JAPAN
did not hesitate to enlist the most lawless and unscrupulous elements of the population among its adherents. The religious fanatics were strong enough to defy the governors of the northern provinces, where their principal centre of power lay. They destroyed family after family of their opponents, and even the illustrious Hosokawa Harumoto, one of the most powerful nobles of the time, had to appeal to the Nichiren sect for aid against them. Thus the religious bodies wielded a power which no one, though he were the Shōgun himself, could afford to disregard. Even the Shintô priests of Ise had a military organisation numbering thousands of halberdiers.
Under such circumstances Christianity made its advent in Japan. It was brought to Kiushiu by the Portuguese, and with it came fire-arms, as well as many evidences of a new and dazzling civilisation. A large number of people adopted it, less, perhaps, because its doctrines convinced them, than because several of the prominent nobles, attracted by the material novelties that came in the train of the new creed, and by the prospects of the commerce it foreran, set the example of welcoming the Christian propagandists. A fresh element of disturbance was thus introduced. Christianity did not disarm opposition by displays of gentleness or forbearance. It relied on the stalwart methods which in mediæval Europe bound the unbeliever on the rack and the recusant to the stake. The Buddhist and Shintô
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