ate animals useful to man? Why the Jesuit chiefs allowed merchants of their nation to buy Japanese and to make them slaves in the Indies?"