Not content with what had been accomplished in India he set out for Japan (1549) in company with a Japanese convert, who assisted him to acquire a knowledge of the language. He landed at Kagoshima, where he remained nearly a year learning the language and preparing a short treatise in Japanese on the principal articles of faith. When he had overcome these preliminary difficulties he began the work of evangelisation, and notwithstanding the energetic opposition of the bonzes or native priests he formed a flourishing community. Through central Japan he made his way preaching with success in the principal towns, but the political troubles then raging in the capital proved a serious obstacle to the success of his work. For two years and a half St. Francis continued his apostolic labours in Japan, and then returned to Goa, not indeed to rest but only to prepare for a still more hazardous mission. In Japan he discovered that one of the principal arguments used against the acceptance of the Christian faith was the fact that the Chinese, to whom the people of Japan looked with reverence, still preferred Confucius to Christ. Inspired by the hope of securing the Celestial Empire for the Church, and of ensuring thereby the conversion of the entire Eastern races, he had himself appointed ambassador to China and set off to reach the capital. On the voyage, however, he became to seriously ill that it was necessary to land him on the little island of Sancian, where in a rude hut constructed to shelter him he breathed his last. During the ten years of his mission he had won close on a million people to the faith, and he had given Christianity a hold on the people of India and Japan which no political revolutions or religious persecution could ever loosen. He was canonised in 1622. After the death of the Apostle of India the work that he had begun was carried on by his brethren of the Society of Jesus in face of very serious difficulties. They were opposed by the Brahmins, who tried to stir up persecutions, and their progress was impeded by political disturbances. The arrival of the Jesuit, Robert de' Nobili (1577- 1656), in 1605 marked a new stage in the history of the conversion of India. After a visit paid to the city of Madura,[3] where one of his brethren had been labouring for years without any visible fruit, de' Nobili came to the conclusion that the comparative failure of the Christian missionaries was due to the contempt of the Brahmins for them as Portuguese or friends of the Portuguese and as associates of the pariahs, who were regarded by the Brahmins as being little better than beasts. He determined to adopt new methods, to come to them not as a Portuguese but as a Roman, to avoid all contact with the pariahs or outcasts, to respect the national customs and caste divisions of the country, and to secure a sympathetic hearing from the Brahmins by his learning and specially by his intimate knowledge of the Indian literature.