ake missionary work in the Portuguese colonies.
Through his labors in India, Xavier became known as the
"Apostle of the Indies." Before sailing to Japan he had
established a flourishing mission with a school, called the
Seminary of the Holy Faith, at Goa, on the Malabar coast of
India.

It was to Portuguese enterprise that Christianity owed its introduction
into Japan in the sixteenth century. As early as 1542 Portuguese trading
vessels began to visit Japan, where they exchanged Western commodities
for the then little-known products of the Japanese islands; and seven
years afterward three Portuguese missionaries (Xavier, Torres, and
Fernandez) took passage in one of these merchant ships and landed at
Kagoshima.

The leading spirit of the three, it need scarcely be said, was Xavier,
who had already acquired considerable reputation by his missionary
labors in India. After a short residence the missionaries were forced to
leave Satsuma, and after as short a stay in the island of Hirado, which
appears to have been then the rendezvous of trade between the Portuguese
merchants and the Japanese, they crossed over to the mainland and
settled down in Yamaguchi in Nagato, the chief town of the territories
of the Prince of Choshiu. After a visit to the capital, which was
productive of no result, owing to the disturbed state of the country,
Xavier (November, 1551) left Japan with the intention of founding a
Jesuit mission in China, but died on his way in the island of Sancian.

In 1553 fresh missionaries arrived, some of whom remained in Bungo,
where Xavier had made a favorable impression before his departure, while
others joined their fellow-missionaries in Yamaguchi. After having been
driven from the latter place by the outbreak of disturbances, and having
failed to establish a footing in Hizen, we find the missionaries in 1557
collected in Bungo, and this province appears to have become their
headquarters from that time. In the course of the next year but one,
Vilela made a visit to Kioto, Sakai, and other places, during which he
is said to have gained a convert in the person of the _daimio_, of the
small principality of Omura, who displayed an imprudent excess of
religious zeal in the destruction of idols and other extreme measures,
which could only tend to provoke the hostility of the Buddhist
priesthood. The conversion of this prince was followed by that of
Arima-no-Kami (mistakenly called the Pr