them to all the sects of the bonzes. . . He is
entrusting to Christians his treasures, his secrets, and his
fortresses of most importance, and he shows himself well pleased that
the sons of the great lords about him should adopt our customs and
our law.' Two years later in Osaka he received with every mark of
cordiality and favour a Jesuit mission which had come from Nagasaki
seeking audience, and on that occasion his visitors recorded that he
spoke of an intention of christianizing one half of Japan." Nor did
he confine himself to licensing the missionaries to preach throughout
all Japan: he exempted not only churches from the billeting of
soldiers but also the priests themselves from local burdens.

"This was in 1586, on the eve of his great military enterprise, the
invasion of Kyushu. . . He carried that difficult campaign to
completion by the middle of 1587, and throughout its course he
maintained a uniformly friendly demeanour toward the Jesuits. But
suddenly, when on the return journey he reached Hakata in the north
of the island, his policy underwent a radical metamorphosis. Five
questions were by his orders propounded to the vice-provincial of the
Jesuits: 'Why and by what authority he and his fellow propagandists
had constrained Japanese subjects to become Christians? Why they had
induced their disciples and their sectaries to overthrow temples? Why
they persecuted the bonzes? Why they and other Portuguese ate animals
useful to men, such as oxen and cows? Why the vice-provincial allowed
merchants of his nation to buy Japanese and make slaves of them in
the Indies?' To these queries Coelho, the vice-provincial, made
answer that the missionaries had never themselves resorted, or
incited, to violence in their propagandism, or persecuted bonzes;
that if their eating of beef was considered inadvisable, they would
give up the practice, and that they were powerless to prevent or
restrain the outrages perpetrated by their countrymen. Hideyoshi read
the vice-provincial's reply and, without comment, sent him word to
retire to Hirado, assemble all his followers there, and quit the
country within six months. On the next day (July 25, 1587) the
following edict was published:

'Having learned from our faithful councillors that foreign priests
have come into our estates, where they preach a law contrary to that
of Japan, and that they have even had the audacity to destroy temples
dedicated to our Kami and Hotoke; although