the Bateren in this document,--that of political conspiracy under the
guise of religion, with a view to getting possession of the
government; and that of intolerance, towards both the Shinto and the
Buddhist forms of native worship. The intolerance is sufficiently
proved by the writings of the Jesuits themselves. The charge of
conspiracy was less easy to prove; but who could reasonably have
doubted that, were opportunity offered, the Roman Catholic orders
would attempt to control the general government precisely as they had
been able to control local government already in the lordships of
converted daimyo. Besides, we may be sure that by the time at which
the edict was issued, Iyeyasu must have heard of many matters likely
to give him a most evil opinion of Roman Catholicism:--the story of
the Spanish conquests in America, and the extermination of the West
Indian races; the story of the persecutions in the Netherlands, and
of the work of the Inquisition elsewhere; the story of the attempt of
Philip II to conquer England, and of the loss of the two great [313]
Armadas. The edict was issued in 1614, and Iyeyasu had found
opportunity to inform himself about some of these matters as early as
1600. In that year the English pilot Will Adams had arrived at Japan
in charge of a Dutch ship, Adams had started on this eventful voyage
in the year 1598,--that is to say, just ten years after the defeat of
the first Spanish Armada, and one year after the ruin of the second.
He had seen the spacious times of great Elizabeth--who was yet
alive;--he had very probably seen Howard and Seymour and Drake and
Hawkins and Frobisher and Sir Richard Grenville, the hero of 1591.
For this Will Adams was a Kentish man, who had "serued for Master and
Pilott in her Majesties ships ..." The Dutch vessel was seized
immediately upon her arrival at Kyushu; and Adams and his shipmates
were taken into custody by the daimyo of Bungo, who reported the fact
to Iyeyasu. The advent of these Protestant sailors was considered an
important event by the Portuguese Jesuits, who had their own reasons
for dreading the results of an interview between such heretics and
the ruler of Japan. But Iyeyasu also happened to think the event an
important one; and he ordered that Adams should be sent to him at
Osaka. The malevolent anxiety of the Jesuits about the matter had not
escaped Iyeyasu's penetrating observation. They endeavoured again and
again to have the sailors killed, according to the [314] written
statement of Adams himself, who was certainly no liar; and they had
been able--in Bungo to frighten two scoundrels of the ship's company
into giving false testimony.* "The Iesuites and the Portingalls,"
wrote Adams, "gaue many euidences against me and the rest to the
Emperour [Iyeyasu], that we were theeues and robbers of all
nations,--and [that] were we suffered to liue,--it should be against
the profit of his Highnes, and the land." But Iyeyasu was perhaps all
the more favourably inclined towards Adams by the eagerness of the
Jesuits to have him killed--"crossed [crucified]," as Adams called
it,--"the custome of iustice in Japan, as hanging is in our land." He
gave them answer, says Adams, "that we had as yet not doen to him nor
to none of his lande any harme or dammage: therefore against Reason
and Iustice to put vs to death." ... And there came to pass precisely
what the Jesuits had most feared,--what they had vainly endeavoured
by intimidation, by slander, by all possible intrigue to prevent,--an
interview between Iyeyasu and the heretic Adams. [315] "Soe that as
soon as I came before him," wrote Adams, "he demanded of me of what
countrey we were: so I answered him in all points; for there was
nothing that he demanded not, both concerning warre and peace between
countrey and countrey: so that the particulars here to wryte would be
too tedious. And for that time I was commanded to prison, being well
vsed, with one of our mariners that cam with me to serue me." From
another letter of Adams it would seem that this interview lasted far
into the night, and that Iyeyasu's questions referred especially to
politics and religion. "He asked," says Adams, "whether our countrey
had warres? I answered him yea, with the Spaniards and
Portugals--beeing in peace with all other nations. Further he asked
me in what I did beleeue? I said, in God, that made heauen and earth.
He asked me diverse other questions of things of religion, and many
other things: As, what way we came to the country? Having a chart of
the whole world, I shewed him through the Straight of Magellan. At
which he wondred, and thought me to lie. Thus, from one thing to
another, I abode with him till midnight." ... The two men liked each
other at sight, it appears. Of Iyeyasu, Adams significantly observes:
"He viewed me well, and seemed to be wonderful favourable." Two days
later Iyeyasu again sent for Adams, and cross-questioned him just
about those matters which the [316] Jesuits wanted to remain in the
dark. "He demaunded also as conserning the warres between the
Spaniard or Portingall and our countrey, and the reasons: the which I
gaue him to vnderstand of all things, which he was glad to heare, as
it seemed to me. In the end I was commaunded to prisson agein, but my
lodging was bettered." Adams did not see Iyeyasu again for nearly six
weeks: then he was sent for, and cross-questioned a third time. The
result was liberty and favour. Thereafter, at intervals, Iyeyasu used
to send for him; and presently we hear of him teaching the great
statesman "some points of jeometry, and understanding of the art of
mathematickes, with other things." ... Iyeyasu gave him many
presents, as well as a good living, and commissioned him to build
some ships for deep-sea sailing. Eventually, the poor pilot was
created a samurai, and given an estate. "Being employed in the
Emperour's seruice," he wrote, "he hath given me a liuing, like vnto
a lordship in England, with eightie or ninetie husbandmen that be as
my slaues or seruents: the which, or the like president [precedent],
was neuer here before geven to any stranger." ... Witness to the
influence of Adams with Iyeyasu is furnished by the correspondence of
Captain Cock, of the English factory, who thus wrote home about him
in 1614: "The truth is the Emperour esteemeth hym much, and he may
goe in and speake with hym at all times, when [317] kynges and
princes are kept ovt."** It was through this influence that the
English were allowed to establish their factory at Hirado. There is
no stranger seventeenth-century romance than that of this plain
English pilot,--with only his simple honesty and common-sense to help
him,--rising to such extraordinary favour with the greatest and
shrewdest of all Japanese rulers. Adams was never allowed, however,
to return to England,--perhaps because his services were deemed too
precious to lose. He says himself in his letters that Iyeyasu never
refused him anything that he asked for,*** except the privilege of
revisiting England: when he asked that, once too often, the "ould
Emperour" remained silent.
[*"Daily more and more the Portugalls incensed the justices and the
people against vs. And two of our men, as traytors, gaue themselves
in seruice to the king [daimyo], beeing all in all with the
Portugals, hauing by them their liues warranted. The one was called
Gilbert de Conning, whose mother dwelleth at Middleborough, who gaue
himself out to be marchant of all the goods in the shippe. The other
was called Iobn Abelson Van Owater. These traitours sought all manner
of wayes to get the goods into their hands, and made known vnto them
all things that had passed in our voyage. Nine dayes after our
arriuall, the great king of the land [Iyeyasu] sent for me to come
vnto him. "--Letter of Will Adams to his wife.]
**"It has plessed God to bring things to pass, so as in ye eyes of ye
world [must seem] strange; for the Spaynnard and Portingall hath bin
my bitter enemies to death; and now theay must seek to me, an
unworthy wretch; for the Spaynard as well as the Portingall must haue
all their negosshes [negotiations] go thorough my hand.--" Letter of
Adams dated January 12, 1613.
***Even favours for the people who had sought to bring about his
death. "I pleased him so," wrote Adams, "that what I said he would
not contrarie. At which my former enemies did wonder; and at this
time must entreat me to do them a friendship, which to both Spaniards
and Portingals have I doen: recompencing them good for euill. So, to
passe my time to get my liuing, it hath cost mee great labour and
trouble at the first, but God hath blessed my labour."]
The correspondence of Adams proves that Iyeyasu disdained no means of
obtaining direct information about foreign affairs in regard to
religion and politics. As for affairs in Japan, he had at his
disposal the most perfect system of espionage ever [318] established;
and he knew all that was going on. Yet he waited, as we have seen,
fourteen years before he issued his edict. Hideyoshi's edict was,
indeed, renewed by him in 1606; but that referred particularly to the
public preaching of Christianity; and while the missionaries
outwardly conformed to the law, he continued to suffer them within
his own dominions. Persecutions were being carried on elsewhere; but
the secret propaganda was also being carried on, and the missionaries
could still hope. Yet there was menace in the air, like the heaviness
preceding storms. Captain Saris, writing from Japan in 1613, records
a pathetic incident which is very suggestive. "I gaue leaue," he
says, "to divers women of the better sort to come into my Cabbin,
where the picture of Venus, with her sonne Cupid, did hang somewhat
wantonly set out in a large frame. They, thinking it to bee Our Ladie
and her sonne, fell downe and worshipped it, with shewes of great
deuotion, telling me in a whispering manner (that some of their own
companions, which were not so, might not heare), that they were
Christianos: whereby we perceived them to be Christians, conuerted by
the Portugall Iesuits." ... When Iyeyasu first took strong measures,
they were directed, not against the Jesuits, but against a more
imprudent order,--as we know from Adams's correspondence. "In the
yeer 1612," he says, "is put downe all the sects of the
Franciscannes. The Jesouets hau [319] what priuiledge ... theare
beinge in Nangasaki, in which place only may be so manny as will of
all sectes: in other places not so many permitted...." Roman
Catholicism was given two more years' grace after the Franciscan
episode.
Why Iyeyasu should have termed it a "false and corrupt religion,"
both in his Legacy and elsewhere, remains to be considered. From the
Far-Eastern point of view he could scarcely have judged it otherwise,
after an impartial investigation. It was essentially opposed to all
the beliefs and traditions upon which Japanese society had been
founded. The Japanese State was an aggregate of religious
communities, with a God-King at its head;--the customs of all these
communities had the force of religious laws, and ethics were
identified with obedience to custom; filial piety was the basis of
social order, and loyalty itself was derived from filial piety. But
this Western creed, which taught that a husband should leave his
parents and cleave to his wife, held filial piety to be at best an
inferior virtue. It proclaimed that duty to parents, lords, and
rulers remained duty only when obedience involved no action opposed
to Roman teaching, and that the supreme duty of obedience was not to
the Heavenly Sovereign at Kyoto, but to the Pope at Rome. Had not the
Gods and the Buddhas been called devils by these missionaries from
Portugal and Spain? Assuredly such doctrines were subversive, [320]
no matter how astutely they might be interpreted by their apologists.
Besides, the worth of a creed as a social force might be judged from
its fruits. This creed in Europe had been a ceaseless cause of
disorders, wars, persecutions, atrocious cruelties. This creed, in
Japan, had fomented great disturbances, had instigated political
intrigues, had wrought almost immeasurable mischief. In the event of
future political trouble, it would justify the disobedience of
children to parents, of wives to husbands, of subjects to lords, of
lords to shogun. The paramount duty of government was now to compel
social order, and to maintain those conditions of peace and security
without which the nation could never recover from the exhaustion of a
thousand years of strife. But so long as this foreign religion was
suffered to attack and to sap the foundations of order, there never
could be peace.... Convictions like these must have been well
established in the mind of Iyeyasu when he issued his famous edict.
The only wonder is that he should have waited so long.
Very possibly Iyeyasu, who never did anything by halves, was waiting
until Christianity should find itself without one Japanese leader of
ability. In 1611 he had information of a Christian conspiracy in the
island of Sado (a convict mining-district) whose governor, Okubo, had
been induced to adopt Christianity, and was to be made ruler of the
country if [321] the plot proved successful. But still Iyeyasu
waited. By 1614 Christianity had scarcely even an Okubo to lead the
forlorn hope. The daimyo converted in the sixteenth century were dead
or dispossessed or in banishment; the great Christian generals had
been executed; the few remaining converts of importance had been
placed under surveillance, and were practically helpless.
The foreign priests and native catechists were not cruelly treated
immediately after the proclamation of 1614. Some three hundred of
them were put into ships and sent out of the country,--together with
various Japanese suspected of religious political intrigues, such as
Takayama, former daimyo of Akashi, who was called "Justo Ucondono" by
the Jesuit writers, and who had been dispossessed and degraded by
Hideyoshi for the same reasons. Iyeyasu set no example of unnecessary
severity. But harsher measures followed upon an event which took
place in 1615,--the very year after the issuing of the edict.
Hideyori, the son of Hideyoshi, had been supplanted--fortunately for
Japan--by Iyeyasu, to whose tutelage the young man had been confided.
Iyeyasu took all care of him, but had no intention of suffering him
to direct the government of the country,--a task scarcely within the
capacity of a lad of twenty-three. In spite of various political
intrigues in which Hideyori was known to have taken part, Iyeyasu had
left him in possession [322] of large revenues, and of the strongest
fortress in Japan,--that mighty castle of Osaka, which Hideyoshi's
genius had rendered almost impregnable. Hideyori, unlike his father,
favoured the Jesuits: and he made the castle a refuge for adherents
of the "false and corrupt sect." Informed by government spies of a
dangerous intrigue there preparing, Iyeyasu resolved to strike; and
he struck hard. In spite of a desperate defence, the great fortress
was stormed and burnt--Hideyori perishing in the conflagration. One
hundred thousand lives are said to have been lost in this siege.
Adams wrote thus quaintly of Hideyori's fate, and the results of his
conspiracy:--
"Hee mad warres with the Emperour ... allso by the Jessvits and
Ffriers, which mad belleeue he should be fauord with mirrackles and
wounders; but in fyne it proued the contrari. For the ould Emperour
against him pressentlly maketh his forces reddy by sea and land, and
compasseth his castell that he was in; although with loss of
multitudes on both sides, yet in the end rasseth the castell walles,
setteth it on fyre, and burneth hym in it. Thus ended the warres. Now
the Emperour heering of thees Jessvets and friers being in the
castell with his ennemis, and still from tym to tym agaynst hym,
coumandeth all romische sorte of men to depart ovt of his
countri--thear churches pulld dooun, and burned. This folowed in the
ould Emperour's [323] daies. Now this yeear, 1616, the old Emperour
he died. His son raigneth in his place, and hee is more hot agaynste
the romish relligion then his ffather wass: for he hath forbidden
thorough all his domynions, on paine of deth, none of his subjects to
be romish christiane; which romish seckt to prevent eueri wayes that
he maye, he hath forbidden that no stranger merchant shall abid in
any of the great citties." ...
The son here referred to was Hidetada, who, in 1617, issued an
ordinance sentencing to death every Roman priest or friar discovered
in Japan,--an ordinance provoked by the fact that many priests
expelled from the country had secretly returned, and that others had
remained to carry on their propaganda under various disguises.
Meanwhile, in every city, town, village, and hamlet throughout the
empire, measures had been taken for the extirpation of Roman
Christianity. Every community was made responsible for the existence
in it of any person belonging to the foreign creed; and special
magistrates, or inquisitors, were appointed, called Kirishitan-bugyo,
to seek out and punish members of the prohibited religion.*
Christians [324] who freely recanted were not punished, but only kept
under surveillance: those who refused to recant, even after torture,
were degraded to the condition of slaves, or else put to death. In
some parts of the country, extraordinary cruelty was practised, and
every form of torture used to compel recantation. But it is tolerably
certain that the more atrocious episodes of the persecution were due
to the individual ferocity of local governors or magistrates--as in
the case of Takenaka Uneme-no-Kami, who was compelled by the
government to perform harakiri for abusing his powers at Nagasaki,
and making persecution a means of extorting money. Be that as it may,
the persecution at last either provoked, or helped to bring about a
Christian rebellion in the daimiate of Arima,--historically
remembered as the Shimabara Revolt. In 1636 a host of peasants,
driven to desperation by the tyranny of their lords--the daimyo of
Arima and the daimyo of Karatsu (convert-districts)--rose in arms,
burnt all the Japanese temples in their vicinity, and proclaimed
religious war. Their banner bore a cross; their leaders were
converted samurai. They were soon [325] joined by Christian refugees
from every part of the country, until their numbers swelled to thirty
or forty thousand. On the coast of the Shimabara peninsula they
seized an abandoned castle, at a place called Hara, and there
fortified themselves. The local authorities could not cope with the
uprising; and the rebels more than held their own until government
forces, aggregating over 160,000 men, were despatched against them.
After a brave defence of one hundred and two days, the castle was
stormed in 1638, and its defenders, together with their women and
children, put to the sword. Officially the occurrence was treated as
a peasant revolt; and the persons considered responsible for it were
severely punished;--the lord of Shimabara (Arima) was further
sentenced to perform harakiri. Japanese historians state that the
rising was first planned and led by Christians, who designed to seize
Nagasaki, subdue Kyushu, invite foreign military help, and compel a
change of government;--the Jesuit writers would have us believe there
was no plot. One thing certain is that a revolutionary appeal was
made to the Christian element, and was largely responded to with
alarming consequences. A strong castle on the Kyushu coast, held by
thirty or forty thousand Christians, constituted a serious danger,--a
point of vantage from which a Spanish invasion of the country might
have been attempted with some [326] chance of success. The government
seems to have recognized this danger, and to have despatched in
consequence an overwhelming force to Shimabara. If foreign help could
have been sent to the rebels, the result might have been a prolonged
civil war. As for the wholesale slaughter, it represented no more
than the enforcement of Japanese law: the punishment of the peasant
revolting against his lord, under any circumstances whatever, being
death. So far as concerns the policy of such massacre, it may be
remembered that, with less provocation, Nobunaga exterminated the
Tendai Buddhists at Hiyei-san. We have every reason to pity the brave
men who perished at Shimabara, and to sympathize with their revolt
against the atrocious cruelty of their rulers. But it is necessary,
as a simple matter of justice, to consider the whole event from the
Japanese political point of view.
[*It should be borne in mind that none of these edicts were directed
against Protestant Christianity: the Dutch were not considered
Christians in the sense of the ordinances, nor were the English. The
following extract from a typical village, Kumicho, or code of
communal regulations, shows the responsibility imposed upon all
communities regarding the presence in their midst of Roman Catholic
converts or believers:--
"Every year, between the first and the third month, we will renew our
Shumon-cho If we know of any person who belongs to a prohibited sect,
we will immediately inform the Daikwan.... Servants and labourers
shall give to their masters a certificate declaring that they are not
Christians. In regard to persons who have been Christians, but have
recanted,--if such persons come to or leave the village, we promise
to report it."--See Professor Wigmore's Notes on Land-Tenure and
Local Institutions in Old Japan.]
The Dutch have been denounced for helping to crush the rebellion with
ships and cannon: they fired, by their own acknowledgment, 426 shot
into the castle. However, the extant correspondence of the Dutch
factory at Hirado proves beyond question that they were forced, under
menace, to thus act. In any event, it would be difficult to discover
a good reason for the merely religious denunciations of their
conduct,--although that conduct would be open to criticism from the
humane [327] point of view. Dutchmen could not reasonably have
refused to assist the Japanese authorities in suppressing a revolt,
merely because a large proportion of the rebels happened to profess
the religion which had been burning alive as heretics the men and
women of the Netherlands. Very possibly, not a few persons of kin to
those very Dutch had suffered in the days of Alva. What would have
happened to all the English and Dutch in Japan, if the Portuguese and
Spanish clergy could have got full control of government, ought to be
obvious.
With the massacre of Shimabara ends the real history of the
Portuguese and Spanish missions. After that event, Christianity was
slowly, steadily, implacably stamped out of visible existence. It had
been tolerated, or half-tolerated, for only sixty-five years: the
entire history of its propagation and destruction occupies a period
of scarcely ninety years. People of nearly every rank, from prince to
pauper, suffered for it; thousands endured tortures for its
sake--tortures so frightful that even three of those Jesuits who sent
multitudes to useless martyrdom were forced to deny their faith under
the infliction;* and tender women, sentenced to, the stake, carried
[328] their little ones with them into the fire, rather than utter
the words that would have saved both mother and child. Yet this
religion, for which thousands vainly died, had brought to Japan
nothing but evil disorders, persecutions, revolts, political
troubles, and war. Even those virtues of the people which had been
evolved at unutterable cost for the protection and conservation of
society,--their self-denial, their faith, their loyalty, their
constancy and courage,--were by this black creed distorted, diverted,
and transformed into forces directed to the destruction of that
society. Could that destruction have been accomplished, and a new
Roman Catholic empire have been founded upon the ruins, the forces of
that empire would have been used for the further extension of
priestly tyranny, the spread of the Inquisition, the perpetual Jesuit
warfare against freedom of conscience and human progress. Well may we
pity the victims of this pitiless faith, and justly admire their
useless courage: yet who can regret that their cause was lost? ...
Viewed from another standpoint than that of religious bias, and
simply judged by its results, the Jesuit effort to Christianize Japan
must be regarded as a crime against humanity, a labour of
devastation, a calamity comparable only,--by reason of the misery and
destruction which it wrought,--to an earthquake, a tidal-wave, a
volcanic eruption.
[*Francisco Cassola, Pedro Marquez, and Giuseppe Chiara. Two of
these--probably under compulsion--married Japanese women. For their
after-history, see a paper by Satow in the Transactions of the
Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. VI, Part I.]
[329] The policy of isolation,--of shutting off Japan from the rest
of the world,--as adopted by Hidetada and maintained by his
successors, sufficiently indicates the fear that religious intrigues
had inspired. Not only were all foreigners, excepting the Dutch
traders, expelled from the country; all half-breed children of
Portuguese or Spanish blood were also expatriated, Japanese families
being forbidden to adopt or conceal any of them, under penalties to
be visited upon all the members of the household disobeying. In 1636
two hundred and eighty-seven half-breed children were shipped to
Macao. It is possible that the capacity of half-breed children to act
as interpreters was particularly dreaded; but there can be little
doubt that, at the time when this ordinance was issued, race-hatred
had been fully aroused by religious antagonism. After the Shimabara
episode all Western foreigners, without exception, were regarded with
unconcealed distrust.* [*The Chinese traders, however, were allowed
much more liberty than the Dutch.] The Portuguese and Spanish traders
were replaced by the Dutch (the English factory having been closed
some years previously); but even in the case of these, extraordinary
precautions were taken. They were compelled to abandon their good
quarters at Hirado, and transfer their factory to Deshima,--a tiny
island only six hundred feet long, by two hundred and forty feet
wide. There they were kept under constant guard, like prisoners; they
were not [330] permitted to go among the people; no man could visit
them without permission, and no woman, except a prostitute, was
allowed to enter their reservation under any circumstances. But they
had a monopoly of the trade of the country; and Dutch patience
endured these conditions, for the profit's sake, during more than two
hundred years. Other commerce with foreign countries than that
maintained by the Dutch factory, and by the Chinese, was entirely
suppressed. For any Japanese to leave Japan was a capital offence;
and any one who might succeed in leaving the country by stealth, was
to be put to death upon his return. The purpose of this law was to
prevent Japanese, sent abroad by the Jesuits for missionary training,
from returning to Japan in the disguise of laymen. It was forbidden
also to construct ships capable of long voyages; and all ships
exceeding a dimension fixed by the government were broken up,
Lookouts were established along the coast to watch for strange
vessels; and any European ships entering a Japanese port, excepting
the ships of the Dutch company, were to be attacked and destroyed.