The Hostility of Hidéyoshi.
Konishi, on the other hand, was less numerously and perhaps less influentially backed by, and made the champion of, the European brethren; and as all the negotiations between the invaders and the allied Koreans and Chinese had to be conducted in the Chinese script, the alien fathers were, as secretaries and interpreters, less useful than the native Japanese bonzes.
Yet this jealousy and hostility in the camps of the invaders proved to be only correlative to the state of things in Japan. Even supposing the statistics in round numbers, reported at that time, to be exaggerated, and that there were not as many as the alleged two hundred thousand Christians, yet there were, besides scores of thousands of confessing believers among the common people, daimiōs, military leaders, court officers and many persons of culture and influence. Nevertheless, the predominating influence at the Kiōto court was that of Buddhism; and as the cult that winks at polygamy was less opposed to Hidéyoshi's sensualism and amazing vanity, the illustrious upstart was easily made hostile to the alien faith. According to the accounts of the Jesuits, he took umbrage because a Portuguese captain would not please him by risking his ship in coming out of deep water and nearer land, and because there were Christian maidens of Arima who scorned to yield to his degrading proposals. Some time after these episodes, an edict appeared, commanding every Jesuit to quit the country within twenty days. There were at this time sixty-five foreign missionaries in the country.
Then began a series of persecutions, which, however, were carried on spasmodically and locally, but not universally or with system. Bitter in some places, they were neutralized or the law became a dead letter, in other parts of the realm. It is estimated that ten thousand new converts were made in the single year, 1589, that is, the second year after the issue of the edict, and again in the next year, 1590. It might even be reasonable to suppose that, had the work been conducted wisely and without the too open defiance of the letter of the law, the awful sequel which history knows, might not have been.
Let us remember that the Duke of Alva, the tool of Philip II., failing to crush the Dutch Republic had conquered Portugal for his master. The two kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula were now united under one crown. Spain longed for trade with Japan, and while her merchants hoped to displace their Portuguese rivals, the Spanish Franciscans not scrupling to wear a political cloak and thus override the Pope's bull of world-partition, determined to get a foothold alongside of the Jesuits. So, in 1593 a Spanish envoy of the governor of the Philippine Islands came to Kiōto, bringing four Spanish Franciscan priests, who were allowed to build houses in Kiōto, but only on the express understanding that this was because of their coming as envoys of a friendly power, and with the explicitly specified condition that they were not to preach, either publicly or privately. Almost immediately violating their pledge and the hospitality granted them, these Spaniards, wearing the vestments of their order, openly preached in the streets. Besides exciting discord among the Christian congregations founded by the Jesuits, they were violent in their language.
Hidéyoshi, to gratify his own mood and test his power as the actual ruler for a shadowy emperor, seized nine preachers while they were building churches at Kiōto and Osaka. They were led to the execution-ground in exactly the same fashion as felons, and executed by crucifixion, at Nagasaki, February 5, 1597. Three Portuguese Jesuits, six Spanish Franciscans and seventeen native Christians were stretched on bamboo crosses, and their bodies from thigh to shoulder were transfixed with spears. They met their doom uncomplainingly.
In the eye of the Japanese law, these men were put to death, not as Christians, but as law-breakers and as dangerous political conspirators. The suspicions of Hidéyoshi were further confirmed by a Spanish sea-captain, who showed him a map of the world on which were marked the vast dominions of the King of Spain; the Spaniard informing the Japanese, in answer to his shrewd question, that these great conquests had been made by the king's soldiers following up the priests, the work being finished by the native and foreign allies.