When Pope Alexander VI. bisected the known world, assigning the western half, including America to Spain, and the eastern half, including Asia and its outlying archipelagos to the Portuguese, the latter sailed and fought their way around Africa to India, and past the golden Chersonese.  In 1542, exactly fifty years after the discovery of America, Dai Nippon was reached.  Mendez Pinto, on a Chinese pirate junk which had been driven by a storm away from her companions, set foot upon an island called Tanegashima.  This name among the country folks is still synonymous with guns and pistols, for Pinto introduced fire-arms, and powder.[3]

During six months spent by the “mendacious” Pinto on the island, the imitative people made no fewer than six hundred match-locks or arquebuses.  Clearing twelve hundred per cent. on their cargo, the three Portuguese loaded with presents, returned to China.  Their countrymen quickly flocked to this new market, and soon the beginnings of regular trade with Portugal were inaugurated.  On the other hand, Japanese began to be found as far west as India.  To Malacca, while Francis Xavier was laboring there, came a refugee Japanese, named Anjiro.  The disciple of Loyola, and this child of the Land of the Rising Sun met.  Xavier, ever restless and ready for a new field, was fired with the idea of converting Japan.  Anjiro, after learning Portuguese and becoming a Christian, was baptized with the name of Paul.  The heroic missionary of the cross and keys then sailed with his Japanese companion, and in 1549 landed at Kagoshima,[4] the capital of Satsuma.  As there was no central government then existing in Japan, the entrance of the foreigners, both lay and clerical, was unnoticed.

Having no skill in the learning of languages, and never able to master one foreign tongue completely, Xavier began work with the aid of an interpreter.  The jealousy of the daimi[=o], because his rivals had been supplied with fire-arms by the Portuguese merchants, and the plots and warnings of those Buddhist priests (who were later crushed by the Satsuma clansmen as traitors), compelled Xavier to leave this province.  He went first to Hirado,[5] next to Nagat[=o], and then to Bungo, where he was well received.  Preaching and teaching through his Japanese interpreter, he formed Christian congregations, especially at Yamaguchi.[6] Thus, within a year, the great apostle to the Indies had seen the quick sprouting of the seed which he had planted.  His ambition was now to go to the imperial capital, Ki[=o]to, and there advocate the claims of Christ, of Mary and of the Pope.