[Buddha-l] religious pluralism in Asia

[Franz Metcalf]

Gang,

Dan Lusthaus wrote,

> And [the Jesuits] probably thought the Japanese were agents of
> Satan, preventing the salvation of countless souls, obviously
> evil for rejecting such enlightened frocked gun-runners as
> themselves.

I know you were having fun when you wrote this, Dan, but it reminded me 
of something I've been telling students in earnest and have always had 
nagging doubts about. It's the old saw that when the Jesuits learned of 
Pure Land Buddhism they lamented that that damned Lutheran heresy had 
somehow reached Japan before they had. Folks love this story, perhaps 
too much for it to be veridical (despite the really obvious parallels 
between Pure Land and Lutheran soteriology). I was wondering if you or 
anyone on the list had a locus classicus for this story--or evidence 
that it's another Hakuin-and-the-girl narrative.

Cheers,

Franz Metcalf