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