Where the imposition had no way: Reflections on the japanese reaction to the jesuit to the jesuit activity in Japan during the XVI AND XVII Centuries

During the XVI century, the expansionist process of the Portuguese Crown reached its greater geographical amplitude. The most distant territory from Portugal within the area under the Portuguese Patronage intervention was Japan, an archipelago in Far East Asia in which was founded a Jesuit mission in 1549. Being in a region of great difficulty to be accessed, where the priests were almost completely isolated, the Jesuit mission in Japan gradually assumed a genuine Japanese form. The establishment of a mission in the territory was inevitably conditioned by the interests and determinations of the local government. As such, in front of a growing resistance by the Japanese leaders, the missionaries came to suffocate from the ending of the XVI century, until their final
expulsion from Japan in the first half of the XVII century. Considering this scenario, I seek to reflect on some aspects of the reception the Japanese population manifested to the evangelization during the XVI and XVII centuries. At the same time that the Japanese were identified by the missionaries as a higher and civilized people, what would make them
ideal to create a Christendom, they showed to be very resistant to any imposition of the European referential. Thus, to understand better some aspects of the cross-cultural encounters this experience promoted, from the rejection to the conversion, I will analyse fragments of Jesuit letters and Japanese documents focusing on the Japanese point of view in what concerns the evangelization in the archipelago.