nterfered with the propagation of Christianity both in
Yamaguchi and Kyoto. Mori himself, the most powerful prince of his time
and who once held the control in ten provinces, was hostile to the
Christians. By his influence the work in Kyoto was temporarily abandoned
and the fathers resorted to Sakai, a seaport town not far from Osaka,
where a branch mission was established.

It was in A.D. 1573 that Nagasaki became distinctively a Christian city.
At that time the Portuguese were seeking various ports in which they could
conduct a profitable trade, and they found that Nagasaki possessed a
harbor in which their largest ships could ride at anchor. The merchants
and Portuguese fathers therefore proposed to the Prince of Omura, in whose
territory the port of Nagasaki was situated, to grant to them the town
with jurisdiction over it. The prince at first refused, but finally by the
intervention of the Prince of Arima the arrangement was made.(150) The
transference to Nagasaki of the foreign trade at this early day made it a
very prosperous place. The Prince of Omura had the town laid out in
appropriate streets, and Christian churches were built often on the sites
of Buddhist temples which were torn down to give place for them. It is
said that in A.D. 1567 "there was hardly a person who was not a
Christian."

We shall have occasion often in the subsequent narrative to refer to the
progress of Christianity in the empire. In the meantime we must trace the
career of Nobunaga, who exerted a powerful effect on the affairs of his
country and particularly upon the condition of both Buddhism and
Christianity. He must be regarded always as one of the great men of Japan
who at an opportune moment intervened to rescue its affairs from anarchy.
He prepared the way for Hideyoshi and he, in turn, made it possible for
Ieyasu to establish a peace which lasted without serious interruption for
two hundred and fifty years.

Ota Nobunaga was descended from the Taira family through Ota Chikazane, a
great-grandson of Taira Kiyomori. The father of Chikazane had perished in
the wars between the Taira and Minamoto families, and his mother had
married as her second husband the chief man in the village of Tsuda in the
province of Omi. The step-child was adopted by a Shinto priest of the
village of Ota in the province of Echizen, and received the name of Ota
Chikazane. When he grew up, he became a Shinto priest and married and
became the father of a lin