Shipwrecked Portuguese traders were the first Christians to set foot in Japan, in Tanageshima, an island off Kyushu, in 1543. As far as Christianity is concerned though, it was not until Saint Francis Xavier and his Jesuit missionaries landed in Kagoshima, southwest Kyushu, in 1549 that things really took off. Initially, the local daimyo were eager to convert, largely in order to acquire firearms and other advanced European technologies, while often also maintaining their original religious belief and practices. It wasn't only about trade, though; many feudal lords were also attracted by Jesuit austerity, which accorded with their bushido values, while the poor were attracted by social programmes which helped raise their standard of living.

The port of Nagasaki was created in 1571 to trade with the Portuguese. It soon became a centre of Jesuit missionary activity, from where Catholicism spread rapidly throughout Kyushu. At first, the converts were tolerated by the authorities, and in the late 1570s the then ruler of Japan, the great, unifying general Oda Nobunaga , used Christianity, with all its material benefits, to win over his remaining influential opponents against the troublesome Buddhists. In 1582 he was succeeded by Toyotomi Hideyoshi who completed the unification of Japan. To Hideyoshi's mind the Christians had now served their purpose, and their increasing stranglehold on trade, coupled with a growing influence in secular affairs, was beginning to pose a threat. Persecution began in 1587 when Hideyoshi ordered the expulsion of all missionaries, though there was little immediate action; in fact the number of foreign missionaries increased temporarily with the arrival of Spanish Franciscan friars. In 1597, however, Hideyoshi struck again: six Franciscan priests and twenty local converts were crucified upside-down in Nagasaki.

Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu succeeded Hideyoshi in 1598. Though generally more tolerant of the Christian Europeans - principally in the interests of maintaining good trade relations - Ieyasu passed several edicts prohibiting Christianity after 1612. It was a short reprieve. Ieyasu's son, Hidetada , turned persecution into an art form when he came to power in 1618. Suspected Christians were forced to trample on pictures of Christ or the Virgin Mary to prove their innocence. If they refused, they were tortured, burnt at the stake or thrown into boiling sulphur; over 3000 local converts were martyred between 1597 and 1660.

Things came to a head with the Battle of Shimabara in 1637, when a Christian-led army rebelled against the local daimyo . Japan had been gradually closing itself off from the world during the 1620s, but this was the final straw. Christian worship in Japan was forbidden and the edicts were only finally repealed in the late nineteenth century. Amazingly, a sizeable number of converts in Kyushu continued to uphold their faith, disguised as onando buppo "back-room Buddhism", throughout this time. When foreign missionaries again appeared in Nagasaki in the mid-1860s, they were astonished to discover some 20,000 of these "hidden Christians" .

Today, Christians represent less than two percent of Japan's population. Though churches can be found even in small rural towns, Christmas is only celebrated as a brief commercial fling. Christianity - however superficially - has also had an impact on Japanese weddings . It is currently fashionable to get married in Western-style chapels, created solely for that purpose, partly because it appears exotic, and partly because it's less complex than the traditional Shinto ceremony.