or ,
baptized
Baptism (from ) is a Christian sacrament of initiation almost invariably with the use of water. It may be performed by sprinkling or pouring water on the head, or by immersing in water either partially or completely, traditionally three ...
as Paulo de Santa Fé, was the first recorded
Japanese Christian, who lived in the 16th century. After committing a murder in his home domain of
Satsuma in southern
Kyushu
is the third-largest island of Japan's Japanese archipelago, four main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands (i.e. excluding Okinawa Island, Okinawa and the other Ryukyu Islands, Ryukyu (''Nansei'') Ryukyu Islands, Islands ...
, he fled to
Portuguese Malacca
Portuguese control of Malaccaa city on the Malay Peninsulaspanned a 130 year period from 1511 to 1641 as a possession of the Portuguese East Indies. It was captured from the Malacca Sultanate as part of Portuguese attempts to gain control of ...
and he sought out Saint
Francis Xavier
Francis Xavier, Jesuits, SJ (born Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta; ; ; ; ; ; 7 April 15063 December 1552), venerated as Saint Francis Xavier, was a Kingdom of Navarre, Navarrese cleric and missionary. He co-founded the Society of Jesus ...
(1506–1552) and returned to Japan with him as an interpreter.
Along with Xavier, Anjirō returned to Japan with two other Jesuits, two Japanese companions, and a Chinese companion who had been
baptized
Baptism (from ) is a Christian sacrament of initiation almost invariably with the use of water. It may be performed by sprinkling or pouring water on the head, or by immersing in water either partially or completely, traditionally three ...
to
Catholicism
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
to form the first
Jesuit
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
mission to
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
.
Early life
Anjirō was originally a
samurai
The samurai () were members of the warrior class in Japan. They were originally provincial warriors who came from wealthy landowning families who could afford to train their men to be mounted archers. In the 8th century AD, the imperial court d ...
of the
Satsuma Domain
The , briefly known as the , was a Han system, domain (''han'') of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan during the Edo period from 1600 to 1871.
The Satsuma Domain was based at Kagoshima Castle in Satsuma Province, the core of the modern city of ...
, and was described to be "rich and of a noble extraction",
but he killed a man and was forced to go on the run. In the port of
Kagoshima
, is the capital Cities of Japan, city of Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 583,966 in 285,992 households, and a population density of 1100 persons per km2. The total area of the city is .
Etymology
While the ...
, he met the Portuguese captain of a trading ship, Alvaro Vas, to whom he confessed his deed and described his hardships as an outlaw. Vas got him a job on a Portuguese ship, but Anjirō reported to the wrong ship and presented himself to Captain Jorge Álvares, a personal friend of
Francis Xavier
Francis Xavier, Jesuits, SJ (born Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta; ; ; ; ; ; 7 April 15063 December 1552), venerated as Saint Francis Xavier, was a Kingdom of Navarre, Navarrese cleric and missionary. He co-founded the Society of Jesus ...
. Álvares took him to Malacca to see Xavier since he felt Xavier was better suited to hear Anjirō's confession. Upon their arrival, however, they had discovered that Xavier had departed for the
Moluccas
The Maluku Islands ( ; , ) or the Moluccas ( ; ) are an archipelago in the eastern part of Indonesia. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located in West Melanesi ...
. Disappointed, Anjirō boarded a ship that would take him back to Japan, but it encountered a storm and had to take shelter on the Chinese coast. There, he met yet another Portuguese captain, who informed him that Xavier had returned to Malacca, and the captain took Anjirō back to Malacca, where he finally met Xavier in December 1547.
With Xavier
Anjirō had picked up some
pidgin
A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified form of contact language that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn f ...
Portuguese by this time and could communicate with Xavier directly. The priest told Anjirō the word of God while Anjirō described the land of Japan to Xavier, which impressed the priest so much that he became resolved to go to Japan himself. Anjirō then went with Xavier to
Goa, the headquarters of
Portuguese India
The State of India, also known as the Portuguese State of India or Portuguese India, was a state of the Portuguese Empire founded seven years after the discovery of the sea route to the Indian subcontinent by Vasco da Gama, a subject of the ...
where he was baptized with the name Paulo de Santa Fé (Paul of the Holy Faith), furthered his training in the Portuguese language, and received
catechesis
Catechesis (; from Greek: , "instruction by word of mouth", generally "instruction") is basic Christian religious education of children and adults, often from a catechism book. It started as education of converts to Christianity, but as the ...
in
Saint Paul's College. On 14 April 1549, Xavier left Goa and made his way to Japan with a party of seven, including Anjirō as interpreter, and reached Malacca by 25 April. There, they boarded a Chinese pirate
junk since that was the only craft they could book that would take them to Kagoshima.
''Deus'' and ''Dainichi''
The party landed in Kagoshima on August 15, 1549 and soon attracted attention as foreigners who came all the way from India, or
Tenjiku
Tianzhu () is one of the historical ancient Chinese names for the Indian subcontinent. Tian (天) means heaven, and Zhu (竺) means bamboo in Chinese.
Tianzhu was also referred to as ''Wutianzhu'' (, literal meaning is "Five Indias"), because ...
, which was where the Japanese understood as the birthplace of Buddhism. Anjirō gathered crowds by vividly describing his experiences in India, and even the Satsuma daimyo
Shimazu Takahisa
, a son of Shimazu Tadayoshi, was a ''daimyō'' during Japan's Sengoku period. He was the fifteenth head of the Shimazu clan.
Biography
In 1514, he is said to have been born in Izaku Castle. On 1526, Takahisa was adopted as the successor to ...
became curious and sent for Anjirō and Xavier for an audience at his court. Xavier made a good impression on the young daimyo, who allowed his vassals to convert to Xavier's creed. At the time, the Japanese did not realize that Xavier was actually preaching a new religion different from Buddhism since he had come from India. The confusion was compounded by Anjirō's choice of using the term "Dainichi", the Japanese word for
Vairocana Buddha
Vairocana (from Sanskrit: Vi+rocana, "from the sun" or "belonging to the sun", "Solar", or "Shining"), also known as Mahāvairocana (Great Vairocana), is a major Buddha from Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism. Vairocana is often interpreted, in texts ...
, to refer to the Christian God since he mistakenly assumed that Japan had only one creator God. Xavier eventually realized the mistake in the summer of 1551 when he was preaching in
Yamaguchi, far away from Satsuma. He used the Latin word "
Deus
''Deus'' (, ) is the Latin word for 'God (word), god' or 'deity'.
Latin ''deus'' and ''dīvus'' ('divine') are in turn descended from Proto-Indo-European language, Proto-Indo-European *''deiwos'', 'celestial' or 'shining', from the same root ( ...
" henceforth and denounced "Dainichi" as "an invention of the devil". The Buddhist monks, who initially respected Xavier, now resented him, forming an obstacle to the efforts of the Jesuits. Xavier acknowledged that Anjirō was uneducated in the written language (
Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese is the language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from . For millennia thereafter, the written Chinese used in these works was imitated and iterated upon by scholars in a form now called Literary ...
) and so could not read well enough to give evidence about the religious affairs of his homeland.
Recently, the circumstances of Anjirō's translation have been complicated by scholars, including
Jason Ānanda Josephson
Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm (''né'' Josephson) is an American academic, philosopher, social scientist, and author. He is currently Professor in the Department of Religion and chair in Science and Technology Studies at Williams College. He als ...
. Josephson notes that Anjirō's choice to translate ''Deus'' as ''Dainichi'' reflects earlier
Shingon Buddhist means of coping with religious difference, with which Anjirō may have been familiar. Thus Anjirō's terminology may have represented an indigenous Japanese belief that "translation can bridge divergence."
After Xavier
After less than a year in Kagoshima, Xavier went to Kyoto in hopes of converting the
Emperor of Japan
The emperor of Japan is the hereditary monarch and head of state of Japan. The emperor is defined by the Constitution of Japan as the symbol of the Japanese state and the unity of the Japanese people, his position deriving from "the will of ...
to Christianity so the whole nation would follow. He left Anjirō to lead the small congregation that they had managed to gather in Kagoshima. After Xavier returned from his unsuccessful endeavour in Kyoto, during which he realized both the Emperor of Japan and the
Ashikaga shogun were powerless during the chaotic
Sengoku period
The was the period in History of Japan, Japanese history in which civil wars and social upheavals took place almost continuously in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Kyōtoku incident (1454), Ōnin War (1467), or (1493) are generally chosen as th ...
and their conversion would achieve nothing, he was recalled to Goa in 1552 and set his sights on China, dying on
Shangchuan Island off its coast in the same year. After Xavier's departure from Japan, Anjirō's mission in Kagoshima became deserted in just two years, and Anjirō was driven out by religious persecution. He descended into piracy and died a
wakō pirate on a raid in China.
See also
*
Camille de Soyécourt
*
Exploration of Asia
References
Further reading
*Cabezas, Antonio (1995): The Iberian century Japan. The Spanish-Portuguese presence in Japan (1543-1643). Valladolid: Secretariat Publications, University of Valladolid. .
{{DEFAULTSORT:Anjiro
16th-century births
16th-century deaths
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Buddhism
Japanese translators
Japanese Roman Catholics
16th-century Japanese people
Japanese pirates
Shimazu retainers
Japanese murderers
Samurai