Emperor Nobunanga Influence

The official arrival of Portuguese was recorded in 1543, the lead missionary Fr. Jerome de Angelis arrived in Japan for his Far East expeditions where he and his evangelist delegation prepared for their maiden Christian excursion in 1602 (Reischauer 215). Furthermore, Reischauer indicates that this was the beginning of the Christian spread into the ancient Japan expanding the religions to three main philosophies, Buddhism, Confucianism, and now the Christianity. However, towards the end of Toyotomi Hideyoshi period, Emperor Nobunanga is seen as one leader who allowed the most cultural exchange with the Europe in the entire Japanese history. The first mission was conducted in a modest way in which the Portuguese first learned the Japanese language
Expansion of trade with the counterparts from Europe increased towards the end of 1580’s as evidenced by the arrival of English, Spanish and Holland expeditionary ships at the Japanese ports (Munson 49). They were called the Southern Barbarians because of the direction of their arrival, which was from the south. The southern barbarians were purely Christians, and their primary aim was the trade. Therefore, they brought with them firearms, tobacco, refined sugar, deep fried food, and bread among other trade items. The first contact was 1543 when the Portuguese ship was blown offshore by strong winds and upon their capture by the Japanese warlords, their assortment of firearms impressed the lords and they were welcomed (Munson 52). It is also noted that this is the time that the Japanese experienced a heightened warring nation with highly divided kingdoms. Again, according to Munson, because Japan was open to the outer world, the society welcomed and borrowed much of the European culture including religion. It is also estimated that nearly 500, 000 Japanese converted to Christianity during the Oda Nobunanga
Sadler has also indicated that Japan had been divided into hundreds of states with every emperor watching control over its territories; however, the next centuries of rule by the shoguns reunified them into a single and solid state (Sadler 163). The leadership was a military government that dictated every aspect of the society including the religious doctrines of Japan. For two and half centuries Japan was unified into a pure Buddhist society with orders of execution to any defiant people. This is also the time when the 50 Christian martyrs were brutally executed for their failure to change their denomination. The system prohibited international relations with missionaries and restricted all foreigners to pure commerce, or they are executed for suspicion of influencing the Japanese religion. The initially converted daimyo domains were ordered to convert and all their international relations prohibited, in essence, Christianity was outlawed and all the missionaries ordered to leave the country (Teather 73). The Shogun rule was the era known as the closed country