Yet no one can read the records of the Japanese mission without realising that the success of this early Christian mission was singularly sincere and solid, and presents a most remarkable and inexplicable contrast to the experience of our own time. By the year 1580 the Jesuits announced that they had made 100,000 converts; by the year 1593 they represent this number as doubled. We may assume that a large number of very imperfectly converted Japanese help to round these generous figures, but the extraordinary number of native Christians whom we shall presently find ready to endure suffering and death for their faith must convince every candid student that the early missionaries had sincerely converted an astonishing proportion of the nation. The success is the more strange when we reflect that the Jesuits were not men of what is usually understood to be an "apostolic" character. Not only had they members of their Society making money as merchants, but they induced Philip of Spain to send out his subsidy to them in the form of fifty large bales of silk every year, and they secured the sale of these to their highest advantage. Even less edifying is the fact that in 1585 they induced the Pope to decree that no other priests than Jesuits should be allowed to enter Japan.
Two years later the clouds began, as if in punishment, to overcast their prosperity. Taicosama had usurped the chief throne of Japan in 1583, and, as the Catholic generals in the army had made no defence of their legitimate monarch, he continued for some years to favour the Church. The displacement of the native faith, however, led him to reflect that it might entail political displacements, and he is said to have seized the opportunity, when certain Christian girls refused the honour of being added to the lengthy list of his concubines, to suppress the mission. The Jesuits were to leave his kingdom within twenty days, or die; and he burned nearly a third of their 240 chapels. The Provincial Valignani returned from Italy to find his mission on the brink of destruction. He had taken a few noble Japanese youths to Europe, and was bringing them back to tell their fellows of the grandeur of Rome and Spain. As a Jesuit he was forbidden to enter the kingdom. With remarkable ease he transformed himself into an ambassador of the Viceroy of India, and was borne in a superb litter to the presence of Taicosama, on whom he showered presents and compliments. The Jesuits were allowed to remain in the country, though still forbidden to practise their religion, and the hundred priests had for some time to be content with stealthy and nocturnal ministration to their converts.