The article examines the question of the financing of the Jesuit mission to Japan by placing it in the context of its global strategy, marked by a complex blend of spiritual and political issues. It is based on the analysis of a specific type of source, namely the accounts compiled by Alessandro Valignano, the visitor to the East Indies in charge of inspecting the Asian missions between the 1580s and the early seventeenth century. In so doing, the point is not so much to analyze the internal workings of the Society of Jesus in Japan as to assess its position relative to the other Asian missionary fields (particularly India), as well as its material and spiritual links with Portugal and Rome, its main source of funding. The Jesuits were thus faced with the double task of accounting for the financial difficulties they were experiencing in Japan and justifying the initiatives they took as a consequence, sometimes in disregard of the decisions made in Europe. Contrary to what has been stated elsewhere, the search for new resources does not seem to have been an objective in itself nor the object of separate thinking. The specificities of the mission’s financing should be understood with regard to the mission’s position and its particularly ambitious strategy. The pragmatic financing solutions devised by the Jesuits did not reflect any kind of capitalistic attitude, but were merely the consequence of their anxiousness to develop, at all costs, Japanese Christianity.