VIII.--FOREIGN INTERCOURSE

_Foreign Intercourse in Early and Medieval Times._--There can be no

doubt that commerce was carried on by Japan with China and Korea earlier

that the 8th century of the Christian era. It would appear that from the

very outset over-sea trade was regarded as a government monopoly.

Foreigners were allowed to travel freely in the interior of the country

provided that they submitted their baggage for official inspection and

made no purchases of weapons of war, but all imported goods were bought

in the first place by official appraisers who subsequently sold them to

the people at arbitrarily fixed prices. Greater importance attached to

the trade with China under the Ashikaga shoguns (14th, 15th and 16th

centuries), who were in constant need of funds to defray the cost of

interminable military operations caused by civil disturbances. In this

distress they turned to the neighbouring empire as a source from which

money might be obtained. This idea seems to have been suggested to the

shogun Takauji by a Buddhist priest, when he undertook the construction

of the temple Tenryu-ji. Two ships laden with goods were fitted out, and

it was decided that the enterprise should be repeated annually. Within a

few years after this development of commercial relations between the two

empires, an interruption occurred owing partly to the overthrow of the

Yuen Mongols by the Chinese Ming, and partly to the activity of Japanese

pirates and adventurers who raided the coasts of China. The shogun

Yoshimitsu (1368-1394), however, succeeded in restoring commercial

intercourse, though in order to effect his object he consented that

goods sent from Japan should bear the character of tribute and that he

himself should receive investiture at the hands of the Chinese emperor's

ambassador. The Nanking government granted a certain number of

commercial passports, and these were given by the shogun to Ouchi,

feudal chief of Cho-shu, which had long been the principal port for

trade with the neighbouring empire. Tribute goods formed only a small

fraction of a vessel's cargo: the bulk consisted of articles which were

delivered into the government's stores in China, payment being received

in copper cash. It was from this transaction that the shogun derived a

considerable part of his profits, for the articles did not cost him

anything originally, being either presents from the great temples and

provincial governors or compulsory contributions from the house of

Ouchi. As for the gifts by the Chinese government and the goods shipped

in China, they were arbitrarily distributed among the noble families in

Japan at prices fixed by the shogun's assessor. Thus, so far as the

shogun was concerned, these enterprises could not fail to be lucrative.

They also brought large profits to the Ouchi family, for, in the absence

of competition, the products and manufactures of each country found

ready sale in the markets of the other. The articles found most suitable

in China were swords, fans, screens, lacquer wares, copper and agate,

and the goods brought back to Japan were brocade and other silk fabrics,

ceramic productions, jade and fragrant woods. The Chinese seem to have

had a just appreciation of the wonderful swords of Japan. At first they

were willing to pay the equivalent of 12 guineas for a pair of blades,

but by degrees, as the Japanese began to increase the supply, the price

fell, and at the beginning of the 16th century all the diplomacy of the

Japanese envoys was needed to obtain good figures for the large and

constantly growing quantity of goods that they took over by way of

supplement to the tribute. Buddhist priests generally enjoyed the

distinction of being selected as envoys, for experience showed that

their subtle reasoning invariably overcame the economical scruples of

the Chinese authorities and secured a fine profit for their master, the

shogun. In the middle of the 16th century these tribute-bearing

missions came to an end with the ruin of the Ouchi family and the

overthrow of the Ashikaga shoguns, and they were never renewed.

With Korea.

Japan's medieval commerce with Korea was less ceremonious than that with

China. No passports had to be obtained from the Korean government. A

trader was sufficiently equipped when he carried a permit from the So

family, which held the island of Tsushima in fief. Fifty vessels were

allowed to pass yearly from ports in Japan to the three Japanese

settlements in Korea. Little is recorded about the nature of this trade,

but it was rudely interrupted by the Japanese settlers, who, offended at

some arbitrary procedure on the part of the local Korean authorities,

took up arms (A.D. 1510) and at first signally routed the Koreans. An

army from Seoul turned the tables, and the Japanese were compelled to

abandon the three settlements. Subsequently the shogun's

government--which had not been concerned in the struggle--approached

Korea with amicable proposals, and it was agreed that the ringleaders of

the raiders should be decapitated and their heads sent to Seoul, Japan's

compliance with this condition affording, perhaps, a measure of the

value she attached to neighbourly friendship. Thenceforth the number of

vessels was limited to 25 annually and the settlements were abolished.

Some years later, the Japanese again resorted to violent acts of

self-assertion, and on this occasion, although the offenders were

arrested by order of the shogun Yoshiharu, and handed over to Korea for

punishment, the Seoul court persisted in declining to restore the system

of settlements or to allow the trade to be resumed on its former basis.

Fifty years afterwards the taiko's armies invaded Korea, overrunning it

for seven years, and leaving, when they retired in 1598, a country so

impoverished that it no longer offered any attraction to commercial

enterprise from beyond the sea.

With Occidental Nations.

The Portuguese discovered Japan by accident in 1542 or 1543--the exact

date is uncertain. On a voyage to Macao from Siam, a junk carrying three

Portuguese was blown from her course and fetched Tanegashima, a small

island lying south of the province of Satsuma. The Japanese, always

hospitable and inquisitive, welcomed the newcomers and showed special

curiosity about the arquebuses carried by the Portuguese, fire-arms

being then a novelty in Japan and all weapons of war being in great

request. Conversation was impossible, of course, but, by tracing

ideographs upon the sand, a Chinese member of the crew succeeded in

explaining the cause of the junk's arrival. She was then piloted to a

more commodious harbour, and the Portuguese sold two arquebuses to the

local feudatory, who immediately ordered his armourer to manufacture

similar weapons. Very soon the news of the discovery reached all the

Portuguese settlements in the East, and at least seven expeditions were

fitted out during the next few years to exploit this new market. Their

objective points were all in the island of Kiushiu--the principal stage

where the drama--ultimately converted into a tragedy--of Christian

propagandism and European commercial intercourse was acted in the

interval between 1542 and 1637.

Arrival of the Jesuits.

It does not appear that the Jesuits at Macao, Goa or other centres of

Portuguese influence in the East took immediate advantage of the

discovery of Japan. The pioneer propagandist was Francis Xavier, who

landed at Kagoshima on the 15th of August 1549. During the interval of

six (or seven) years that separated this event from the drifting of the

junk to Tanegashima, the Portuguese had traded freely in the ports of

Kiushiu, had visited Kioto, and had reported the Japanese capital to be

a city of 96,000 houses, therefore larger than Lisbon. Xavier would

certainly have gone to Japan even though he had not been specially

encouraged, for the reports of his countrymen depicted the Japanese as

"very desirous of being instructed," and he longed to find a field more

promising than that inhabited by "all these Indian nations, barbarous,

vicious and without inclination to virtue." There were, however, two

special determinants. One was a request addressed by a feudatory,

supposed to have been the chief of the Bungo fief, to the viceroy of

the Indies at Goa; the other, an appeal made in person by a Japanese

named Yajiro, whom the fathers spoke of as Anjiro, and who subsequently

attained celebrity under his baptismal name, Paul of the holy faith. No

credible reason is historically assigned for the action of the Japanese

feudatory. Probably his curiosity had been excited by accounts which the

Portuguese traders gave of the noble devotion of their country's

missionaries, and being entirely without bigotry, as nearly all Japanese

were at that epoch, he issued the invitation partly out of curiosity and

partly from a sincere desire for progress. Anjiro's case was very

different. Labouring under stress of repentant zeal, and fearful that

his evil acts might entail murderous consequences, he sought an asylum

abroad, and was taken away in 1548 by a Portuguese vessel whose master

advised him to repair to Malacca for the purpose of confessing to

Xavier. This might well have seemed to the Jesuits a providential

dispensation, for Anjiro, already able to speak Portuguese, soon

mastered it sufficiently to interpret for Xavier and his

fellow-missionaries (without which aid they must have remained long

helpless in the face of the immense difficulty of the Japanese

language), and to this linguistic skill he added extraordinary gifts of

intelligence and memory. Xavier, with two Portuguese companions and

Anjiro, were excellently received by the feudal chiefs of Satsuma and

obtained permission to preach their doctrine in any part of the fief.

This permit is not to be construed as an evidence of official sympathy

with the foreign creed. Commercial considerations alone were in

question. A Japanese feudal chief in that era had sedulously to foster

every source of wealth or strength, and as the newly opened trade with

the outer world seemed full of golden promise, each feudatory was not

less anxious to secure a monopoly of it in the 16th century than the

Ashikaga shoguns had been in the 15th. The Satsuma daimyo was led to

believe that the presence of the Jesuits in Kagoshima would certainly

prelude the advent of trading vessels. But within a few months one of

the expected merchantmen sailed to Hirado without touching at Kagoshima,

and her example was followed by two others in the following year, so

that the Satsuma chief saw himself flouted for the sake of a petty

rival, Matsudaira of Hirado. This fact could not fail to provoke his

resentment. But there was another influence at work. Buddhism has always

been a tolerant religion, eclectic rather than exclusive. Xavier,

however, had all the bigoted intolerance of his time. The Buddhist

priests in Kagoshima received him with courtesy and listened

respectfully to the doctrines he expounded through the mouth of Anjiro.

Xavier rejoined with a display of aggressive intolerance which shocked

and alienated the Buddhists. They represented to the Satsuma chief that

peace and good order were inconsistent with such a display of militant

propagandism, and he, already profoundly chagrined by his commercial

disappointment, issued in 1550 an edict making it a capital offence for

any of his vassals to embrace Christianity. Xavier, or, more correctly

speaking, Anjiro, had won 150 converts, who remained without

molestation, but Xavier himself took ship for Hirado. There he was

received with salvoes of artillery by the Portuguese merchantmen lying

in the harbour and with marks of profound respect by the Portuguese

traders, a display which induced the local chief to issue orders that

courteous attention should be paid to the teaching of the foreign

missionaries. In ten days a hundred baptisms took place; another

significant index of the mood of the Japanese in the early era of

Occidental intercourse: the men in authority always showed a complaisant

attitude towards Christianity where trade could be fostered by so doing,

and wherever the men in authority showed such an attitude, considerable

numbers of the lower orders embraced the foreign faith. Thus, in

considering the commercial history of the era, the element of religion

constantly thrusts itself into the foreground.

First Visit of Europeans to Kioto.

Xavier next resolved to visit Kioto. The first town of importance he

reached on the way was Yamaguchi, capital of the Choshu fief, situated

on the northern shore of the Shimonoseki Strait. There the feudal chief,

Ouchi, though sufficiently courteous and inquisitive, showed no special

cordiality towards humble missionaries unconnected with commerce, and

the work of proselytizing made no progress, so that Xavier and his

companion, Fernandez, pushed on to Kioto. The time was mid-winter; the

two fathers suffered terrible privations during their journey of two

months on foot, and on reaching Kioto they found a city which had been

almost wholly reduced to ruins by internecine war. Necessarily they

failed to obtain audience of either emperor or shogun, at that time the

most inaccessible potentates in the world, the Chinese "son of heaven"

excepted, and nothing remained but street preaching, a strange resource,

seeing that Xavier, constitutionally a bad linguist, had only a most

rudimentary acquaintance with the profoundly difficult tongue in which

he attempted to expound the mysteries of a novel creed. A fortnight

sufficed to convince him that Kioto was unfruitful soil. He therefore

returned to Yamaguchi. But he had now learned a lesson. He saw that

propagandism without scrip or staff and without the countenance of those

sitting in the seats of power would be futile in Japan. So he obtained

from Hirado his canonicals, together with a clock and other novel

products of European skill, which, as well as credentials from the

viceroy of India, the governor of Malacca and the bishop of Goa, he

presented to the Choshu chief. His prayer for permission to preach

Christianity was now readily granted, and Ouchi issued a proclamation

announcing his approval of the introduction of the new religion and

according perfect liberty to embrace it. Xavier and Fernandez now made

many converts. They also gained the valuable knowledge that the road to

success in Japan lay in associating themselves with over-sea commerce

and its directors, and in thus winning the co-operation of the feudal

chiefs.

Christian Propagandists.

Nearly ten years had now elapsed since the first Portuguese landed in

Kagoshima, and during that time trade had gone on steadily and

prosperously. No attempt was made to find markets in the main island:

the Portuguese confined themselves to Kiushiu for two reasons: one, that

having no knowledge of the coasts, they hesitated to risk their ships

and their lives in unsurveyed waters; the other, that whereas the main

island, almost from end to end, was seething with internecine war,

Kiushiu remained beyond the pale of disturbance and enjoyed comparative

tranquillity. At the time of Xavier's second sojourn in Yamaguchi, a

Portuguese ship happened to be visiting Bungo, and at its master's

suggestion the great missionary proceeded thither, with the intention of

returning temporarily to the Indies. At Bungo there was then ruling

Otomo, second in power to only the Satsuma chief among the feudatories

of Kiushiu. By him the Jesuit father was received with all honour.

Xavier did not now neglect the lesson he had learned in Yamaguchi. He

repaired to the Bungo chieftain's court, escorted by nearly the whole of

the Portuguese crew, gorgeously bedizened, carrying their arms and with

banners flying. Otomo, a young and ambitious ruler, was keenly anxious

to attract foreign traders with their rich cargoes and puissant weapons

of war. Witnessing the reverence paid to Xavier by the Portuguese

traders, he appreciated the importance of gaining the goodwill of the

Jesuits, and accordingly not only granted them full freedom to teach and

preach, but also enjoined upon his younger brother, who, in the sequel

of a sudden rebellion, had succeeded to the lordship of Yamaguchi, the

advisability of extending protection to Torres and Fernandez, then

sojourning there. After some four months' stay in Bungo, Xavier set sail

for Goa in February 1552. Death overtook him in the last month of the

same year.

Xavier's departure from Japan marked the conclusion of the first epoch

of Christian propagandism. His sojourn in Japan extended to 27 months.

In that time he and his coadjutors won about 760 converts. In Satsuma

more than a year's labour produced 150 believers. There Xavier had the

assistance of Anjiro to expound his doctrines. No language lends itself

with greater difficulty than Japanese to the discussion of theological

questions. The terms necessary for such a purpose are not current among

laymen, and only by special study, which, it need scarcely be said,

must be preluded by an accurate acquaintance with the tongue itself, can

a man hope to become duly equipped for the task of exposition and

dissertation. It is open to grave doubt whether any foreigner has ever

attained the requisite proficiency. Leaving Anjiro in Kagoshima to care

for the converts made there, Xavier pushed on to Hirado, where he

baptized a hundred Japanese in a few days. Now we have it on the

authority of Xavier himself that in this Hirado campaign "none of us

knew Japanese." How then did they proceed? "By reciting a semi-Japanese

volume" (a translation made by Anjiro of a treatise from Xavier's pen)

"and by delivering sermons, we brought several over to the Christian

cult." Sermons preached in Portuguese or Latin to a Japanese audience on

the island of Hirado in the year 1550 can scarcely have attracted

intelligent interest. On his first visit to Yamaguchi, Xavier's means of

access to the understanding of his hearers was confined to the

rudimentary knowledge of Japanese which Fernandez had been able to

acquire in 14 months, a period of study which, in modern times, with all

the aids now procurable, would not suffice to carry a student beyond the

margin of the colloquial. No converts were won. The people of Yamaguchi

probably admired the splendid faith and devotion of these over-sea

philosophers, but as for their doctrine, it was unintelligible. In Kioto

the same experience was repeated, with an addition of much physical

hardship. But when the Jesuits returned to Yamaguchi in the early autumn

of 1551, they baptized 500 persons, including several members of the

military class. Still Fernandez with his broken Japanese was the only

medium for communicating the profound doctrines of Christianity. It must

be concluded that the teachings of the missionaries produced much less

effect than the attitude of the local chieftain.

Second Period of Christian Propagandism.

Only two missionaries, Torres and Fernandez, remained in Japan after the

departure of Xavier, but they were soon joined by three others. These

newcomers landed at Kagoshima and found that, in spite of the official

veto against the adoption of Christianity, the feudal chief had lost

nothing of his desire to foster foreign trade. Two years later, all the

Jesuits in Japan were assembled in Bungo. Their only church stood there;

and they had also built two hospitals. Local disturbances had compelled

them to withdraw from Yamaguchi, not, however, before their violent

disputes with the Buddhist priests in that town had induced the

feudatory to proscribe the foreign religion, as had previously been done

in Kagoshima. From Funai, the chief town of Bungo, the Jesuits began in

1579 to send yearly reports to their Generals in Rome. These reports,

known as the _Annual Letters_, comprise some of the most valuable

information available about the conditions then existing in Japan. They

describe a state of abject poverty among the lower orders; poverty so

cruel that the destruction of children by their famishing parents was an

everyday occurrence, and in some instances choice had to be made between

cannibalism and starvation. Such suffering becomes easily intelligible

when the fact is recalled that Japan had been racked by civil war during

more than 200 years, each feudal chief fighting for his own hand, to

save or to extend his territorial possessions. From these _Annual

Letters_ it is possible also to gather a tolerably clear idea of the

course of events during the years immediately subsequent to Xavier's

departure. There was no break in the continuity of the newly inaugurated

foreign trade. Portuguese ships visited Hirado as well as Bungo, and in

those days their masters and crews not only attended scrupulously to

their religious duties, but also showed such profound respect for the

missionaries that the Japanese received constant object lessons in the

influence wielded over the traders by the Jesuits. Thirty years later,

this orderly and reverential demeanour was exchanged for riotous

excesses such as had already made the Portuguese sailor a byword in

China. But in the early days of intercourse with Japan the crews of the

merchant vessels seem to have preached Christianity by their exemplary

conduct. Just as Xavier had been induced to visit Bungo by the anxiety

of a ship-captain for Christian ministrations, so in 1557 two of the

fathers repaired to Hirado in obedience to the solicitations of

Portuguese sailors. There the fathers, under the guidance of Vilela,

sent brothers to parade the streets ringing bells and chaunting

litanies; they organized bands of boys for the same purpose; they caused

the converts, and even children, to flagellate themselves at a model of

Mount Calvary, and they worked miracles, healing the sick by contact

with scourges or with a booklet in which Xavier had written litanies and

prayers. It may well be imagined that such doings attracted surprised

attention in Japan. They were supplemented by even more striking

practices. For a sub-feudatory of the Hirado chief, having been

converted, showed his zeal by destroying Buddhist temples and throwing

down the idols, thus inaugurating a campaign of violence destined to

mark the progress of Christianity throughout the greater part of its

history in Japan. There followed the overthrowing of a cross in the

Christian cemetery, the burning of a temple in the town of Hirado, and a

street riot, the sequel being that the Jesuit fathers were compelled to

return once more to Bungo. It is essential to follow all these events,

for not otherwise can a clear understanding be reached as to the aspects

under which Christianity presented itself originally to the Japanese.

The Portuguese traders, reverent as was their demeanour towards

Christianity, did not allow their commerce to be interrupted by

vicissitudes of propagandism. They still repaired to Hirado, and rumours

of the wealth-begetting effects of their presence having reached the

neighbouring fief of Omura, its chief, Sumitada, made overtures to the

Jesuits in Bungo, offering a port free from all dues for ten years, a

large tract of land, a residence for the missionaries and other

privileges. The Jesuits hastened to take advantage of this proposal, and

no sooner did the news reach Hirado than the feudatory of that island

repented of having expelled the fathers and invited them to return. But

while they hesitated, a Portuguese vessel arrived at Hirado, and the

feudal chief declared publicly that no need existed to conciliate the

missionaries, since trade went on without them. When this became known

in Bungo, Torres hastened to Hirado, was received with extraordinary

honours by the crew of the vessel, and at his instance she left the

port, her master declaring that "he could not remain in a country where

they maltreated those who professed the same religion as himself."

Hirado remained a closed port for some years, but ultimately the advent

of three merchantmen, which intimated their determination not to put in

unless the anti-Christian ban was removed, induced the feudal chief to

receive the Jesuits, once more. This incident was paralleled a few years

later in the island of Amakusa, where a petty feudatory, in order to

attract foreign trade, as the missionaries themselves frankly explain,

embraced Christianity and ordered all his vassals to follow his example;

but when no Portuguese ship appeared, he apostatized, required his

subjects to revert to Buddhism arid made the missionaries withdraw. In

fact, the competition for the patronage of Portuguese traders was so

keen that the Hirado feudatory attempted to burn several of their

vessels because they frequented the territorial waters of his neighbour

and rival, Sumitada. The latter became a most stalwart Christian when

his wish was gratified. He set himself to eradicate idolatry throughout

his fief with the strong arm, and his fierce intolerance provoked

results which ended in the destruction of the Christian town at the

newly opened free port. Sumitada, however, quickly reasserted his

authority, and five years later (1567), he took a step which had

far-reaching consequences, namely, the building of a church at Nagasaki,

in order that Portuguese commerce might have a centre and the Christians

an assured asylum. Nagasaki was then a little fishing village. In five

years it grew to be a town of thirty thousand inhabitants, and Sumitada

became one of the richest of the Kiushiu feudatories. When in 1573

successful conflicts with the neighbouring fiefs brought him an access

of territory, he declared that he owed these victories to the influence

of the Christian God, and shortly afterwards he publicly proclaimed

banishment for all who would not accept the foreign faith. There were

then no Jesuits by his side, but immediately two hastened to join him,

and "these, accompanied by a strong guard, but yet not without danger of

their lives, went round causing the churches of the Gentiles, with their

idols, to be thrown to the ground, while three Japanese Christians went

preaching the law of God everywhere. Three of us who were in the

neighbouring kingdoms all withdrew therefrom to work in this abundant

harvest, and in the space of seven months twenty thousand persons were

baptized, including the bonzes of about sixty monasteries, except a few

who quitted the State." In Bungo, however, where the Jesuits were

originally so well received, it is doubtful whether Christian

propagandism would not have ended in failure but for an event which

occurred in 1576, namely, the conversion of the chieftain's son, a youth

of some 16 years. Two years later Otomo himself came over to the

Christian faith. He rendered inestimable aid, not merely within his own

fief, but also by the influence he exercised on others. His

intervention, supported by recourse to arms, obtained for the Jesuits a

footing on the island of Amakusa, where one of the feudatories gave his

vassals the choice of conversion or exile, and announced to the Buddhist

priests that unless they accepted Christianity their property would be

confiscated and they themselves banished. Nearly the whole population of

the fief did violence to their conscience for the sake of their homes.

Christianity was then becoming established in Kiushiu by methods similar

to those of Islam and the inquisition. Another notable illustration is

furnished by the story of the Arima fief, adjoining that of Sumitada

(Omura), where such resolute means had been adopted to force

Christianity upon the vassals. Moreover, the heads of the two fiefs were

brothers. Accordingly, at the time of Sumitada's very dramatic

conversion, the Jesuits were invited to Arima and encouraged to form

settlements at the ports of Kuchinotsu and Shimabara, which thenceforth

began to be frequented by Portuguese merchantmen. The fief naturally

became involved in the turmoil resulting from Sumitada's iconoclastic

methods of propagandism; but, in 1576, the then ruling feudatory,

influenced largely by the object lesson of Sumitada's prosperity and

puissance, which that chieftain openly ascribed to the tutelary aid of

the Christian deity, accepted baptism and became the "Prince Andrew" of

missionary records. It is written in those records that "the first thing

Prince Andrew did after his baptism was to convert the chief temple of

his capital into a church, its revenues being assigned for the

maintenance of the building and the support of the missionaries. He then

took measures to have the same thing done in the other towns of his

fief, and he seconded the preachers of the gospel so well in everything

else that he could flatter himself that he soon would not have one

single idolater in his states." Thus in the two years that separated his

baptism from his death, twenty thousand converts were won in Arima. But

his successor was an enemy of the alien creed. He ordered the Jesuits to

quit his dominions, required the converts to return to their ancestral

faith, and caused "the holy places to be destroyed and the crosses to be

thrown down." Nearly one-half of the converts apostatized under this

pressure, but others had recourse to a device of proved potency. They

threatened to leave Kuchinotsu _en masse_, and as that would have

involved the loss of foreign trade, the hostile edict was materially

modified. To this same weapon the Christians owed a still more signal

victory. For just at that time the great ship from Macao, now an annual

visitor, arrived in Japanese waters carrying the visitor-general,

Valegnani. She put into Kuchinotsu, and her presence, with its suggested

eventualities, gave such satisfaction that the feudatory offered to

accept baptism and to sanction its acceptance by his vassals. This did

not satisfy Valegnani, a man of profound political sagacity. He saw that

the fief was menaced by serious dangers at the hands of its neighbours,

and seizing the psychological moment of its extreme peril, he used the

secular arm so adroitly that the fief's chance of survival seemed to be

limited to the unreserved adoption of Christianity. Thus, in 1580, the

chieftain and his wife were baptized; "all the city was made Christian;

they burned their idols and destroyed 40 temples, reserving some

materials to build churches."

Christian propagandism had now made substantial progress. The _Annual

Letter_ of 1582 recorded that at the close of 1581, thirty-two years

after the landing of Xavier in Japan, there were about 150,000 converts,

of whom some 125,000 were in Kiushiu and the remainder in Yamaguchi,

Kioto and the neighbourhood of the latter city. The Jesuits in the

empire then numbered 75, but down to the year 1563 there had never been

more than 9, and down to 1577, not more than 18. The harvest was

certainly great in proportion to the number of sowers. But it was a

harvest mainly of artificial growth; forced by the despotic insistence

of feudal chiefs who possessed the power of life and death over their

vassals, and were influenced by a desire to attract foreign trade. To

the Buddhist priests this movement of Christian propagandism had brought

an experience hitherto unknown to them, persecution on account of creed.

They had suffered for interfering in politics, but the fierce cruelty of

the Christian fanatic now became known for the first time to men

themselves conspicuous for tolerance of heresy and receptivity of

instruction. They had had no previous experience of humanity in the garb

of an Otomo of Bungo, who, in the words of Crasset, "went to the chase

of the bonzes as to that of wild beasts, and made it his singular

pleasure to exterminate them from his states."

First Japanese Embassy to Europe.

In 1582 the first Japanese envoys sailed from Nagasaki for Europe. The

embassy consisted of four youths, the oldest not more than 16,

representing the fiefs of Arima, Omura and Bungo. They visited Lisbon,

Madrid and Rome, and in all these cities they were received with

displays of magnificence such as 16th century Europe delighted to make.

That, indeed, had been the motive of Valegnani in organizing the

mission: he desired to let the Japanese see with their own eyes how

great were the riches and might of Western states.

Second Visit of Jesuits to Kioto.

In the above statistics of converts at the close of 1581 mention is made

of Christians in Kioto, though we have already seen that the visit by

Xavier and Fernandez to that city was wholly barren of results. A second

visit, however, made by Vilela in 1559, proved more successful. He

carried letters of recommendation from the Bungo chieftain, and the

proximate cause of his journey was an invitation from a Buddhist priest

in the celebrated monastery of Hiei-zan, who sought information about

Christianity. This was before the razing of temples and the overthrow of

idols had commenced in Kiushiu. On arrival at Hiei-zan, Vilela found

that the Buddhist prior who had invited him was dead and that only a

portion of the old man's authority had descended to his successor.

Nevertheless the Jesuit obtained an opportunity to expound his doctrines

to a party of bonzes at the monastery. Subsequently, through the good

offices of a priest, described as "one of the most respected men in the

city," and with the assistance of the Bungo feudatory's letter, Vilela

enjoyed the rare honour of being received by the shogun in Kioto, who

treated him with all consideration and assigned a house for his

residence. It may be imagined that, owing such a debt of gratitude to

Buddhist priests, Vilela would have behaved towards them and their creed

with courtesy. But the Jesuit fathers were proof against all influences

calculated to impair their stern sense of duty. Speaking through the

mouth of a Japanese convert, Vilela attacked the bonzes in unmeasured

terms and denounced their faith. Soon the bonzes, on their side, were

seeking the destruction of these uncompromising assailants with

insistence inferior only to that which the Jesuits themselves would have

shown in similar circumstances. Against these perils Vilela was

protected by the goodwill of the shogun, who had already issued a decree

threatening with death any one who injured the missionaries or

obstructed their work. In spite of all difficulties and dangers these

wonderful missionaries, whose courage, zeal and devotion are beyond all

eulogy, toiled on resolutely and even recklessly, and such success

attended their efforts that by 1564 many converts had been won and

churches had been established in five walled towns within a distance of

50 miles from Kioto. Among the converts were two Buddhist priests,

notoriously hostile at the outset, who had been nominated as official

commissioners to investigate and report upon the doctrine of

Christianity. The first conversion _en masse_ was due to pressure from

above. A petty feudatory, Takayama, whose fief lay at Takatsuki in the

neighbourhood of the capital, challenged Vilela to a public controversy,

the result of which was that the Japanese acknowledged himself

vanquished, embraced Christianity and invited his vassals as well as his

family to follow his example. This man's son--Takayama Yusho--proved one

of the stanchest supporters of Christianity in all Japan, and has been

immortalized by the Jesuits under the name of Don Justo Ucondono.

Incidentally this event furnishes an index to the character of the

Japanese samurai: he accepted the consequences of defeat as frankly as

he dared it. In the same year (1564) the feudatory of Sawa, a brother of

Takayama, became a Christian and imposed the faith on all his vassals,

just as Sumitada and other feudal chiefs had done in Kiushiu. But the

Kioto record differs from that of Kiushiu in one important respect--the

former is free from any intrusion of commercial motives.

Nobunaga and the Jesuits.

Kioto was at that time the scene of sanguinary tumults, which culminated

in the murder of the shogun (1565), and led to the issue of a decree by

the emperor proscribing Christianity. In Japanese medieval history this

is one of the only two instances of Imperial interference with Christian

propagandism. There is evidence that the edict was obtained at the

instance of one of the shogun's assassins and certain Buddhist priests.

The Jesuits--their number had been increased to three--were obliged to

take refuge in Sakai, now little more than a suburb of Osaka, but at

that time a great and wealthy mart, and the only town in Japan which did

not acknowledge the sway of any feudal chief. Three years later they

were summoned thence to be presented to Oda Nobunaga, one of the

greatest captains Japan has ever produced. In the very year of Xavier's

landing at Kagoshima, Nobunaga had succeeded to his father's fief, a

comparatively petty estate in the province of Owari. In 1568 he was

seated in Kioto, a maker of shoguns and acknowledged ruler of 30 among

the 66 provinces of Japan. Had Nobunaga, wielding such immense power,

adopted a hostile attitude towards Christianity, the fires lit by the

Jesuits in Japan must soon have been extinguished. Nobunaga, however, to

great breadth and liberality of view added strong animosity towards

Buddhist priests. Many of the great monasteries had become armed camps,

their inmates skilled equally in field-attacks and in the defence of

ramparts. One sect (the Nichiren), which was specially affected by the

samurai, had lent powerful aid to the murderers of the shogun three

years before Nobunaga's victories carried him to Kioto, and the armed

monasteries constituted _imperia in imperio_ which assorted ill with his

ambition of complete supremacy. He therefore welcomed Christianity for

the sake of its opposition to Buddhism, and when Takayama conducted

Froez from Sakai to Nobunaga's presence, the reception accorded to the

Jesuit was of the most cordial character. Throughout the fourteen years

of life that remained to him, Nobunaga continued to be the constant

friend of the missionaries in particular and of foreigners visiting

Japan in general. He stood between the Jesuits and the Throne when, in

reply to an appeal from the Buddhist priests, the emperor, for the

second time, issued an anti-Christian decree (1568); he granted a site

for a church and residence at Azuchi on Lake Biwa, where his new

fortress stood; he addressed to various powerful feudatories letters

signifying a desire for the spread of Christianity; he frequently made

handsome presents to the fathers, and whenever they visited him he

showed a degree of accessibility and graciousness very foreign to his

usually haughty and imperious demeanour. The Jesuits themselves said of

him: "This man seems to have been chosen by God to open and prepare the

way for our faith." Nevertheless they do not appear to have entertained

much hope at any time of converting Nobunaga. They must have understood

that their doctrines had not made any profound impression on a man who

could treat them as this potentate did in 1579, when he plainly showed

that political exigencies might at any moment induce him to sacrifice

them.[30] His last act, too, proved that sacrilege was of no account in

his eyes, for he took steps to have himself apotheosized at Azuchi with

the utmost pomp and circumstance. Still nothing can obscure the benefits

he heaped upon the propagandists of Christianity.

Hideyshi and the Christians.

The terrible tumult of domestic war through which Japan passed in the

15th and 16th centuries brought to her service three of the greatest men

ever produced in Occident or Orient. They were Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi

Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Iyeyasu. Hideyoshi, as Nobunaga's lieutenant,

contributed largely to the building of the latter's fortunes, and,

succeeding him in 1582, brought the whole 66 provinces of the empire

under his own administrative sway. For the Jesuits now the absorbing

question was, what attitude Hideyoshi would assume towards their

propagandism. His power was virtually limitless. With a word he could

have overthrown the whole edifice created by them at the cost of so much

splendid effort and noble devotion. They were very quickly reassured. In

this matter Hideyoshi walked in Nobunaga's footsteps. He not only

accorded a friendly audience to Father Organtino, who waited on him as

representative of the Jesuits, but also he went in person to assign to

the company a site for a church and a residence in Osaka, where there

was presently to rise the most massive fortress ever built in the East.

At that time many Christian converts were serving in high positions, and

in 1584 the Jesuits placed it on record that "Hideyoshi was not only not

opposed to the things of God, but he even showed that he made much

account of them and preferred them to all the sects of the bonzes.... He

is entrusting to Christians his treasures, his secrets and his

fortresses of most importance, and shows himself well pleased that the

sons of the great lords about him should adopt our customs and our law."

Two years later in Osaka he received with every mark of cordiality and

favour a Jesuit mission which had come from Nagasaki seeking audience,

and on that occasion his visitor recorded that he spoke of an intention

of christianizing one half of Japan. Nor did Hideyoshi confine himself

to words. He actually signed a patent licensing the missionaries to

preach throughout all Japan, and exempting not only their houses and

churches from the billeting of soldiers but also the priests themselves

from local burdens. This was in 1586, on the eve of Hideyoshi's greatest

military enterprise, the invasion of Kiushiu and its complete reduction.

He carried that difficult campaign to completion by the middle of 1587,

and throughout its course he maintained a uniformly friendly demeanour

towards the Jesuits. But suddenly, when on the return journey he reached

Hakata in the north of the island, his policy underwent a radical

metamorphosis. Five questions were by his order propounded to the

vice-provincial of the Jesuits: "Why and by what authority he and his

fellow-propagandists had constrained Japanese subjects to become

Christians? Why they had induced their disciples and their sectaries to

overthrow temples? Why they persecuted the bonzes? Why they and other

Portuguese ate animals useful to men, such as oxen and cows? Why the

vice-provincial allowed merchants of his nation to buy Japanese to make

slaves of them in the Indies?" To these queries Coelho, the

vice-provincial, made answer that the missionaries had never themselves

resorted, or incited, to violence in their propagandism or persecuted

bonzes; that if their eating of beef were considered inadvisable, they

would give up the practice; and that they were powerless to prevent or

restrain the outrages perpetrated by their countrymen. Hideyoshi read

the vice-provincial's reply and, without comment, sent him word to

retire to Hirado, assemble all his followers there, and quit the country

within six months. On the next day (July 25, 1587) the following edict

was published:--

"Having learned from our faithful councillors that foreign priests

have come into our estates, where they preach a law contrary to that

of Japan, and that they even had the audacity to destroy temples

dedicated to our Kami and Hotoke; although the outrage merits the most

extreme punishment, wishing nevertheless to show them mercy, we order

them under pain of death to quit Japan within twenty days. During that

space no harm or hurt will be done to them. But at the expiration of

that term, we order that if any of them be found in our states, they

should be seized and punished as the greatest criminals. As for the

Portuguese merchants, we permit them to enter our ports, there to

continue their accustomed trade, and to remain in our states provided

our affairs need this. But we forbid them to bring any foreign priests

into the country, under the penalty of the confiscation of their ships

and goods."

How are we to account for this apparently rapid change of mood on the

part of Hideyoshi? Some historians insist that from the very outset he

conceived the resolve of suppressing Christianity and expelling its

propagandists, but that he concealed his design pending the subjugation

of Kiushiu, lest, by premature action, he might weaken his hand for that

enterprise. This hypothesis rests mainly on conjecture. Its formulators

found it easier to believe in a hidden purpose than to attribute to a

statesman so shrewd and far-seeing a sudden change of mind. A more

reasonable theory is that, shortly before leaving Osaka for Kiushiu,

Hideyoshi began to entertain doubts as to the expediency of tolerating

Christian propagandism, and that his doubts were signally strengthened

by direct observation of the state of affairs in Kiushiu. While still in

Osaka, he one day remarked publicly that "he feared much that all the

virtue of the European priests served only to conceal pernicious designs

against the empire." There had been no demolishing of temples or

overthrowing of images at Christian instance in the metropolitan

provinces. In Kiushiu, however, very different conditions prevailed.

There Christianity may be said to have been preached at the point of the

sword. Temples and images had been destroyed wholesale; vassals in

thousands had been compelled to embrace the foreign faith; and the

missionaries themselves had come to be treated as demi-gods whose nod

was worth conciliating at any cost of self-abasement. Brought into

direct contact with these evidences of the growth of a new power,

temporal as well as spiritual, Hideyoshi may well have reached the

conclusion that a choice had to be finally made between his own

supremacy and that of the alien creed, if not between the independence

of Japan and the yoke of the great Christian states of Europe.

Sequel of the Edict of Banishment.

Hideyoshi gauged the character of the medieval Christians with

sufficient accuracy to know that for the sake of their faith they would

at any time defy the laws of the island. His estimate received immediate

verification, for when the Jesuits, numbering 120, assembled at Hirado

and received his order to embark at once they decided that only those

should sail whose services were needed in China. The others remained and

went about their duties as usual, under the protection of the converted

feudatories. Hideyoshi, however, saw reason to wink at this disregard of

his authority. At first he showed uncompromising resolution. All the

churches in Kioto, Osaka and Sakai were demolished, while troops were

sent to raze the Christian places of worship in Kiushiu and seize the

port of Nagasaki. These troops were munificently dissuaded from their

purpose by the Christian feudatories. But Hideyoshi did not protest, and

in 1588 he allowed himself to be convinced by a Portuguese envoy that in

the absence of missionaries foreign trade must cease, since without the

intervention of the fathers peace and good order could not be maintained

among the merchants. Rather than suffer the trade to be interrupted

Hideyoshi agreed to the coming of priests, and thenceforth, during some

years, Christianity not only continued to flourish and grow in Kiushiu

but also found a favourable field of operations in Kioto itself. Care

was taken that Hideyoshi's attention should not be attracted by any

salient evidences of what he had called a "diabolical religion," and

thus for a time all went well. There is evidence that, like the feudal

chiefs in Kiushiu, Hideyoshi set great store by foreign trade and would

even have sacrificed to its maintenance and expansion something of the

aversion he had conceived for Christianity. He did indeed make one very

large concession. For on being assured that Portuguese traders could not

frequent Japan unless they found Christian priests there to minister to

them, he consented to sanction the presence of a limited number of

Jesuits. The statistics of 1595 show how Christianity fared under even

this partial tolerance, for there were then 137 Jesuits in Japan with

300,000 converts, among whom were 17 feudal chiefs, to say nothing of

many men of lesser though still considerable note, and even not a few

bonzes.

Hideyoshi's Final Attitude towards Christianity.

For ten years after his unlooked-for order of expulsion, Hideyoshi

preserved a tolerant mien. But in 1597 his forbearance gave place to a

mood of uncompromising severity. The reasons of this second change are

very clear, though diverse accounts have been transmitted. Up to 1593

the Portuguese had possessed a monopoly of religious propagandism and

over-sea commerce in Japan. The privilege was secured to them by

agreement between Spain and Portugal and by a papal bull. But the

Spaniards in Manila had long looked with somewhat jealous eyes on this

Jesuit reservation, and when news of the disaster of 1587 reached the

Philippines, the Dominicans and Franciscans residing there were fired

with zeal to enter an arena where the crown of martyrdom seemed to be

the least reward within reach. The papal bull, however, demanded

obedience, and to overcome that difficulty a ruse was necessary: the

governor of Manila agreed to send a party of Franciscans as ambassadors

to Hideyoshi. In that guise the friars, being neither traders nor

propagandists, considered that they did not violate either the treaty or

the bull. It was a technical subterfuge very unworthy of the object

contemplated, and the friars supplemented it by swearing to Hideyoshi

that the Philippines would submit to his sway. Thus they obtained

permission to visit Kioto, Osaka and Fushimi, but with the explicit

proviso that they must not preach. Very soon they had built a church in

Kioto, consecrated it with the utmost pomp, and were preaching sermons

and chaunting litanies there in flagrant defiance of Hideyoshi's veto.

Presently their number received an access of three friars who came

bearing gifts from the governor at Manila, and now they not only

established a convent in Osaka, but also seized a Jesuit church in

Nagasaki and converted the circumspect worship hitherto conducted there

by the fathers into services of the most public character. Officially

checked in Nagasaki, they charged the Jesuits in Kioto with having

intrigued to impede them, and they further vaunted the courageous

openness of their own ministrations as compared with the clandestine

timidity of the methods which wise prudence had induced the Jesuits to

adopt. Retribution would have followed quickly had not Hideyoshi's

attention been engrossed by an attempt to invade China through Korea. At

this stage, however, a memorable incident occurred. Driven out of her

course by a storm, a great and richly laden Spanish galleon, bound for

Acapulco from Manila, drifted to the coast of Tosa province, and

running--or being purposely run--on a sand-bank as she was being towed

into port by Japanese boats, broke her back. She carried goods to the

value of some 600,000 crowns, and certain officials urged Hideyoshi to

confiscate her as derelict, conveying to him at the same time a detailed

account of the doings of the Franciscans and their open flouting of his

orders. Hideyoshi, much incensed, commanded the arrest of the

Franciscans and despatched officers to Tosa to confiscate the "San

Felipe." The pilot of the galleon sought to intimidate these officers by

showing them on a map of the world the vast extent of Spain's dominions,

and being asked how one country had acquired such extended sway,

replied: "Our kings begin by sending into the countries they wish to

conquer missionaries who induce the people to embrace our religion, and

when they have made considerable progress, troops are sent who combine

with the new Christians, and then our kings have not much trouble in

accomplishing the rest."

The First Execution of Christians.

On learning of this speech Hideyoshi was overcome with fury. He

condemned the Franciscans to have their noses and ears cut off, to be

promenaded through Kioto, Osaka and Sakai, and to be crucified at

Nagasaki. "I have ordered these foreigners to be treated thus, because

they have come from the Philippines to Japan, calling themselves

ambassadors, although they were not so; because they have remained here

far too long without my permission; because, in defiance of my

prohibition, they have built churches, preached their religion and

caused disorders." Twenty-six suffered under this sentence--six

Franciscans, three Japanese Jesuits and seventeen native Christians,

chiefly domestic servants of the Franciscans.[31] They met their fate

with noble fortitude. Hideyoshi further issued a special injunction

against the adoption of Christianity by a feudal chief, and took steps

to give practical effect to his expulsion edict of 1587. The governor of

Nagasaki received instructions to send away all the Jesuits, permitting

only two or three to remain for the service of the Portuguese merchants.

But the Jesuits were not the kind of men who, to escape personal peril,

turn their back upon an unaccomplished work of grace. There were 125 of

them in Japan at that time. In October 1597 a junk sailed out of

Nagasaki harbour, her decks crowded with seeming Jesuits. In reality she

carried 11 of the company, the apparent Jesuits being disguised sailors.

It is not to be supposed that such a manoeuvre could be hidden from the

local authorities. They winked at it, until rumour became insistent that

Hideyoshi was about to visit Kiushiu in person, and all Japanese in

administrative posts knew how Hideyoshi visited disobedience and how

hopeless was any attempt to deceive him. Therefore, early in 1598,

really drastic steps were taken. Churches to the number of 137 were

demolished in Kiushiu, seminaries and residences fell, and the governor

of Nagasaki assembled there all the fathers of the company for

deportation to Macao by the great ship in the following year. But while

they waited, Hideyoshi died. It is not on record that the Jesuits openly

declared his removal from the earth to have been a special dispensation

in their favour. But they pronounced him an execrable tyrant and

consigned his "soul to hell for all eternity." Yet no impartial reader

of history can pretend to think that a 16th-century Jesuit general in

Hideyoshi's place would have shown towards an alien creed and its

propagandists even a small measure of the tolerance exercised by the

Japanese statesman towards Christianity and the Jesuits.

Foreign Policy of the Tokugawa Rulers.

Hideyoshi's death occurred in 1598. Two years later, his authority as

administrative ruler of all Japan had passed into the hands of Iyeyasu,

the Tokugawa chief, and thirty-nine years later the Tokugawa potentates

had not only exterminated Christianity in Japan but had also condemned

their country to a period of international isolation which continued

unbroken until 1853, an interval of 214 years. It has been shown that

even when they were most incensed against Christianity, Japanese

administrators sought to foster and preserve foreign trade. Why then did

they close the country's doors to the outside world and suspend a

commerce once so much esteemed? To answer that question some retrospect

is needed. Certain historians allege that from the outset Iyeyasu shared

Hideyoshi's misgivings about the real designs of Christian potentates

and Christian propagandists. But that verdict is not supported by facts.

The first occasion of the Tokugawa chief's recorded contact with a

Christian propagandist was less than three months after Hideyoshi's

death. There was then led into his presence a Franciscan, by name Jerome

de Jesus, originally a member of the fictitious embassy from Manila.

This man's conduct constitutes an example of the invincible zeal and

courage inspiring a Christian priest in those days. Barely escaping the

doom of crucifixion which overtook his companions, he had been deported

from Japan to Manila at a time when death seemed to be the certain

penalty of remaining. But no sooner had he been landed at Manila than he

took passage in a Chinese junk, and, returning to Nagasaki, made his way

secretly from the far south of Japan to the province of Kii. There

arrested, he was brought into the presence of Iyeyasu, and his own

record of what ensued is given in a letter subsequently sent to

Manila:--

"When the Prince saw me he asked how I had managed to escape the

previous persecution. I answered him that at that date God had

delivered me in order that I might go to Manila and bring back new

colleagues from there--preachers of the divine law--and that I had

returned from Manila to encourage the Christians, cherishing the

desire to die on the cross in order to go to enjoy eternal glory like

my former colleagues. On hearing these words the Emperor began to

smile, whether in his quality of a pagan of the sect of Shaka, which

teaches that there is no future life, or whether from the thought that

I was frightened at having to be put to death. Then, looking at me

kindly, he said, 'Be no longer afraid and no longer conceal yourself,

and no longer change your habit, for I wish you well; and as for the

Christians who every year pass within sight of the Kwanto where my

domains are, when they go to Mexico with their ships, I have a keen

desire for them to visit the harbours of this island, to refresh

themselves there, and to take what they wish, to trade with my vassals

and to teach them how to develop silver mines; and that my intentions

may be accomplished before my death, I wish you to indicate to me the

means to take to realize them.' I answered that it was necessary that

Spanish pilots should take the soundings of his harbours, so that

ships might not be lost in future as the 'San Felipe' had been, and

that he should solicit this service from the governor of the

Philippines. The Prince approved of my advice, and accordingly he has

sent a Japanese gentleman, a native of Sakai, the bearer of this

message.... It is essential to oppose no obstacle to the complete

liberty offered by the Emperor to the Spaniards and to our holy order,

for the preaching of the holy gospel.... The same Prince (who is about

to visit the Kwanto) invites me to accompany him to make choice of a

house, and to visit the harbour which he promises to open to us; his

desires in this respect are keener than I can express."

The above version of the Tokugawa chief's mood is confirmed by events,

for not only did he allow the contumelious Franciscan to build a

church--the first--in Yedo and to celebrate Mass there, but also he sent

three embassies to the Philippines, proposing reciprocal freedom of

commerce, offering to open ports in the Kwanto and asking for competent

naval architects. He never obtained the architects, and though the trade

came, its volume was small in comparison with the abundance of friars

that accompanied it. There is just a possibility that Iyeyasu saw in

these Spanish monks an instrument of counteracting the influence of the

Jesuits, for he must have known that the Franciscans opened their

mission in Yedo by "declaiming with violence against the fathers of the

company of Jesus." In short, the Spanish monks assumed towards the

Jesuits in Japan the same intolerant and abusive tone that the Jesuits

themselves had previously assumed towards Buddhism.

At that time there appeared upon the scene another factor destined

greatly to complicate events. It was a Dutch merchant ship, the

"Liefde." Until the Netherlands revolted from Spain, the Dutch had been

the principal distributors of all goods arriving at Lisbon from the Far

East; but in 1594 Philip II. closed the port of Lisbon to these rebels,

and the Dutch met the situation by turning their prows to the Orient to

invade the sources of Portuguese commerce. One of the first expeditions

despatched for that purpose set out in 1598, and of the five vessels

composing it one only was ever heard of again. This was the "Liefde."

She reached Japan during the spring of 1600, with only four-and-twenty

alive out of her original crew of 110. Towed into the harbour at Funai,

the "Liefde" was visited by Jesuits, who, on discovering her

nationality, denounced her to the local authorities as a pirate and

endeavoured to incense the Japanese against them. The "Liefde" had on

board in the capacity of "pilot major" an Englishman, Will Adams of

Gillingham in Kent, whom Iyeyasu summoned to Osaka, where there

commenced between the rough British sailor and the Tokugawa chief a

curiously friendly intercourse which was not interrupted until the death

of Adams twenty years later. The Englishman became master ship-builder

to the Yedo government; was employed as diplomatic agent when other

traders from his own country and from Holland arrived in Japan,

received in perpetual gift a substantial estate, and from first to last

possessed the implicit confidence of the shogun. Iyeyasu quickly

discerned the man's honesty, perceived that whatever benefits foreign

commerce might confer would be increased by encouraging competition

among the foreigners, and realized that English and Dutch trade

presented the wholesome feature of complete dissociation from religious

propagandism. On the other hand, he showed no intolerance to either

Spaniards or Portuguese. He issued (1601) two official patents

sanctioning the residence of the fathers in Kioto, Osaka and Nagasaki;

he employed Father Rodriguez as interpreter to the court at Yedo; and in

1603 he gave munificent succour to the Jesuits who were reduced to dire

straits owing to the capture of the great ship from Macao by the Dutch

and the consequent loss of several years' supplies for the mission in

Japan.

It is thus seen that each of the great trio of Japan's 16th-century

statesmen--Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Iyeyasu--adopted at the outset a most

tolerant demeanour towards Christianity. The reasons of Hideyoshi's

change of mood have been set forth. We have now to examine the reasons

that produced a similar metamorphosis in the case of Iyeyasu. Two causes

present themselves immediately. The first is that, while tolerating

Christianity, Iyeyasu did not approve of it as a creed; the second, that

he himself, whether from state policy or genuine piety, strongly

encouraged Buddhism. Proof of the former proposition is found in an

order issued by him in 1602 to insure the safety of foreign merchantmen

entering Japanese ports: it concluded with the reservation, "but we

rigorously forbid them" (foreigners coming in such ships) "to promulgate

their faith." Proof of the latter is furnished by the facts that he

invariably carried about with him a miniature Buddhist image which he

regarded as his tutelary deity, and that he fostered the creed of Shaka

as zealously as Oda Nobunaga had suppressed it. There is much difficulty

in tracing the exact sequence of events which gradually educated a

strong antipathy to the Christian faith in the mind of the Tokugawa

chief. He must have been influenced in some degree by the views of his

great predecessor, Hideyoshi. But he did not accept those views

implicitly. At the end of the 16th century he sent a trusted emissary to

Europe for the purpose of directly observing the conditions in the home

of Christianity, and this man, the better to achieve his aim, embraced

the foreign faith, and studied it from within as well as from without.

The story that he had to tell on his return could not fail to shock the

ruler of a country where freedom of conscience had existed from time

immemorial. It was a story of the inquisition and of the stake; of

unlimited aggression in the name of the cross; of the pope's

overlordship which entitled him to confiscate the realm of heretical

sovereigns; of religious wars and of well-nigh incredible fanaticism.

Iyeyasu must have received an evil impression while he listened to his

emissary's statements. Under his own eyes, too, were abundant evidences

of the spirit of strife that Christian dogma engendered in those times.

From the moment when the Franciscans and Dominicans arrived in Japan, a

fierce quarrel began between them and the Jesuits; a quarrel which even

community of suffering could not compose. Not less repellent was an

attempt on the part of the Spaniards to dictate to Iyeyasu the expulsion

of all Hollanders from Japan, and on the part of the Jesuits to dictate

the expulsion of the Spaniards. The former proposal, couched almost in

the form of a demand, was twice formulated, and accompanied on the

second occasion by a scarcely less insulting offer, namely, that Spanish

men-of-war would be sent to Japan to burn all Dutch ships found in the

ports of the empire. If in the face of proposals so contumelious of his

sovereign authority Iyeyasu preserved a calm and dignified mien, merely

replying that his country was open to all comers, and that, if other

nations had quarrels among themselves, they must not take Japan for

battle-ground, it is nevertheless unimaginable that he did not strongly

resent such interference with his own independent foreign policy, and

that he did not interpret it as foreshadowing a disturbance of the

realm's peace by sectarian quarrels among Christians. These

experiences, predisposing Iyeyasu to dislike Christianity as a creed and

to distrust it as a political influence, were soon supplemented by

incidents of an immediately determinative character. The first was an

act of fraud and forgery committed in the interests of a Christian

feudatory by a trusted official, himself a Christian. Thereupon Iyeyasu,

conceiving it unsafe that Christians should fill offices at his court,

dismissed all those so employed, banished them from Yedo and forbade any

feudal chief to harbour them. The second incident was an attempted

survey of the coast of Japan by a Spanish mariner and a Franciscan

friar. Permission to take this step had been obtained by an envoy from

New Spain, but no deep consideration of reasons seems to have preluded

the permission on Japan's side, and when the mariner (Sebastian) and the

friar (Sotelo) hastened to carry out the project, Iyeyasu asked Will

Adams to explain this display of industry. The Englishman replied that

such a proceeding would be regarded in Europe as an act of hostility,

especially on the part of the Spaniards or Portuguese, whose aggressions

were notorious. He added, in reply to further questions, that "the Roman

priesthood had been expelled from many parts of Germany, from Sweden,

Norway, Denmark, Holland and England, and that although his own country

preserved the pure form of the Christian faith from which Spain and

Portugal had deviated, yet neither English nor Dutch considered that

that fact afforded them any reason to war with, or to annex, States

which were not Christian solely for the reason that they were

non-Christian." Iyeyasu reposed entire confidence in Adams. Hearing the

Englishman's testimony, he is said to have exclaimed, "If the sovereigns

of Europe do not tolerate these priests, I do them no wrong if I refuse

to tolerate them." Japanese historians add that Iyeyasu discovered a

conspiracy on the part of some Japanese Christians to overthrow his

government by the aid of foreign troops. It was not a widely ramified

plot, but it lent additional importance to the fact that the sympathy of

the fathers and their converts was plainly with the only magnate in the

empire who continued to dispute the Tokugawa supremacy, Hideyori, the

son of Hideyoshi. Nevertheless Iyeyasu shrank from proceeding to

extremities in the case of any foreign priest, and this attitude he

maintained until his death (1616). Possibly he might have been not less

tolerant towards native Christians also had not the Tokugawa authority

been openly defied by a Franciscan father--the Sotelo mentioned

above--in Yedo itself. Then (1613) the first execution of Japanese

converts took place, though the monk himself was released after a short

incarceration. At that time, as is still the case even in these more

enlightened days, insignificant differences of custom sometimes induced

serious misconceptions. A Christian who had violated the secular law was

crucified in Nagasaki. Many of his fellow-believers kneeled around his

cross and prayed for the peace of his soul. A party of converts were

afterwards burned to death in the same place for refusing to apostatize,

and their Christian friends crowded to carry off portions of their

bodies as holy relics. When these things were reported to Iyeyasu, he

said, "Without doubt that must be a diabolic faith which persuades

people not only to worship criminals condemned to death for their

crimes, but also to honour those who have been burned or cut in pieces

by the order of their lord" (feudal chief).

Suppression of Christianity.

The fateful edict ordering that all foreign priests should be collected

in Nagasaki preparatory to removal from Japan, that all churches should

be demolished, and that the converts should be compelled to abjure

Christianity, was issued on the 27th of January 1614. There were then in

Japan 122 Jesuits, 14 Franciscans, 9 Dominicans, 4 Augustins and 7

secular priests. Had these men obeyed the orders of the Japanese

authorities by leaving the country finally, not one foreigner would have

suffered for his faith in Japan, except the 6 Franciscans executed at

Nagasaki by order of Hideyoshi in 1597. But suffering and death counted

for nothing with the missionaries as against the possibility of winning

or keeping even one convert. Forty-seven of them evaded the edict, some

by concealing themselves at the time of its issue, the rest by leaving

their ships when the latter had passed out of sight of the shore of

Japan, and returning by boats to the scene of their former labours.

Moreover, in a few months, those that had actually crossed the sea

re-crossed it in various disguises, and soon the Japanese government had

to consider whether it would suffer its authority to be thus flouted or

resort to extreme measures.

During two years immediately following the issue of the anti-Christian

decree, the attention of the Tokugawa chief and indeed of all Japan was

concentrated on the closing episode of the great struggle which assured

to Iyeyasu final supremacy as administrative ruler of the empire. That

episode was a terrible battle under the walls of Osaka castle between

the adherents of the Tokugawa and the supporters of Hideyori. In this

struggle fresh fuel was added to the fire of anti-Christian resentment,

for many Christian converts threw in their lot with Hideyori, and in one

part of the field the Tokugawa troops found themselves fighting against

a foe whose banners were emblazoned with the cross and with images of

the Saviour and St James, the patron saint of Spain. But the Christians

had protectors. Many of the feudatories showed themselves strongly

averse from inflicting the extreme penalty on men and women whose

adoption of an alien religion had been partly forced by the feudatories

themselves. As for the people at large, their liberal spirit is attested

by the fact that five fathers who were in Osaka castle at the time of

its capture made their way to distant refuges without encountering any

risk of betrayal. During these events the death of Iyeyasu took place

(June 1, 1616), and pending the dedication of his mausoleum the

anti-Christian crusade was virtually suspended.

In September 1616 a new anti-Christian edict was promulgated by

Hidetada, son and successor of Iyeyasu. It pronounced sentence of exile

against all Christian priests, including even those whose presence had

been sanctioned for ministering to the Portuguese merchants: it forbade

the Japanese, under the penalty of being burned alive and of having all

their property confiscated, to have any connexion with the ministers of

religion or to give them hospitality. It was forbidden to any prince or

lord to keep Christians in his service or even on his estates, and the

edict was promulgated with more than usual solemnity, though its

enforcement was deferred until the next year on account of the obsequies

of Iyeyasu. This edict of 1616 differed from that issued by Iyeyasu in

1614, since the latter did not prescribe the death penalty for converts

refusing to apostatize. But both agreed in indicating expulsion as the

sole manner of dealing with the foreign priests. As for the shogun and

his advisers, it is reasonable to assume that they did not anticipate

much necessity for recourse to violence. They must have known that a

great majority of the converts had joined the Christian church at the

instance or by the command of their local rulers, and nothing can have

seemed less likely than that a creed thus lightly embraced would be

adhered to in defiance of torture and death. It is moreover morally

certain that had the foreign propagandists obeyed the Government's edict

and left the country, not one would have been put to death. They

suffered because they defied the laws of the land. Some fifty

missionaries happened to be in Nagasaki when Hidetada's edict was

issued. A number of these were apprehended and deported, but several of

them returned almost immediately. This happened under the jurisdiction

of Omura, who had been specially charged with the duty of sending away

the _bateren_ (_padres_). He appears to have concluded that a striking

example must be furnished, and he therefore ordered the seizure and

decapitation of two fathers, De l'Assumpcion and Machado. The result

completely falsified his calculations, and presaged the cruel struggle

now destined to begin.

The bodies, placed in different coffins, were interred in the same

grave. Guards were placed over it, but the concourse was immense. The

sick were carried to the sepulchre to be restored to health. The

Christians found new strength in this martyrdom; the pagans themselves

were full of admiration for it. Numerous conversions and numerous

returns of apostates took place everywhere.

In the midst of all this, Navarette, the vice-provincial of the

Dominicans, and Ayala, the vice-provincial of the Augustins, came out of

their retreat, and in full priestly garb started upon an open

propaganda. The two fanatics--for so even Charlevoix considers them to

have been--were secretly conveyed to the island Takashima and there

decapitated, while their coffins were weighted with big stones and sunk

in the sea. Even more directly defiant was the attitude of the next

martyred priest, an old Franciscan monk, Juan de Santa Martha. He had

for three years suffered all the horrors of a medieval Japanese prison,

when it was proposed to release him and deport him to New Spain. His

answer was that, if released, he would stay in Japan and preach there.

He laid his head on the block in August 1618. But from that time until

1622 no other foreign missionary suffered capital punishment in Japan,

though many of them arrived in the country and continued their

propagandism there. During that interval, also, there occurred another

incident eminently calculated to fix upon the Christians still deeper

suspicion of political designs. In a Portuguese ship captured by the

Dutch a letter was found instigating the Japanese converts to revolt,

and promising that, when the number of these disaffected Christians was

sufficient, men-of-war would be sent to aid them. Not the least potent

of the influences operating against the Christians was that pamphlets

were written by apostates attributing the zeal of the foreign

propagandists solely to political motives. Yet another indictment of

Spanish and Portuguese propagandists was contained in a despatch

addressed to Hidetada in 1620 by the admiral in command of the British

and Dutch fleet then cruising in Far-Eastern waters. In that document

the friars were flatly accused of treacherous practices, and the

Japanese ruler was warned against the aggressive designs of Philip of

Spain. In the face of all this evidence the Japanese ceased to hesitate,

and a time of terror ensued for the fathers and their converts. The

measures adopted towards the missionaries gradually increased in

severity. In 1617 the first two fathers put to death (De l'Assumpcion

and Machado) were beheaded, "not by the common executioner, but by one

of the first officers of the prince." Subsequently Navarette and Ayala

were decapitated by the executioner. Then, in 1618, Juan de Santa Martha

was executed like a common criminal, his body being dismembered and his

head exposed. Finally, in 1622, Zuñiga and Flores were burnt alive. The

same year was marked by the "great martyrdom" at Nagasaki when 9 foreign

priests went to the stake with 19 Japanese converts. The shogun seems to

have been now labouring under vivid fear of a foreign invasion. An

emissary sent by him to Europe had returned on the eve of the "great

martyrdom" after seven years abroad, and had made a report more than

ever unfavourable to Christianity. Therefore Hidetada deemed it

necessary to refuse audience to a Philippine embassy in 1624 and to

deport all Spaniards from Japan. Further, it was decreed that no

Japanese Christian should thenceforth be suffered to go abroad for

commerce, and that though non-Christians or men who had apostatized

might travel freely, they must not visit the Philippines. Thus ended all

intercourse between Japan and Spain. It had continued for 32 years and

had engendered a widespread conviction that Christianity was an

instrument of Spanish aggression.

Iyemitsu, son of Hidetada, now ruled in Yedo, though Hidetada himself

remained the power behind the throne. The year (1623) of the former's

accession to power had been marked by the re-issue of anti-Christian

decrees, and by the martyrdom of some 500 Christians within the Tokugawa

domains, whither the tide of persecution now flowed for the first time.

Thenceforth the campaign was continuous. The men most active and most

relentless in carrying on the persecution were Mizuno and Takenaka,

governors of Nagasaki, and Matsukura, feudatory of Shimabara. By the

latter were invented the punishment of throwing converts into the

solfataras at Unzen and the torture of the _fosse_, which consisted in

suspension by the feet, head downwards, in a pit until blood oozed from

the mouth, nose and ears. Many endured this latter torture for days,

until death came to their relief, but a few--notably the Jesuit

provincial Ferreyra--apostatized. Matsukura and Takenaka were so

strongly obsessed by the Spanish menace that they contemplated the

conquest of the Philippines in order to deprive the Spaniards of a

Far-Eastern base. But timid counsels then prevailed in Yedo, where the

spirit of a Nobunaga, a Hideyoshi or an Iyeyasu no longer presided. Of

course the measures of repression grew in severity as the fortitude of

the Christians became more obdurate. It is not possible to state the

exact number of victims. Some historians say that, down to 1635, no

fewer than 280,000 were punished, but that figure is probably

exaggerated, for the most trustworthy records indicate that the converts

never aggregated more than 300,000, and many of these, if not a great

majority, having accepted the foreign faith very lightly, doubtless

discarded it readily under menace of destruction. Every opportunity was

given for apostatizing and for escaping death. Immunity could be secured

by pointing out a fellow-convert, and when it is observed that among the

seven or eight feudatories who embraced Christianity only two or three

died in that faith, we must conclude that not a few cases of recanting

occurred among the commoners. Remarkable fortitude, however, is said to

have been displayed. If the converts were intrepid their teachers showed

no less courage. Again and again the latter defied the Japanese

authorities by coming to the country or returning thither after having

been deported. Ignoring the orders of the governors of Macao and Manila

and even of the king of Spain himself, they arrived, year after year, to

be certainly apprehended and sent to the stake after brief periods of

propagandism. In 1626 they actually baptized over 3000 converts. Large

rewards were paid to anyone denouncing a propagandist, and as for the

people, they had to trample upon a picture of Christ in order to prove

that they were not Christians.

Meanwhile the feuds between the Dutch, the Spaniards and the Portuguese

never ceased. In 1636, the Dutch found on a captured Portuguese vessel a

report of the governor of Macao describing a two days' festival which

had been held there in honour of Vieyra, the vice-provincial whose

martyrdom had just taken place in Japan. This report the Dutch handed to

the Japanese authorities "in order that his majesty may see more clearly

what great honour the Portuguese pay to those he has forbidden his realm

as traitors to the state and to his crown." Probably the accusation

added little to the resentment and distrust already harboured by the

Japanese against the Portuguese. At all events the Yedo government took

no step distinctly hostile to Portuguese laymen until 1637, when an

edict was issued forbidding any foreigners to travel in the empire, lest

Portuguese with passports bearing Dutch names might enter it. This was

the beginning of the end. In the last month of 1637 a rebellion broke

out, commonly called the "Christian revolt of Shimabara," which sealed

the fate of Japan's foreign intercourse for over 200 years.

The Shimabara Revolt.

The promontory of Shimabara and the island of Amakusa enclose the gulf

of Nagasaki on the west. Among all the fiefs in Japan, Shimabara and

Amakusa had been the two most thoroughly christianized in the early

years of Jesuit propagandism. Hence in later days they were naturally

the scene of the severest persecutions. Still the people would probably

have suffered in silence had they not been taxed beyond all endurance to

supply funds for an extravagant chief who employed savage methods of

extortion. Japanese annals, however, relegate the taxation grievance to

an altogether secondary place, and attribute the revolt solely to the

instigation of five samurai who led a roving life to avoid persecution

for their adherence to Christianity. Whichever version be correct, it is

certain that the outbreak ultimately attracted all the Christians from

the surrounding regions, and was regarded by the authorities as in

effect a Christian rising. The Amakusa insurgents passed over to

Shimabara, and on the 27th of January 1638 the whole body--numbering,

according to some authorities, 20,000 fighting men with 17,000 women and

children; according to others, little more than one-half of these

figures--took possession of the dilapidated castle of Hara, which stood

on a plateau with three sides descending perpendicularly to the sea, a

hundred feet beneath, and with a swamp on its fourth front. There the

insurgents, who fought under flags with red crosses and whose battle

cries were "Jesus," "Maria" and "St Iago," successfully maintained

themselves against the repeated assaults of strong forces until the 12th

of April, when, their ammunition and their provisions alike exhausted,

they were overwhelmed and put to the sword, with the exception of 105

prisoners. During the siege the Dutch were enabled to furnish a vivid

proof of enmity to the Christianity of the Spaniards and the Portuguese.

For the guns in possession of the besiegers being too light to

accomplish anything, Koeckebacker, the factor at Hirado, was invited to

send ships carrying heavier metal. He replied with the "de Ryp" of 20

guns, which threw 426 shot into the castle in 15 days. Probably the

great bulk of the remaining Japanese Christians perished at the massacre

of Hara. Thenceforth there were few martyrs.[32]

Foreign Trade in the 17th Century.

It has been clearly shown that Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Iyeyasu were all

in favour of foreign intercourse and trade, and that the Tokugawa chief,

even more than his predecessor Hideyoshi, made strenuous efforts to

differentiate between Christianity and commerce, so that the latter

might not be involved in the former's fate. In fact the three objects

which Iyeyasu desired most earnestly to compass were the development of

foreign commerce, the acquisition of a mercantile marine and the

exploitation of Japan's mines. He offered the Spaniards, Portuguese,

English and Dutch a site for a settlement in Yedo, and had they accepted

the offer the country might never have been closed. In his time Japan

was virtually a free-trade country. Importers had not to pay any duties.

It was expected, however, that they should make presents to the

feudatory into whose port they carried their goods, and these presents

were often very valuable. Naturally the Tokugawa chief desired to

attract such a source of wealth to his own domains. He sent more than

one envoy to Manila to urge the opening of commerce direct with the

regions about Yedo, and to ask the Spaniards for competent naval

architects. Perhaps the truest exposition of his attitude is given in a

law enacted in 1602:--

"If any foreign vessel by stress of weather is obliged to touch at any

principality or to put into any harbour of Japan, we order that,

whoever these foreigners may be, absolutely nothing whatever that

belongs to them or that they may have brought in their ship, shall be

taken from them. Likewise we rigorously prohibit the use of any

violence in the purchase or the sale of any of the commodities brought

by their ship, and if it is not convenient for the merchants of the

ship to remain in the port they have entered, they may pass to any

other port that may suit them, and therein buy and sell in full

freedom. Likewise we order in a general manner that foreigners may

freely reside in any part of Japan they choose, but we rigorously

forbid them to promulgate their faith."

It was in that mood that he granted (1605) a licence to the Dutch to

trade in Japan, his expectation doubtless being that the ships which

they promised to send every year would make their dépôt at Uraga or in

some other place near Yedo. But things were ordered differently. The

first Hollanders that set foot in Japan were the survivors of the

wrecked "Liefde." Thrown into prison for a time, they were approached by

emissaries from the feudatory of Hirado, who engaged some of them to

teach the art of casting guns and the science of gunnery to his vassals,

and when two of them were allowed to leave Japan, he furnished them with

the means of doing so, at the same time making promises which invested

Hirado with attractions as a port of trade, though it was then and

always remained an insignificant fishing village. The Dutch possessed

precisely the qualifications suited to the situation then existing in

Japan: they had commercial potentialities without any religious

associations. Fully appreciating that fact, the shrewd feudatory of

Hirado laid himself out to entice the Dutchmen to his fief, and he

succeeded. Shortly afterwards, an incident occurred which clearly

betrayed the strength of the Tokugawa chief's desire to exploit Japan's

mines. The governor-general of the Philippines (Don Rodrigo Vivero y

Velasco), his ship being cast away on the Japanese coast on a voyage to

Acapulco, was received by Iyeyasu, and in response to the latter's

request for fifty miners, the Spaniard formulated terms to which Iyeyasu

actually agreed: that half the produce of the mines should go to the

miners; that the other half should be divided between Iyeyasu and the

king of Spain; that the latter might send commissioners to Japan to look

after his mining interests, and that these commissioners might be

accompanied by priests who would be entitled to have public churches for

holding services. This was in 1609, when the Tokugawa chief had again

and again imposed the strictest veto on Christian propagandism. There

can be little doubt that he understood the concession made to Don

Rodrigo in the sense of Hideyoshi's mandate to the Jesuits in Nagasaki,

namely, that a sufficient number might remain to minister to the

Portuguese traders frequenting the port. Iyeyasu had confidence in

himself and in his countrymen. He knew that emergencies could be dealt

with when they arose and he sacrificed nothing to timidity. But his

courageous policy died with him and the miners did not come. Neither did

the Spaniards ever devote any successful efforts to establishing trade

with Japan. Their vessels paid fitful visits to Uraga, but the

Portuguese continued to monopolize the commerce.

Opening of Dutch and English Trade.

In 1611 a Dutch merchantman (the "Brach") reached Hirado with a cargo of

pepper, cloth, ivory, silk and lead. She carried two envoys, Spex and

Segerszoon, and in the very face of a Spanish embassy which had just

arrived from Manila expressly for the purpose of "settling the matter

regarding the Hollanders," the Dutchmen obtained a liberal patent from

Iyeyasu. Twelve years previously, the merchants of London, stimulated

generally by the success of the Dutch in trade with the East, and

specially by the fact that "these Hollanders had raised the price of

pepper against us from 3 shillings per pound to 6 shillings and 8

shillings," organized the East India Company which immediately began to

send ships eastward. Of course the news that the Dutch were about to

establish a trading station in Japan reached London speedily, and the

East India Company lost no time in ordering one of their vessels, the

"Clove," under Captain Saris, to proceed to the Far-Eastern islands. She

carried a quantity of pepper, and on the voyage she endeavoured to

procure some spices at the Moluccas. But the Dutch would not suffer any

poaching on their valuable monopoly. The "Clove" entered Hirado on the

11th of June 1613. Saris seems to have been a man self-opinionated, of

shallow judgment and suspicious. Though strongly urged by Will Adams to

make Uraga the seat of the new trade, though convinced of the excellence

of the harbour there, and though instructed as to the great advantage of

proximity to the shogun's capital, he appears to have conceived some

distrust of Adams, for he chose Hirado. From Iyeyasu Captain Saris

received a most liberal charter, which plainly displayed the mood of the

Tokugawa shogun towards foreign trade:--

1. The ship that has now come for the first time from England over the

sea to Japan may carry on trade of all kinds without hindrance. With

regard to future visits (of English ships) permission will be given in

regard to all matters.

2. With regard to the cargoes of ships, requisition will be made by

list according to the requirements of the shogunate.

3. English ships are free to visit any port in Japan. If disabled by

storms they may put into any harbour.

4. Ground in Yedo in the place which they may desire shall be given to

the English, and they may erect houses and reside and trade there.

They shall be at liberty to return to their country whenever they wish

to do so, and to dispose as they like of the houses they have erected.

5. If an Englishman dies in Japan of disease, or any other cause, his

effects shall be handed over without fail.