How long has Christianity been in Japan? Even though Christian population in Japan today still lingers around 1%, Japanese people have been exposed to Christian teachings since as early as 1549.
The first Christian missionary to come to Japan was Francisco de Xavier, or Francis Xavier, who was a Spanish missionary and one of the founders of the Society of Jesus along with Ignatius de Loyola. He was born in the Kingdom of Navvare (Spain) and it is thought that his first language was Basque. He left Lisbon in 1541 on his missionary trip to Asia under the order of King John the 3rd of Portugal. He first went to Goa, a Portuguese colony in India, where he spent 3 years. He then did his missionary work in other parts of India and Indonesia. In 1547, he met a Japanese named Anjiro in the Malacca islands, who told him about Japan and later got baptized. Intrigued by Anjiro’s stories, Xavier left India and reached the western part of Japan in 1549, accompanied by Anjiro and two other Jesuits. He struggled to learn the Japanese language which was radically different than any other languages that the Europeans had encountered before, and his ministry was limited because of that. His primary means of teaching was to read the Japanese translation of cathechism aloud and he also brought many pieces of artwork such as paintings of the Madonna as complementary resources to teach about Christianity to the Japanese. He spent two years in Japan before returning to India.
