An attack upon the emperor by Mōri Motonari, king of Nagato, who forced the city of Miyako, and set it on fire, detained Vilela for a while in the neighboring town of Sakai, the most commercial place in Japan, which seems, at that time, to have been a free city, as it were, with an independent government of its own; and there also a church was planted. But the emperor soon reëstablished his affairs; and although, from the hostility of Mōri, the church at Yamaguchi was very much depressed, everything went on well at Miyako, where Vilela was joined, in 1565, by Louis Almeida, and by a young missionary, Louis Froez, lately arrived from Malacca. Of their journey from Kuchinotsu to Miyako we have a detailed account in a long and very interesting letter of Almeida’s. His visit to Miyako was only temporary. Froez remained there, and from him we have a long series of letters, historical and descriptive, as well as religious, which, for a period of thirty years following, throw great light on the history and internal condition of Japan. At this time the entire empire, since and at present so stable, was the scene of constant revolutions. Very shortly after Froez’s arrival Miyoshi and Matsunaga conspired against their patron (_i. e._ the Shōgun Yoshiteru), dethroned him, and drove him to cut himself open, as did great numbers of his relatives and partisans. These nobles, hitherto favorable to the missionaries, now published an edict against them, probably to secure the favor of the bonzes; and Vilela and Froez were thus again driven to take refuge at Sakai, where they had a few converts. But the believers at Miyako stood firm, and a new revolution soon occurred, headed by a noble called Wada Iga-no-kami, and by Nobunaga (Oda Nobunaga), king of Owari,—which province adjoined the emperor’s special territory on the east, a prince whose military prowess had already made him from a petty noble the master of eighteen provinces in the eastern part of Nippon. In 1566 Wada and Nobunaga proclaimed as emperor a brother of the late one—a bonze who had escaped from the rebels. Miyako was regained, and the new emperor established there A. D. 1567. All real authority remained, however, with Nobunaga, who showed himself very hostile to the Buddhist bonzes, they having generally taken the side of the late rebels. He even destroyed many of their temples, using the idols which they contained as materials for a new palace. He easily granted to Wada, who was himself a sort of half convert, the reëstablishment of the missionaries at Miyako, which was soon confirmed by an imperial edict, issued in 1568; and, in spite of an attempt at interference on the part of the Dairi, the new religion, under the protection of Wada, who was appointed governor of Miyako, soon reached a very flourishing condition. [Illustration: IMAGE OF ODA NOBUNAGA From Dening’s _New Life of Toyotomi Hideyoshi_]