EARLY TOKUGAWA TIMES
influence. But its sun had risen high above the horizon before the first clouds made their appearance. In thirty years two hundred thousand converts were won, three monasteries, a college, a university, and upwards of fifty churches were built, and it seemed as though the thirty-six provinces of which Japan then consisted might soon be included in the pale of Christendom. Such results, when compared with the achievements of missionaries in the present times, suggest, at first sight, either that the methods of mediæval propagandism were superior to those of modern, or that some special receptivity for religious truth existed among the Japanese of the sixteenth century. But the fact is that the imported faith profited largely by two adventitious aids, its commercial associations and the marked disfavour into which Buddhism happened to have fallen at that epoch. The latter point, already briefly touched on in a previous chapter, deserves elaboration.
At the moment when the question of the State's attitude towards Christianity had to be answered, Oda Nobunaga, the first of the great triumvirate who finally rescued Japan from internecine strife, was approaching the zenith of his power in the central and northern districts. He aimed at restoring the administrative authority of the Emperor and putting an end to the sanguinary struggles carried on by the feudal chiefs throughout the Empire. His splendid successes soon placed him in a position to decide whether
109
