Christianity—Japan
Christianity arrived in Japan with Catholic missionaries in the midsixteenth century and flourished for approximately a century before being brutally suppressed. After that, isolated underground communities attempted to maintain Christian teachings without benefit of priests. With the reopening of Japan in the mid-nineteenth century, a new wave of missionaries arrived, and during this period the Japanese people alternated between interest in and rejection of what they saw as foreign to Japanese sensibilities.
First Encounter with Christianity
The history of Christianity in Japan began with the arrival of Portuguese traders, but formal instruction began in 1549 with the arrival of Francis Xavier.....
