Anjirō (アンジロー) or Yajirō (弥次郎, ヤジロウ), baptized as Paulo de Santa Fé, was the first recorded Japanese Christian, who lived in the 16th century.
After committing a murder in his home domain of Satsuma in southern Kyushu, he fled to Portuguese Malacca and he sought out Saint Francis Xavier (1506–1552) and returned to Japan with him as an interpreter.
In the port of Kagoshima, he met the Portuguese captain of a trading ship, Alvaro Vas, to whom he confessed his deed and described his hardships as an outlaw.
[7] The party landed in Kagoshima on August 15, 1549 and soon attracted attention as foreigners who came all the way from India, or Tenjiku, which was where the Japanese understood as the birthplace of Buddhism.
[10] Xavier acknowledged that Anjirō was uneducated in the written language (Classical Chinese) and so could not read well enough to give evidence about the religious affairs of his homeland.
[14] After Xavier returned from his unsuccessful endeavour in Kyoto, during which he realized both the Emperor of Japan and the Ashikaga shogun were powerless during the chaotic Sengoku period and their conversion would achieve nothing, he was recalled to Goa in 1552 and set his sights on China, dying on Shangchuan Island off its coast in the same year.