The Martyrs of Japan

February 6 is the Feast of the Japanese Martyrs. Very few today know anything about these men and women. But despite their largely anonymous deaths they deserve to be remembered and honored.

Christianity was carried into Japan on the back of Saint Francis Xavier, SJ. "The Apostle of the Indies". St. Francis was a Jesuit - in the glorious days before the Jesuits became a sewer of heresy - and the son of a Basque nobleman. He became a close friend of the founder of the Society of Jesus, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, and one of the first Jesuits.

When, in the early days of the great Age of Exploration, fantastic stories of far-off lands with millions of pagan souls ripe for salvation began to circulate, Catholic missions were sent out to the four corners of the Earth... and Francis wanted to be part of it.

After years of adventures as a foreign missionary Francis finally made his way to fabled Japan - where an odd miracle announced his arrival. A crucifix given to him by Ignatius had fallen overboard during the stormy passage - much grieving the saint. But on making landfall a crab was seen marching out of the surf holding up a crucifix in its claws. It walked directly to Francis, who took the crucifix from it, not forgetting to thank and bless the crab, which then turned and hurried back to its watery home. It was the very same crucifix Francis had lost during the storm.

The spectacle was witnessed by scores of people and the story spread quickly. Francis began drawing crowds and gained a reputation as a wonder worker.

Catholicism grew quickly in Japan, and among all classes... from the lowest to the highest. Although he had great hope for the Japanese mission Francis didn't live to enjoy it as he died a few years later while trying to reach China. But within 50 years of his arrival there were some 300,000 Catholics throughout the country and the number was growing. Most lived in the Nagasaki area, which became predominantly Catholic.

Unfortunately, along with Catholicism come the bad Catholics... the mother of whom is always pregnant.

The Portuguese in particular began to make a nuisance of themselves, mostly for their slave trading, skirting or ignoring Japanese laws, and usury. The Jesuits too came in for criticism as many of them were also Portuguese. Furthermore, the Jesuits and Franciscans, who had recently arrived, began quarreling. The resulting power struggle went public and even caused a schism in the diocese of Funai.

In response to the trouble the miscreant Christians were causing, in early 1597 the Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi had twenty-six Christians arrested - as an example to those Japanese who might want to convert. These men were later canonized as The Twenty-Six Martyrs of Japan. They included five European Franciscans, one Mexican Franciscan, three Japanese Jesuits and seventeen Japanese Christian laymen, including three boys aged 11 to 13. They were tortured, mutilated and marched barefoot through snow from Sakai to Nagasaki, where on February 5 they were crucified on Nishizaka hill.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/26_Martyrs_of_Japan

In spite of this and the generally bad reputation gained by the Portuguese, the number of Christians in Japan continued to grow. Hideyoshi had been comparatively lenient in prosecuting them, usually content with taking all they owned, but his equally shrewd and even more formidable successor, Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, decided that harder methods would have to be used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokugawa_Ieyasu

In 1596 the Spanish merchant ship San Felipe foundered on the coast. The captain of the ship, during a drinking party with some Japanese, drunkenly boasted that it was Spanish modus operandi to send in friars to soften a people up - to be followed by the army. Drunk or not the Japanese paid attention. One of the San Felipe's passengers was a Franciscan friar, Philip of Jesus, who would be called on to pay the price for the captain's boasting as one of the 26 Martyrs of Nagasaki.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Felipe_incident_(1596)

Sixteen years later, after Ieyasu had become shogun, the so-called "Okamoto Daihachi Incident" was uncovered and brought to his attention. This involved a series of intrigues involving bribery, forgery and attempted murder, in which one of Japan's Catholic daimyos (the Japanese equivalent of a European nobleman) sought to re-claim ancestral lands. By the time of Ieyasu's shogunate there were some 80-90 Catholic daimyos in Japan, with many others who were sympathetic to the Faith, and he was becoming increasingly alarmed at Christian intentions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okamoto_Daihachi_incident

Furthermore, Ieyasu had made the acquaintance of an English captain, William Adams, whose ship had wrecked in Japan in 1600. Adams was a very able man and made himself useful to the Japanese. He soon came to Ieyasu's attention and then into his confidence. Once, when questioned about European affairs, Adams told Ieyasu how the Spanish and Portuguese were always at war with someone and that when desiring to conquer a nation they would first send in their missionaries to soften the people up, to be followed by their armies; confirming what the captain of the San Felipe had said. Ieyasu knew the Spaniards had recently conquered much of the Philippines and took the story seriously. He decided to act.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Adams_(pilot)

Concerned more about Spanish territorial ambitions than Portuguese debaucheries, in 1612 Ieyasu signed the Christian Expulsion Edict, banning Christianity in Japan and ordering the expulsion of all foreign missionaries. It claimed that the Christians were bringing disorder to Japanese society and that their followers "contravene governmental regulations, traduce Shinto, calumniate the True Law, destroy regulations, and corrupt goodness".

Buddhist ecclesiastics were made responsible for verifying that a person was not a Christian with what became known as the "temple guarantee system" (terauke seido). By the 1630s, people were being required to produce a certificate of affiliation with a Buddhist temple as proof of their religious orthodoxy, social acceptability, and loyalty to the regime.

To further root out Christianity, the government adopted a nationwide scheme called "e-fumi", in which "fumi-e" (icons of Christ and/or the Virgin Mary) were carried from place to place and laid on the ground. Everyone in the community was then ordered to step on them. Anyone refusing, or even showing reluctance, was identified as a Catholic or Catholic sympathizer and arrested. The goal of the government was to force people to recant. Those who refused were tortured. Those who continued to refuse were executed, often on Nagasaki's Mount Unzen, by being boiled alive in the volcanic hot springs that dotted its slopes.

https://www.ucanews.com/news/unzen-hell-a-reminder-of-christian-persecution-in-japan/95688

Depending on where in Japan he lived a stubborn Catholic would find himself faced with being boiled, burned, crucified, drowned or frozen to death.

The government also employed a torture called "The Pit of Hell" - in which the victims would be bound fast in ropes. A wooden lid with a hole cut into the middle was placed around the neck, waist or feet. They were then lowered by their feet, head down into a narrow pit which contained human excrement at the bottom. And there they were left, to recant or die. In order to keep them from dying too early from a cerebral hemorrhage, their heads or ears were cut, to allow blood to leak out, and thus reduce intracranial pressure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana-tsurushi

If someone seemed to die early they would be extracted from the pit to be assessed by a doctor, who would try to revive them. If they revived and still refused to recant they were returned to the pit to continue their torture.

The number of martyred Japanese are unknown. Estimates range anywhere from 2,000 to 30,000. Some of their names are known but sadly the vast majority are known only to God. Many more were tortured, mutilated and/or robbed of their lands, homes and possessions.

The 26 martyrs of Nagasaki were:

Foreign Franciscan missionaries – The Alcantarines:
Martin of the Ascension, Pedro Bautista, Philip of Jesus, Francisco Blanco, Francisco of Saint Michael, Gundisalvus (Gonsalvo) Garcia.

Japanese Franciscan tertiaries:
Antony Dainan, Bonaventure of Miyako, Cosmas Takeya, Francisco of Nagasaki, Francis Kichi, Gabriel de Duisco, Joachim Sakakibara, John Kisaka, Leo Karasumaru, Louis Ibaraki, Matthias of Miyako, Michael Kozaki, Paul Ibaraki, Paul Suzuki, Pedro Sukejiroo, Thomas Kozaki, Thomas Xico, aka Thomas Danki.

Japanese Jesuits:
James Kisai, John Soan de Goto, Paul Miki.

The great courage and constancy of these men and women in holding forth what from all outward appearances was a badly losing cause is remarkable. And as usual, the principal bad actors in the story were... Catholics! Hideyoshi and Ieyasu's subsequent hostility to the Faith can at least be understood when read in the light of the miscreantism of the Europeans they had to deal with.

By the middle of the seventeenth century Christianity in Japan had been all but stamped out. Or so it seemed. When Europeans returned to Japan two centuries later they discovered to their surprise that Christianity had in fact outlasted the great persecution. There were still scores of thousands of Japanese Christians quietly practicing the Faith. The shoguns had become a memory, but Christ was still alive and well.


Citizenfitz