Note 2 — LAFCADIO HEARN (continued 3)
Reading edition
The missionary work was begun by St. Francis Xavier, who landed at Kagoshima in Kyūshū on the 15th of August, 1549. A curious fact is that the word Bateren, a corruption of the Portuguese or Spanish padre, and so adopted into the language two centuries ago, still lingers among the common people in some provinces as a synonym for "wicked magician." Another curious fact worth mentioning is that a particular kind of bamboo screen—from behind which a person can see all that goes on outside the house without being himself seen—is still called a Kirishitan (Christian).
Griffis explains the larger success of the Jesuit missions of the sixteenth century partly by the resemblance between the outer forms of Roman Catholicism and the outer forms of Buddhism. This shrewd judgment has been confirmed by the researches of Ernest Satow (see Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. ii. part 2), who has published facsimiles of some documents proving that the grant to the foreign missionaries by the Lord of Yamaguchi was made that they might "preach the law of Buddha,"—the new religion being at first taken for a higher form of Buddhism. But those who have read the old Jesuit letters from Japan, or even the more familiar compilation of Charlevoix, must recognize that the success of the missions could not be thus entirely explained. It presents us with psychological phenomena of a very remarkable order,—phenomena perhaps never again to be repeated in the history of religion, and analogous to those strange forms of emotionalism classed by Hecker as contagious (see his Epidemics of the Middle Ages). The old Jesuits understood the deeper emotional character of the Japanese infinitely better than any modern missionary society: they studied with marvelous keenness all the springs of the race-life, and knew how to operate them. Where they failed, our modern Evangelical propagandists need not hope to succeed. Still, even in the most flourishing period of the Jesuit missions, only six hundred thousand converts were claimed.