as a political menace to their rule. The Christians, as a sizable group of Japanese owing some sort of vague allegiance to a remote European “ruler,” the Pope, were in their eyes a group which could not be trusted and a possible threat to the reestablished unity of Japan. Furthermore, Hideyoshi and the early Tokugawa were fully aware of the colonial expansion of the European powers in Southeast Asia, where the Christian missionaries had seemed to serve as forerunners of military penetration and conquest. The Japanese leaders were desirous of retaining profitable trade relations with the Europeans, but they gradually came to the conclusion that for reasons of national safety and political stability, Christianity must go.
In 1587, the very year Hideyoshi completed the subjugation of western Japan, he issued a decree ordering all Christian missionaries banned from Japan. However, he made little effort to enforce this decree until ten years later, when irritated by the bickering between the Portuguese Jesuits and the Spanish Franciscans, who had started missionary activities in Japan in 1593, he executed nine European priests and seventeen native Christians.
Ieyasu at first reversed this stern policy, befriending Spanish missionaries in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade Spanish merchants to establish direct trade contacts in the Edo region. The arrival at this time of Protestant Dutch and English traders, who had no interest in proselytizing, convinced Ieyasu that it was not necessary to tolerate Christianity in order to retain trade relations with European countries. The Dutch established a trading post at Hirado, an island off the