Alessandro Valignano - Late Life and The Decline of The Mission

Late Life and The Decline of The Mission

Alessandro Valignano exercised his position as Visitor by overseeing all of the Jesuit missions in Asia from the major Portuguese port of Macau, but his primary focus was always on the Japanese mission. By 1600, the Jesuit mission there was in decline because of persecution from the Kanpaku Toyotomi Hideyoshi and later, most severely, under the Tokugawas.

Tokugawa Ieyasu worked diligently to thwart all European attempts to reestablish contact with Japan, religious or otherwise, after his rise to power in 1603. All samurai and members of the army were required to forswear Christianity and remove Christian emblems or designs from their clothing. Later, daimyo and commoners were ordered to follow the same restrictions. In 1636, Tokugawa Iemitsu enacted the Sakoku edict which ended almost all contact with the outside world. No Japanese ships were allowed to leave the country under pain of death, and any Japanese who attempted to return from abroad would likewise be executed. The policy of isolation was forcibly ended by American Commodore Perry, in 1853, beginning a period of rapid modernization that included the Meiji Restoration and reopening the country to the international community.

Valignano died in Macau during January of 1606 and one of his Jesuit admirers noted in his Panegyric: "In we lament not only our former visitor and father, but, as some would have it, the apostle of Japan."