others."

This most disheartening record underwent a complete change in 1576,
when the son of the Bungo feudatory, a youth of some sixteen years,
and, two years later, the feudatory himself, Otomo, embraced the
Christian faith. In the first Annual Letter sent to Rome after these
events a striking admission is made: "It is Otomo, next to God, whom
the Jesuits have to thank for their success in Japan." This
appreciation looks somewhat exaggerated when placed side by side with
the incidents that occurred in Sumitada's fief, as related above.
Nevertheless, Otomo certainly did render powerful aid, not within his
own fief alone but also through his influence elsewhere. Thus, he did
not hesitate to have recourse to arms in order to obtain for the
Jesuits access to the island of Amakusa, where one of the local
barons, tempted originally by tradal prospects and afterwards urged
by his wife, called upon his vassals to choose between conversion or
exile, and issued an order that any Buddhist priests refusing to
accept Christianity would have their property confiscated and their
persons banished.

Practically the whole population became converts under the pressure
of these edicts, and it is thus seen that Christianity owed much of
its success in Kyushu to methods which recall Islam and the
Inquisition. Another illustration of this is furnished by the Arima
fief, which adjoined that of Omura where Sumitada ruled. The heads of
these two fiefs were brothers, and thus when Sumitada embraced
Christianity the Jesuits received an invitation to visit Arima at the
ports of Kuchinotsu and Shimabara, where from that time Portuguese
ships repaired frequently. In 1576, the Arima baron, seeing the
prosperity and power which had followed the conversion of his brother
Sumitada, accepted baptism and became the "Prince Andrew" of
missionary records. In those records we read that "the first thing
Prince Andrew did after his baptism was to convert the chief temple
of his capital into a church, its revenues being assigned for the
maintenance of the building and the support of the missionaries. He
then took measures to have the same thing done in the other towns of
his fief, and he seconded the preachers of the Gospel so well in
everything else that he could flatter himself that he soon would not
have one single idolater in his states." This fanatical "Prince
Andrew" survived his baptism by two years only, but during that time
twenty thousand conver