I've been doing some reading about 16th and 17th century Jesuits in pretty much two separate areas of study, Jesuit life and scholarship in Western Europe, and Jesuit missions in Asia. A couple of my sources in the former set of readings mention Jesuits who were themselves from Japan, and the latter sometimes mention Japanese Christians who became priests prior to the expulsion of Catholics from Japan. (Mario Scaduto's Catalogo dei Gesuiti d'ltalia, 1540-1565 lists Jesuits with their country of origin as Japan alongside Jesuits from other European nations, for instance.) I'd really like to know more about these guys. Were their career opportunities and geographical spread any different from Jesuits of European descent? Were there still opportunities for Japanese Christians to become Jesuits later than 1565, and when was the cutoff point where Japan's national policies or other factors made this no longer feasible? Basically, sources like Wikipedia can state with reasonable confidence from the historical record that the last (European) Jesuit in Japan "was either killed or reconverted by 1644" -- what about the last Japanese Jesuits abroad?
Oh hey, I can answer this one myself now! Several Jesuits of Japanese descent, like Peter Kibe (ordained 1620) and former boy delegate Julian Nakaura (ordained in 1608) were executed during the suppressions of Christians of the 1620s and 1630s -- other individuals affiliated with the Society of Jesus (as novices, lay brothers, or as full-blown priests) left Japan and found refuge in the Jesuit College in Macau. Some 33 priests of Japanese descent and 26 lay brothers of Japanese descent had relocated to the College there by 1616. The edict of 1614 expelling missionaries appears to have been the formal bar there. There were other Japanese Christian expats present in Macau at this time and Japanese Jesuits and lay brothers may have served as a go-between for this community and the Jesuit community.
Some of those entered into mission work, clustered in Asia and India. Several Japanese Jesuits became prominent in the Jesuit mission in Cambodia -- the Cambodia mission was managed by three Japanese Jesuits (Justo Kazariya, Romão Nishi, and Leão Chinzaiemon), all of whom were educated at the Jesuit college in Macau. Japanese men seeking to become priests, generally those of aristocratic background and from Christian families, were in a better position to be ordained than converts from other countries -- frankly due to European Jesuits' racist assessments of converts from other countries, even within Asia, identifying other converts of African or Indian descent as insufficiently intelligent for any other role but servitude but the Japanese as intelligent enough and strong-willed enough to be suitable for ordination. (At least under some conditions, and still not preferable to European priests. Reading Jesuit writings on this topic, even by Jesuits who were more open and positive regarding Japanese people and Japanese culture than their predecessors, gets pretty rank in the racism department.) I'll need to hunt down more data about Jesuits of expat Japanese descent post-1644, but I now have the keys to hunting down specific individuals.