s to the virgin field, Xavier
preached with such success as to alarm the Buddhist bonzes, who made
futile efforts to excite the populace against him as a vagabond and an
enchanter. From there he set out for China, but died on the way thither.
He had, however, planted the seed of what was destined to yield a great
and noble harvest.

In fact, the progress of Christianity in Japan was of the most
encouraging kind. Other missionaries quickly followed the great Jesuit
pioneer, and preached the gospel with surprising success. In less than
five years after the visit of Xavier to Kioto that city possessed seven
Christian churches, while there were many others in the southwest
section of the empire. In 1581, thirty years after Xavier's death, there
were in Japan two hundred churches, while the number of converts is
given at one hundred and fifty thousand. Several of the daimios were
converted to the new faith, and Nobunaga, who hated and strove to
exterminate the Buddhists, received the Christians with the greatest
favor, gave them desirable sites for their churches, and sought to set
them up as a foil to the arrogance of the bonzes.

The Christian daimios went so far as to send a delegation to the pope at
Rome, which returned eight years afterwards with seventeen Jesuit
missionaries, while a multitude of mendicant friars from the Philippine
Islands and elsewhere sought the new field of labor, preaching with the
greatest zeal and success. It is claimed that at the culminating point
of proselytism in Japan the native Christians numbered no less than six
hundred thousand, among them being several princes, and many lords, high
officials, generals, and other military and naval officers, with
numerous women of noble blood. In some provinces the Christian shrines
and crosses were as numerous as the Buddhist shrines had been before,
while there were thousands of churches, chapels, and ecclesiastical
edifices.

This remarkable success, unprecedented in the history of Christian
missionary work, was due in great measure to certain conditions then
existing in Japan. When Xavier and his successors reached Japan, it was
to find the people of that country in a state of the greatest misery,
the result of a long era of anarchy and misrule. Of the native
religions, Shintoism had in great measure vanished, while Buddhism,
though affecting the imaginations of the people by the gorgeousness of
its service, had little with which to reach their h