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.