"To this land we had longed for"
's ship was meant to go elsewhere, but the wind carried it to Japan. He wrote afterwards: "The wind blew towards Japan, and so, against the will of the captain and the crew, we had to keep to the route to Japan. Neither the devil nor his servants could hinder our voyage. And so God brought us to this land we had longed for, and we arrived in August 1549, on the feast of Our Lady, the 15th." They could not put in at any other port, he said, and came to Kagoshima, the home town of of the Holy Faith, where they were welcomed by his family and by others.
Sources: "to this land we had longed for"
Xavier's own letter, translated in a history by Kadota Akira for the Catholic Diocese of Kagoshima, and Schurhammer's biography, which uses the letters.
With Xavier came the Jesuit priest , Brother Juan Fernández, a Chinese servant, Manuel, and an Indian servant from Malabar, Amador; Paulo brought two Japanese companions, João and António.
A year in Kagoshima
Paulo's mother, wife and daughter welcomed them. On 29 September 1549, the feast of St Michael, the lord of Satsuma, , received Xavier and gave him leave to preach. Xavier liked the people at once. "They are the best people thus far discovered," he wrote. He made a friend of the abbot of a Zen temple, and with Paulo's help put together an account of the faith in Japanese, which he read aloud twice a day. About a hundred people were baptised, and fifteen more at a castle Schurhammer calls Ichiku.
Where did Takahisa receive him? Hioki City notes that, by one theory, the meeting took place at Ichiuji Castle in Ijūin, Takahisa's seat at the time.
By the end of September 1550 the lord had turned against the mission under pressure from the Buddhist clergy. Xavier left for Hirado, and Paulo stayed behind to look after the little community.
Three churches
In 1908 Father , the priest who made the first French and Japanese dictionary, built a stone church in honour of Xavier. It burned in the air raids of 1945. Part of its stone wall still stands in Xavier Park, with a bust of Xavier made in 1949, and a group of life-size statues of Xavier, Yajirō and Bernardo was made by Mizoguchi Moriichi in 1999.
A second church was dedicated in 1949 for the 400th anniversary of Xavier's coming, with a donation from the Pope. It was taken down in 1998 because of termite damage, and in 1999, for the 450th anniversary, the present was dedicated. Its outside is meant to recall the sailing ship that brought Xavier; the red of the stained glass stands for his zeal and the blue for the sea.
On the Gionnosu shore, where Xavier is held to have landed, a memorial was set up in 1978.
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