fury, to bow to their ruling that no one of Jewish (and, by extension, mixed) blood be admitted to the Jesuit order, as they could be classified as 'New Christians’ or crypto-Jews. But the Japanese were a different matter. Valignano delighted in ‘these most cultivated and intelligent people’. He quickly grasped that Japan was totally different from anything Christianity had hitherto encountered: ‘It is impossible either in India or in Europe to evaluate or settle the problems of Japan. Nor can one even understand or imagine how things happen there - it is a different world.’ From the first he favored a Japanese clergy, and on his third visit had two native priests ordained. Leaving aside Chinese culture, which he respected, 'this people is the best and most civilized of all the East, and it is the most apt to be taught and to adopt our holy law, and to produce the finest Christianity in the East, as it is already doing.’ Three years later he boasted that Japanese converts numbered 150,000 and included a high proportion of the nobility and gentry, something which had not happened anywhere else in the East. The existence of a single language, he thought, made all the difference in staging a national mission. And then, he added, the Japanese appeared to be the only eastern people who accepted Christianity from disinterested motives, moved by faith and reason alone. 'We have no jurisdiction whatsoever in Japan. We cannot compel them to do anything they do not wish to do. We have to use pure persuasion and force of argument. They will not suffer being slapped or beaten, or imprisonment, or any of the, methods commonly used with other Asian Christians. They are so touchy they will not brook even a single harsh or impolite word.’ He liked their spirit. He admired their courage - 'the most warlike and bellicose race yet discovered on the earth’. He thought Japanese Christians would willingly die for their faith, and, in sum, he concluded that Japan was the only mission which held any prospect of soon becoming a healthy and self-supporting Christian kingdom with a trustworthy native hierarchy and clergy of its own. Other Jesuits shared his view: among them, Japan was by far the most popular posting. Unfortunately, neither Rome nor Portugal was willing to take the risk of a native clergy. Neither was ready to treat Japan as a special case, and accord its inhabitants chances and privileges denied elsewhere. Nor did they accept Valignano's estimate of Japan's desire and capacity to preserve its political, economic and cultural independence. The Pope saw no reason to make concessions; and from 1580 the Portuguese were ruled by Philip Il of Spain, and their policy thus submerged beneath an expanding imperialist system. What followed could be called one of the great tragedies of history. Of course, within the Church, the Jesuits were suspect: to outsiders it looked as though they were asking to be granted a monopoly of Japan's Spiritual and economic welfare. In his report of 1580 Valignano emphasized that the Japanese derived enormous benefit from the Portuguese ‘great ship’ which called annually at Nagasaki. The Portuguese then had a virtual stranglehold over the trade in valuable goods between the Persian Gulf and the Yellow Sea, and as there was a ban on direct trade between China and Japan, the Jesuits acted as intermediaries, especially as bullion-brokers, from Nagasaki, which they made their headquarters. Trade and religion were inextricably mixed, not to say confused. It is not clear whether the Japanese authorities permitted Jesuit evangelism to continue because they feared that, if the Jesuits left, the great ship would no longer call. But they were certainly highly suspicious of western motives, as Valignano realized and warned. On the whole, the Japanese trusted the Jesuits but no one else. Unfortunately, no one else trusted the Jesuits. They needed the profit from their bullion-broking in order to finance their missions in Japan, which were run at a considerable loss. Valignano had drawn up a formal contract in 1578 with the Macao mercantile ring, which had been approved by Pope Gregory XIII - ‘this could not properly be called trade, since it was done out of pure necessity’ (1582). But if the Pope knew the facts he seems to have made little effort to convey them to other interested clerical bodies. The Jesuits were actually in debt; but the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the secular clergy and the Protestants were quite sure the trade had made the Society fabulously rich. Moreover the Dominicans had great influence over the Spanish government, which of course controlled Portuguese possessions after 1580. Although the thrones had been united on the clear understanding that the two 104