_Events meanwhile in Japan—Downfall of Nobunaga—Accession of Hashiba,
afterwards known as Kwambacudono, and, finally, as Taikōsama—Edict
against the Jesuits—Return of the Ambassadors—A. D. 1582-1588._
While the ambassadors were on their way to Europe, great changes had
taken place in the Japanese islands. A few months after they had sailed
from Nagasaki, Akechi Mitsuhide, a favorite general of Nobunaga’s,
had marched from Miyako to join Hashiba Hideyoshi, another favorite
general, employed in prosecuting the war against Nagato. The stern
severity of Nobunaga had rendered him very unpopular, of which Akechi
took advantage to turn about and attack him, left as he was at Miyako
almost without troops. Nobunaga, thus betrayed and surprised, having
no other resource, set fire to his palace, and perished in it, June
15, 1580, with his eldest son. His second son, overwhelmed by this
disaster, went mad, and in that condition set fire to his father’s
patrimonial palace at Azuchiyama, thus kindling a conflagration which
consumed almost the entire city, including a splendid temple, which
Nobunaga had lately erected there, and in which, suspending all other
worship by edict, he had required divine honors to be paid to a stone
graven with his arms[49] and other devices. To the missionaries, who
had all along counted upon making a convert of Nobunaga, this step
had caused no less horror than surprise; and they found in it a ready
explanation of the sudden ruin which had overtaken himself and his
family, especially as his eldest son had been the first to pay the
required worship.
Akechi now aspired to succeed the master he had betrayed and
overthrown; but he was defeated by Ukondono [Kōyama Ukon], another
general, a nephew of the Wada, who had played so conspicuous a part in
previous revolutions, and a convert to the Catholic faith, who united
with Hashiba to revenge their master’s death, the latter marching upon
Miyako in the name of the late emperor’s third son, whom he proclaimed
as Kubō-Sama, reserving, however, to himself all real authority; and
thus again was Japan, as during part of Nobunaga’s reign, furnished
with two “idle kings,”—a Dairi and a titular Kubō-Sama,—while the real
power was in the hands of a third party.
Hashiba’s own very humble birth made him the more willing to begin, at
first, with ruling in the name of another. Originally he was but a mere
private soldier, who, having attracted the attention of Nobunaga, as
well by his wit and drollery as by his courage and sagacity, had been
gradually raised by him to the highest commands. This founder of the
Japanese imperial authority, as it now exists, is described as having
been short, but quite fat, and exceedingly strong, with six fingers on
each hand, and something frightful in his face, his eyes protruding in
a strange manner. It was he who completed what Nobunaga had begun, and
who first gave to Japan, at least in modern times, a real and effective
emperor, ruling supreme over the whole territory.
The son of Nobunaga, being restless under the humiliation to which he
was reduced, was deprived of his place as Kubō-Sama, and obliged to be
satisfied with the island of Shikoku, the smaller of the three larger
Japanese islands which his father had assigned him as an appanage,
while Hashiba declared himself the guardian of an infant child of
Nobunaga’s eldest son, whom he set up as titular Kubō-Sama.
He showed at first the same favor to the Catholics as his predecessor
had done, and the more so as Ukondono, his confederate against the
rebel Akechi, was himself a convert, as were others of his great
vassals and principal officers of his court and army.
As the son of Nobunaga could not keep quiet, he was presently stripped
of all authority, though his life was spared, and Hashiba, assuming
to himself the high title of Kwambakudono, strengthened himself still
further by marrying a daughter of the Dairi.
Desirous to outdo his predecessor in everything, he converted Ōsaka,
which had, till lately subdued by Nobunaga, been under the rule of a
bonze, into a great city, and he built in its neighborhood a great
stone castle. To this city, made his capital, the Jesuit seminary,
originally established in the now ruined Azuchiyama, was removed,
another being also set up in the neighboring city of Sakai. The king
of Nagato was even induced to allow the reintroduction of missionaries
into his territories. The king of Bungo having appealed to Hashiba for
aid against his neighbors, the converted general Kodera Yoshitaka, the
chief commander of his cavalry, whom he sent to Shimo, not only rescued
the young king, Yoshimune, from his enemies, the kings of Chikuzen and
Satsuma, who had taken his capital and ravaged his territories, but
succeeded also in bringing up to the point of baptism that fickle and
inconstant prince, who had long been a great trial to the missionaries,
as well as to his pious father Civan, who, having given up to him the
reins of government, had been treated thenceforth with very little
respect. The result of this interference also was to reduce the whole
of Shimo to the power of the emperor, who now reigned supreme over
Shimo, Sikoku, and all the western part of Nippon, though still obliged
to pay a certain deference and respect to the pretensions and power of
the local kings and princes, whom, however, he required to be frequent
attendants on his court, and to leave their wives and children there as
hostages, and whose authority and consequence he sought by all means to
diminish.
Peace thus reëstablished, everything seemed to favor the spread of
Catholicity, when, all of a sudden, and in the most unexpected manner,
in the month of July, 1587, the emperor signed an order for the
banishment of the missionaries; and because Ukondono would not renounce
his religion (at least such was the ostensible cause), stripped him at
once of his place and his property. Father Cuello, the vice-provincial,
was ordered to assemble all the missionaries at Hirado; and, in
obedience to his order, they collected there to the number of about
one hundred and twenty, only Father Gnecchi remaining concealed at
Ōsaka, and one brother in Bungo. But when the emperor commanded them
to embark on board a Portuguese vessel about to sail, they resolved
not to obey. A few indeed went on board and sailed for China; but the
greater part remained, a message being sent to the emperor that the
vessel could not carry the others; to which he responded by ordering
all the churches in Miyako, Ōsaka, and Sakai to be destroyed. The
converted princes, however, in general, stood firm, except Yoshimune,
king of Bungo; and even the unconverted ones are said to have protested
against the emperor’s edict as in violation of the freedom of religious
opinion heretofore allowed. The missionaries, in disguise, were
distributed through the territories of their adherents. The emperor’s
grand admiral, Konishi Settsu-no-Kami, who was viceroy of Shimo,
though himself a convert, still kept the confidence of the emperor, as
did also Kodera, the chief commander of his cavalry. The Portuguese
merchants were admitted as before. After a little while the emperor
seemed disposed to wink at the conduct of the converted princes, and
the missionaries soon began to conceive hopes that, by caution on
their part, the work of conversion might still go on, the stimulus of
a prohibition not very strictly enforced, more than supplying all the
benefits hitherto derived from the _éclat_ of imperial favor.
Some difficulty about obtaining recruits for the imperial seraglio,
especially from the province of Hizen, celebrated for its handsome
women, but in which the converts were numerous, was said to have
provoked the emperor, in a fit of drunken fury, to put forth so
suddenly his edict of persecution. But, in fact, his policy brooked
no power but his own. He did not fancy a religion which taught his
subjects to look up with implicit reverence to a distant and foreign
potentate; nor probably was his hostility to the Jesuits much different
in substance from that sentiment which had caused Henry VIII, of
England, fifty years earlier, to break with the holy see—a breach also
ascribed by the Catholics to amorous passion.
But the cautious and artful emperor, who, however he might give way to
sudden fits of violence and caprice, was a perfect master of all the
arts of dissimulation, knowing, as well as Bonaparte, if not better,
how to wait till the pear was ripe, was not yet wholly prepared to
break with the converted kings and nobles, whom he found, perhaps, as
well as the humbler converts, more attached to their faith than he
had supposed. There were too many inflammable materials in his yet
unconsolidated empire for him to run the risk of provoking a rebellion;
and, besides, there still remained to be subdued eight independent
provinces in the east and north of Nippon, including a kingdom of five
provinces, in which were situated the great cities of Suruga and Yedo.
The conquest of this kingdom was speedily achieved, partly by arts and
partly by arms. A new palace was erected for the Dairi, in place of
the old one, which had been burnt during the late troubles at Miyako.
A splendid temple had also been built near that city, in which it was
suspected that the emperor intended to cause himself to be worshipped,
as his predecessor had done; when, in August, 1588, Father Valignani,
appointed ambassador to the emperor and kings of Japan, from the
Portuguese viceroy of Goa, arrived at Macao, on his way to Nagasaki,
having in his company the returning ambassadors to the Pope, who had
touched at Goa on their way home, and who had stopped there a whole
year before proceeding for Japan.[50]