Anjirō

Who They Were

Anjirō (アンジロー), also written Yajirō (ヤジロウ), was a samurai of Satsuma Province in southern Kyushu and the first Japanese person on record to be baptised a Christian. He was born in 1512, in the ninth year of the Eishō era (永正, えいしょう), during the Muromachi period (1336–1573). His life before 1547 is known only through the account he gave to the Jesuits: a man of the warrior class who committed murder in his home domain and fled Japan to escape the consequences.

He died in China in 1550, a few years after leaving Japan for the last time. In the Jesuit record he appears under his baptismal name, Paulo de Santa Fé.

Life and Career

Anjirō's flight from Satsuma carried him across the East China Sea to Portuguese Malacca, the trading port on the Malay Peninsula that served as the hub of Portugal's commercial and missionary activity in Asia. There he attached himself to a Portuguese ship, and it was through that connection that he met Francis Xavier (1506–1552), the Jesuit missionary then working in the region.

Xavier saw in the fugitive an opening into Japan, a country no Jesuit had yet entered. Anjirō was baptised — the first Japanese Christian of record — and given the name Paulo de Santa Fé. He then travelled with Xavier as his interpreter and guide.

The party that sailed for Japan was the first Jesuit mission to the country. Alongside Xavier went two other Jesuits, two Japanese companions, and a Chinese companion who had also been baptised a Catholic. Anjirō's role was to translate and to introduce the missionaries to a society whose language and customs they could not navigate alone.

He returned to Japan with Xavier, but did not stay. He left again for the Asian mainland and died in China in 1550, aged about thirty-eight.

Why They Matter

Anjirō is the point at which Japanese and European religious history first touch in the written record. Every later account of the Christian century in Japan (the period usually called the kirishitan キリシタン era) begins from his baptism and from the mission he made possible.

His importance is not that of a scholar or a saint. It is that of a translator and a go-between at a single hinge moment: a Japanese speaker who could explain Japan to Francis Xavier, and who could explain Xavier to the Japanese. The first Jesuit mission to Japan existed because a samurai wanted passage out of Malacca and Xavier wanted passage into Japan.

His own account of his past — the murder, the flight — was given to the Jesuits and shaped how they understood the man they were relying on. It is one of the earliest extended first-person narratives of a Japanese life to reach Europe.

The Name in Japanese

The name is written in katakana, the Japanese syllabary used for foreign words, names, and emphasis:

ヤジロウ

• Kana reading: ヤジロウ (yajirō)
• Romaji: Yajirō (also rendered Anjirō, アンジロー)
• Alternative kanji spelling: 弥次郎

The katakana form is the one used in the historical record for this figure. It is not a Chinese-derived name written in kanji; it is a Japanese personal name transcribed phonetically. Each character is a syllable, not a meaning-bearing unit:

• ヤ (ya) — the syllable ya. Katakana has no inherent meaning; this character simply represents the sound.
• ジ (ji) — the syllable ji, a voiced form of shi (シ). Again, sound only.
• ロ (ro) — the syllable ro.
• ウ (u) — the vowel u, here lengthening the final o of -rō. In modern romanisation the long vowel is marked with a macron: Yajirō.

The name is also found written in kanji as 弥次郎:

• 弥 (ya) — a common kanji used phonetically in given names; its core meanings include "increasingly," "more and more," and "extensive."
• 次 (ji) — "next," "following," "second."
• 郎 (rō) — "young man," "son"; a standard ending in male given names.

The kanji spelling 弥次郎 is a conventional way of writing the sound Yajirō with characters that carry auspicious or ordinary male-name meanings. The katakana ヤジロウ is a phonetic transcription of the same name. The variant Anjirō (アンジロー) differs only in the first syllable, an rather than ya — a shift that appears in the Portuguese sources and in later Japanese usage.

Legacy

Anjirō's name survives chiefly in two forms: as the first Japanese Christian, and as the interpreter who opened Japan to Francis Xavier. The mission he joined in 1549 is remembered as the beginning of Jesuit activity in Japan, and his baptism as the first entry in a history that would run for the better part of a century.

He did not live to see that history unfold. He died in China in 1550, within a year or so of the mission's arrival, and the later story of Japanese Christianity belongs to others. What remains attached to his name is the crossing itself: a Satsuma samurai, a Portuguese ship, and a missionary who needed a voice.