After the mention of a land called Zipangu in the book of Marco Polo (1254–1324), Japan became a mythical place in the European imagination. With the 1548 arrival of the Jesuit Francis Xavier (1506–1552) in Japan, the first early modern European impressions seemed to confirm the Iberian desires of evangelization and expansion of cultural hegemony in East Asia. The letters of Francis Xavier depict a society that was sophisticated and open to evangelization, “the best people that has yet been discovered.”1 However, the dream of a Christian Japan was threatened in 1586, when the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598) banned the preaching and practice of Christianity.

In 1596, another event would shake the ambitions to include Japan in the Catholic project. The Manila galleon San Felipe wrecked on the coast of Shikoku on October 19. Several Franciscans, who had arrived in Japan in 1594, attempted to act as intermediaries between the galleon crew and passengers and the Japanese authorities. The insistence of the missionaries on preaching in public, the intention of keeping the valuable booty, and internal political and economic issues prompted Hideyoshi to seize the cargo and punish the nanban, or Southern Barbarians, as the Europeans were called. Twenty Japanese Christians (three of them Jesuit lay brothers) and six Franciscans were put to death by crucifixion. This event ruined the image of Japan as a utopian land for the future of Christianity and provoked harsh accusations between Jesuits and Franciscans.