Hesselink, Reinier H. (2026). “The Jesuit Experience in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Japan: Francis Xavier’s Prophecy”, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History.
The standard narrative of the Jesuit mission in Japan often treats its collapse as a result of political maneuvering, the rise of the Tokugawa shogunate, or a general incompatibility between Christian monotheism and Japanese religious thought. In this view, the missionaries are seen as victims of a shifting geopolitical landscape, with their moral objections treated as secondary background noise. The persecution is typically framed as a reaction to foreign interference in domestic politics, where the specific content of the Christian message matters less than the fact that it came from abroad.
Hesselink cuts through this generalization by arguing that the mission’s most difficult hurdle was that the Jesuits directly attacked a core pillar of samurai identity: the institutionalized sexual relationships between older and younger warriors. The article posits that when Francis Xavier and his successors condemned these practices as “sins against nature,” they were not merely correcting moral behavior but dismantling the very mechanism of social cohesion and martial transmission that defined the ruling class. This was not a misunderstanding of local customs; it was a deliberate, public rejection of a system where sexual submission was a rite of passage and a source of political loyalty.
The argument rests on a tight reading of primary sources, particularly the letters of Xavier and the reports of Luís Fróis. Hesselink shows that Xavier’s initial encounters in Hakata and Yamaguchi were derailed not by abstract theological disputes, but by his public denunciation of the “sin of Sodom” among Buddhist monks and daimyō. When Xavier had Brother Juan Fernández read the Ten Commandments to Ōuchi Yoshitaka, the resulting offense was immediate and personal, and the missionaries soon left the city. The text highlights that the Jesuits recognized early on that this specific “vice” was not a private failing but a public institution, deeply woven into the hierarchy of the warrior class.
The clash also shows in the disappearance of explicit condemnations from the Jesuit letters published in Europe after 1571. Hesselink concludes that the order must have made a strategic decision to stop writing about the “sin of Sodom” in its published letters, to avoid losing financial support, choosing instead to fight the custom locally while keeping the conflict quiet. This silence, however, did not stop the friction. Inside the mission, the Society in Japan treated homosexual behavior as grounds for immediate dismissal, viewing the Japanese “natural inclination” toward the practice as a fatal obstacle to recruitment. The article cites a 1612 letter from Mateus de Couros to Claudio Acquaviva, which frames the issue as a direct threat to the order’s integrity.
The work goes further by contextualizing these customs within the broader framework of samurai society. It explains that for the warrior class, undergoing sexual relations with an older mentor was not seen as a violation but as a necessary step to prove manhood and receive martial excellence. The text draws on comparative anthropology and linguistic evidence, such as the terms seishi and saibi, to suggest that martial virtue, like the arete of his Spartan comparison, was believed to pass through these physical bonds. The Tokugawa shoguns Hidetada and Iemitsu are shown to have institutionalized the practice of taking kinju (young pages) as sexual partners, using these relationships to secure political loyalty and social advancement.
The stakes of this conflict are made clear through the Japanese-Portuguese dictionary of 1603–1604, which explicitly defines the “Way of the Catamite” as “sodomy or evil sin.” The Jesuits faced an impossible choice: accept the custom and compromise their faith, or fight it and invite persecution. They chose to fight.
For our readers, this text serves as a sharp complement to articles on the cultural misunderstandings of the early mission. It provides the missing link between the theological objections of the missionaries and the political reality of the daimyō. The paper is open access, making it immediately available to anyone wishing to see how a single moral objection can unravel an entire missionary project. It is a necessary read for anyone curious about why the Jesuits could not simply adapt to Japanese customs, showing that some cultural boundaries were too deep to cross without destroying the mission itself.
Reviewed by Nanban.pt editorial, 2026-10-04.