_Ecclesiastical Retrospect—New Persecution—Edict of Banishment against
the Missionaries—Civil War between Hideyori and Ōgosho-Sama—Triumph of
Ōgosho-Sama—His death—Persecution more Violent than ever—Mutual Rancor
of the Jesuits and the Friars—Progress of Martyrdom—The English and
Dutch, A. D. 1613-1620._
Between the edict of Taikō-Sama against the Catholics, and those the
issue of which by Ōgosho-Sama is briefly alluded to in the preceding
chapter, sixteen years had elapsed, during the whole of which time the
missionaries and the Catholic Japanese had been kept in a state of
painful uncertainty.
It is true that the new emperor had greatly relaxed from the hostility
of his predecessor, and seemed at times decidedly favorable. In many
parts of Japan the Catholic worship was carried on as openly as ever.
Many new laborers, both Jesuits and other, had come into the field,
and conversion still continued to be made among persons of the highest
rank. There was scarcely any part of the empire in which converts were
not to be found, and the missionaries occasionally penetrated into the
most remote provinces. The general of the Jesuits had been encouraged
to raise Japan to the dignity of a province, of which China and the
neighboring regions had been made a part, and of which Father Valentine
Carvilho was made provincial. Japan had also a resident bishop, or at
least coadjutor, in the person of Father Louis Serqueyra, himself taken
from the order of the Jesuits; and under the bishop, as we have seen,
were a few secular clergy. By a brief of Pope Paul V., just published
in Japan, that empire had been opened to the members of all the
religious orders of the church, with liberty to proceed thither by way
of Manila as well as of Macao.
Yet, during these sixteen years, the Catholics of the different
subordinate kingdoms had been more or less exposed to persecution,
especially in the island of Shimo, where they were most numerous, and
which, from being mainly ruled by converted princes, was now chiefly
governed by apostates or infidels; nor could the favor of the emperor
be at any time certainly relied upon.
The new Dutch and English visitors were prompted no less by religious
than by mercantile jealousies and hatreds to do all they could to
diminish the credit of the Catholic missionaries; and it is by no
means improbable that, as the Portuguese asserted, their suggestions
had considerable weight in producing the new persecuting edicts of
Ōgosho-Sama. Indeed, they had only to confirm the truth of what the
Portuguese and Spanish said of each other to excite in the minds of the
Japanese rulers the gravest distrust as to the designs of the priests
of both nations.
The edicts already mentioned were followed by another, about the
beginning of the year 1614, of which the substance was that all priests
and missionaries of the Catholic faith should forthwith depart the
empire, that all their houses and churches should be destroyed, and
that all the Japanese converts should renounce the foreign faith.
There were in Japan when this edict was issued about a hundred and
thirty Jesuits, in possession of some fifty schools, colleges, and
convents, or houses of residence, also some thirty friars of the three
orders of St. Augustin, St. Dominic and St. Francis, besides a few
secular ecclesiastics, or parish priests. Most of them were shipped
off at once. Some found means to return in disguise; but the new
persecution speedily assumed a character far more alarming than any
of the former ones. Severe measures were now taken against the native
converts. Those who refused to renounce their faith were stripped of
their property, those of the most illustrious rank, among whom was
Ukondono [Kōyama Ukon], being shipped off to Manila and Macao, and
others sent into a frightful sort of Siberian banishment among the
mountains of Northern Japan, now first described in the letters of
some of the missionaries who found their way thither to console and
strengthen these exiles. Many, also, were put to death, most of whom
exhibited in the midst of torments all the firmness of the national
character.
The violence of this persecution was interrupted for a moment by an
attempt on the part of Hideyori now grown to man’s estate, to recover
his father’s authority—a rebellion in which many of the converts joined
in hopes of gaining something by the change.
On the 10th of December, 1614, Cocks, the English resident at Hirado,
wrote to Saris that, since his departure, the emperor had banished all
Jesuits, priests, friars, and nuns out of Japan, and had pulled down
and burned all their churches and monasteries, shipping them away,
some for Macao and others for Manila; that old King Hōin was dead, on
which occasion three of his servants had cut themselves open to bear
him company, according to a common Japanese fashion of expressing
attachment and gratitude; that a civil war had broken out between
the emperor and his imprisoned son-in-law; and that all Ōsaka, except
the castle, where the rebels were entrenched and besieged, had been
burned to the ground. Yedo had also suffered exceedingly by a terrible
“tuffon” or hurricane, which the Christians ascribed to the judgment
of God, and the pagan Japanese to the conjurations of the Jesuits.
Sayer, another of the English Company, wrote, December 5, 1615, that
the emperor had got the victory, with the loss—doubtless exaggerated—of
four hundred thousand men on both sides.
The death of Ōgosho-Sama,[101] in 1616, left his son Shōgun-Sama
sole emperor. He continued to reside at Yedo, which, thenceforth,
became the capital. He diligently followed up the policy of his three
predecessors,—that of weakening the particular kings and princes so
as to reduce them to political insignificance; nor does it appear
that, from that time to this, the empire, formerly so turbulent, has
ever been disturbed by civil wars, or internal commotions. He also
began that system of foreign policy since pushed to such extremes. The
English, by a new version of their privileges,[102] were restricted to
the single port of Hirado, while the new emperor positively refused to
receive a present from the viceroy of New Spain, or to see the persons
who brought it.
[Illustration: THE TOMB OF IYEYASU, NIKKŌ]
At the commencement of the new reign, there were yet concealed within
the empire thirty-three Jesuits, sixteen friars of the three orders,
and seven secular priests, who still continued to minister to the
faithful with the aid of a great number of native catechists. Seven
Jesuits and all the friars but one were in Nagasaki and its environs.
Of the other Jesuits, several resided in the other imperial cities
where they still found protectors, while the rest travelled from
place to place, as their services were needed. Those at Nagasaki were
disguised as Portuguese merchants, who were still allowed full liberty
to trade; while those in the provinces adopted the shaven crowns and
long robes, the ordinary guise of the native bonzes. After a while
some of them even ventured to resume the habits of their order, and
to preach in public; but this only drew out from the emperor a new
and more formal and precise edict. It was accompanied with terrible
menaces, such as frightened into apostasy many converts who had
hitherto stood out, and even drove some of them, in order to secure
favor for themselves, to betray the missionaries, who knew no longer
whom to trust.
The missionaries sent home lamentable accounts of their own sufferings
and those of their converts, and all Catholic Europe resounded with
lamentations over this sudden destruction of what had long been
considered one of the most flourishing and encouraging provinces of
missionary labor, not unmingled, however, with exultations over the
courage and firmness of the martyrs.[103]
Such, indeed, was the zeal for martyrdom on the part of the Japanese,
in which they were encouraged by the friars, and which the Jesuits
strove in vain to keep within some reasonable limits, as to lead
to many acts of imprudence, by which the individual was glorified,
but the church damnified. Henceforth, the missionary letters, which
still found their way to Rome, though in diminishing numbers and
with decreasing regularity, contain little but horrible accounts of
tortures and martyrdoms, mingled, indeed, with abundant exultations
over the firmness and even the jubilant spirit with which the victims
met their fate, now by crucifixion, now by the axe, and now by fire.
Infinite were the prayers, the austerities, the fasts, the penitential
exercises, to which the converts resorted in hopes to appease the wrath
of Heaven. Even infants at the breast were made to bear their share in
them, being allowed to nurse but once a day, in the hope that God would
be moved by the cries of these innocents to grant peace to his church.
But, though many miraculous things are told of the martyrs, many of
them, it is said, distinctly pronouncing the name of Jesus and Mary
after their heads were cut off, the persecution continued to rage with
unabated fury.
While the persecution of the Catholics was thus fiercely pursued in
Japan, the Dutch, not in those islands only, but throughout the eastern
seas, were zealously pushing their mercantile enterprises; and in
Japan, as elsewhere, they got decidedly the advantage of the English,
their companions and rivals, in these inroads upon the Portuguese and
Spaniards.
The English at Hirado brought junks and attempted a trade with Siam,
where they already had a factory, one of their first establishments
in the East; and with Cochin China and Corea; but without much
advantage. In 1616, two small vessels arrived from England, one of
which was employed in trading between Japan and Java. The operations
of the Dutch were on a much larger scale. Not content with driving the
Spaniards from the Moluccas, they threatened the Philippines, and
sent to blockade Manila a fleet, which had several engagements with
the Spaniards. Five great Dutch ships arrived at Hirado in 1616, of
which one of nine hundred tons sailed for Bantam, fully laden with raw
silk and other rich China stuffs; and another, of eight hundred tons,
for the Moluccas, with money and provisions. Several others remained
on the coast to watch the Spanish and Portuguese traders, and to carry
on a piratical war against the Chinese junks, of which they captured,
in 1616, according to Cocks’ letters, not less than twenty or thirty,
pretending to be English vessels, and thus greatly damaging the English
name and the chance of a trade with China.[104]
On a visit to Miyako, in 1620, Cocks, as appears by his letters, saw
fifty-five Japanese martyred, because they would not renounce the
Christian faith; among them little children of five or six years old,
burned in their mother’s arms, and crying to Jesus to receive their
souls. Sixteen others had been put to death for the same cause at
Nagasaki, five of whom were burned, and the rest beheaded, cut in
pieces, and cast into the sea in sacks; but the priests had secretly
fished up their bodies and preserved them for relics. There were many
more in prison, expecting hourly to die; for, as Cocks wrote, very few
turned pagans.
Nagasaki had been from its foundation a Catholic city. Hitherto,
notwithstanding former edicts for their destruction, one or two
churches and monasteries had escaped; but, in 1621, all that were
left, including the hospital of Misericordia, were destroyed. The very
graves and sepulchres, so Cocks wrote, had been dug up: and, as if to
root out all memory of Christianity, heathen temples were built on
their sites.
One of the Jesuits wrote home that there was not now any question as
to the number of Jesuit residences in Japan, but only as to the number
of prisons. Even those who had not yet fallen into the hands of the
persecutors had only caves and holes in the rocks for their dwellings,
in which they suffered more than in the darkest dungeons.
It is not necessary to give implicit credit to all which the
contemporary letters and memoirs related, and which the Catholic
historians and martyrologists have repeated, of the ferocity of the
persecutors, the heroism of the sufferers, and especially of the
miracles said to be wrought by their relics. Yet there can be no
question, either of the fury of the persecution, or of the lofty spirit
of martyrdom in which it was unavailingly met. Catholicism lingered on
for a few years longer in Japan, yet it must be considered as having
already received its death-blow in that same year in which a few
Puritan pilgrims landed at Plymouth, to plant the obscure seeds of a
new and still growing Protestant empire.