A history of the Japanese people

by F. Brinkley; Dairoku Kikuchi

This most disheartening record underwent a complete change in 1576, when the son of the Bungo feudatory, a youth of some sixteen years, and, two years later, the feudatory himself, Otomo, embraced the Christian faith. In the first Annual Letter sent to Rome after these events a striking admission is made: "It is Otomo, next to God, whom the Jesuits have to thank for their success in Japan." This appreciation looks somewhat exaggerated when placed side by side with the incidents that occurred in Sumitada's fief, as related above. Nevertheless, Otomo certainly did render powerful aid, not within his own fief alone but also through his influence elsewhere. Thus, he did not hesitate to have recourse to arms in order to obtain for the Jesuits access to the island of Amakusa, where one of the local barons, tempted originally by tradal prospects and afterwards urged by his wife, called upon his vassals to choose between conversion or exile, and issued an order that any Buddhist priests refusing to accept Christianity would have their property confiscated and their persons banished.

Practically the whole population became converts under the pressure of these edicts, and it is thus seen that Christianity owed much of its success in Kyushu to methods which recall Islam and the Inquisition. Another illustration of this is furnished by the Arima fief, which adjoined that of Omura where Sumitada ruled. The heads of these two fiefs were brothers, and thus when Sumitada embraced Christianity the Jesuits received an invitation to visit Arima at the ports of Kuchinotsu and Shimabara, where from that time Portuguese ships repaired frequently. In 1576, the Arima baron, seeing the prosperity and power which had followed the conversion of his brother Sumitada, accepted baptism and became the "Prince Andrew" of missionary records. In those records we read 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." This fanatical "Prince Andrew" survived his baptism by two years only, but during that time twenty thousand converts were made in Arima. His successor, however, was a believer in Buddhism. He caused the Christian churches to be destroyed and the crosses to be thrown down; he ordered the Jesuits to quit his dominions, and he required the converts to return to Buddhism. Under this pressure about one-half of the converts apostatized, but the rest threatened to leave Kuchinotsu en masse. However this would have meant the loss of foreign trade, and as a result of this circumstance the anti-Christian edicts were radically modified.

Just at that time, also, a fortunate incident occurred. It had become the custom for a large vessel from Macao to visit Japan every year, and the advent of this ship had great importance from a commercial point of view. It chanced that she made the port of Kuchinotsu her place of call in 1578, and her presence suggested such a pleasing outcome that the feudatory embraced Christianity and allowed his vassals to do the same. By this "great ship from Macao" the Jesuit vice-general, Valegnani was a passenger. A statesman as well as a preacher, this astute politician made such a clever use of the opportunity that, in 1580, "all the city was made Christian, and the people burned their idols and destroyed forty temples, reserving some materials to build churches."

RESULTS OF THE FIRST THREE DECADES OF PROPAGANDISM

The record achieved by the Christian propagandists up to this time was distinctly satisfactory. In the Annual Letter of 1582 we find it stated that, at the close of 1581, that is to say, thirty-two years after Xavier's landing in Japan there were about 150,000 converts. Of these some 125,000 were in Kyushu; the remainder in Yamaguchi, Kyoto, and the vicinity of the latter city. As for the Jesuits in Japan, they then numbered seventy-five, but down to the year 1563 there had never been more than nine. "The harvest was certainly great in proportion to the number of sowers. But it was a harvest mainly of artificial growth, forced by 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."

BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY

"To the Buddhist priests this movement of Christian propagandism had brought an experience hitherto almost unknown in Japan—persecution solely on account of creed. They had suffered for interfering in politics, but the cruel vehemence of the Christian fanatic may be said to have now become known for the first time to men themselves usually conspicuous for tolerance of heresy and for receptivity of instruction. They had had little previous experience of humanity in the garb of an Otomo of Bungo, who, in the words of Crasset, Svent to the chase of the bonzes as to that of wild beasts, and made it his singular pleasure to exterminate them from his states.'"*

*Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition; article "Japan," by Brinkley.

JAPANESE EMBASSY TO EUROPE

Another important result of the coming of Valegnani to Japan was that, in 1582, an embassy sailed from Nagasaki for Europe. It consisted of four young men, representing the fiefs of Arima, Omura, and Bungo, and it is related that at Lisbon, Madrid, and Rome they were received with an elaborate show of dazzling magnificence, so that they carried back to their island home a vivid impression of the might and wealth of Western countries.