Japan

by Walter G. Dickson

During the year, at Nagasaki, notwithstanding the proclamations which had been issued by government against such exhibitions, upon the beatification of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the Society of Jesuits made a solemn procession through the streets, when forty priests assisted in copes, besides religious of St. Francis, St. Dominic, and St. Austin, who then resided in the town. The next day the bishop officiated in pontificalibus, and the ceremony concluded with illuminations of joy. The same order was observed at Arima.

During the following year the Shiogoon Hide tada, the son of Iyeyas, married the sister of Kita Mandocoro, wife of Taikosama, mother of Hideyori, and niece of Nobu nanga.

Hideyori had still many adherents, who were attached to him and to his father’s memory. Iyeyas had been afraid of acting against the Christians so severely as to compel them to throw their weight into the opposite scale; but he began to see that he could keep all the advantages of trade through the Dutch, and get rid of the political dangers which threatened Japan through the foreign priesthood. The Jesuits allege that the Dutch encouraged him in these views, explaining how the Society had been driven out of their countries by the princes of Germany and Holland as disturbers of the public peace.

In 1612 he determined to get rid of these ever-disquieting agents, the more excited thereto by finding himself in the meshes of a net out of which he could only break his way by force. He found that the Prince of Arima, one of the warmest and most devoted to the cause of Christianity (whose son had married the granddaughter of Iyeyas), had been intriguing with the officers at court, to win their good offices by bribery, in gaining for him large additions to his territory. He now, for the first time, acted with severity against some of the native Christians about the court. Fourteen were condemned to death, but the sentence was commuted to perpetual banishment and confiscation of their estates. This action on the part of Iyeyas himself at once brought out into bolder relief the two parties. Those officers who had hitherto winked at the Christians, and had permitted them to carry on their worship and preaching undisturbed, now saw which way the wind was blowing, and acted accordingly. This severity was carried into the heart of the court—one of the concubines of Iyeyas being confined and banished to the island of Oshima, and thence to the smaller island of Nishima, and thence to a rock, Cozu shima, upon which seven or eight fishermen lived in straw huts, subsisting on what they caught; and these men were ordered to keep this lady.

Shortly after this, Don Protase of Arima suffered. His son Michael, who had been brought up as a Christian, fearing to lose possession of his father’s dominions, informed against him, accusing him of crimes, and suborning witnesses against him. Upon the proof offered he was beheaded. This Christian’s son Michael, who had divorced a Christian lady to marry the granddaughter of Iyeyas, then turned apostate, and began a persecution within his territories of all who professed Christianity. He began, in order to please Iyeyas, by putting to death two boys, his own nephews. Here again, where the Jesuits had been most intolerant, the tables were turned upon them. In the province of Boongo, at one time the stronghold of the Roman Catholics, the same action was being taken; and about this time, in Yedo, the Shiogoon, on the representation of informers, put to death some natives who had built a new church, and banished the father out of the country.

In 1613, Don Michael of Arima was pressed by his wife and others to renew his severities, and eight Christians were burned near his castle by slow fires.

In 1614, Iyeyas was stimulated by the opponents of Christianity to take action against those who professed it. With the advice of his council he issued orders that all religious, European and Japanese, should be sent out of the country, that the churches should be pulled down, and the Christian members be forced to renounce their faith. To carry out these orders, all foreign priests and natives, members of the Jesuit Society, were ordered to leave Miako, Osaka and Fusimi, and retire to Nagasaki. Hojo Segami no kami was ordered to see that this order was executed; but he was chosen, perhaps, from a desire to remove him out of the way, as well as to take the opportunity of seizing his estate. Accordingly, while he was so engaged, he was accused of some crime, and his estates confiscated. The native Christians were banished to Tsoongaru, at the northern extremity of the island. At Kanesawa, in Kanga, Justo Ookon dono Takayama was ordered to leave with the others. Still further to make sure of the success of his projects, Iyeyas dispatched to the island of Kiusiu upward of 10,000 men, under three leaders, for the purpose of overawing the Christians and putting down any attempts to rise in that quarter. In Kiusiu the new doctrines had first taken root, and had flourished with greater luxuriance than on the main island of Nippon. The lordships were smaller, and therefore the advantages of trade were proportionably greater in the eyes of the proprietors. But as in the outset these lesser lords had favored what seemed to them a source of revenue, when things turned against the religion they distinguished themselves by zeal in putting down what in the end threatened to deprive them of everything. In them the government found the most active and zealous assistants. Many of these lords or their parents had been baptized. The Jesuits had there most sway, and had used it with the most intolerance; and Iyeyas determined, before striking a blow at Hideyori in Osaka, to remove any chance of a diversion being made in his favor on the part of the Christians in this distant part of the empire. But if we believe the letters of the fathers, the fortitude and courage with which martyrdom was endured by professing natives must be looked on with admiration. The better classes lost everything—lands, position, comforts, in many cases their wives and children, and, last of all, their lives—in the cause of their faith. The poorer gave up their lives, all they had to give, with zeal, fortitude, and even joy.

In the other parts of Kiusiu, in Tsikuzen and Figo, and in the remote islands of Xequi or Kossiki, the same spirit was shown toward the Christians; and upon October 25, 1614, three hundred persons—in a word, all the Jesuits, except eighteen fathers and nine brothers, with a few cathechists (who lay hid in the country for the help of the faithful)—were shipped off out of the country by a Portuguese vessel. This mode of dealing with persons in the position assumed by these foreigners and their adherents seems to have been at once lenient, yet determined, and mercenary without being severe. The party had assumed a political aspect threatening to the state. The very ladies of his household had been supported by these foreigners in opposition to the Kubosama himself. And as it was intended to be a final political step, and not a religious persecution, any foreigner found thereafter spreading such intolerant doctrines would be treated as a political partisan. Justo was put on board a Chinese vessel with some Spanish priests and some Japonian clerks, and set sail for Manila, where he died shortly after his arrival.

The step of removing from the capital and its neighborhood all the foreign fathers was, in its results, of the utmost importance to the cause of religion. During the rule of Nobu nanga and Taikosama, Father Rodriguez, the interpreter, a man evidently well acquainted with the language and with the court, was invited or allowed to remain in the capital. From the accounts sent thence it is evident that by tact and judgment Father Rodriguez had maintained his place, that he was in communication with the highest officers at court, and exercised an unseen but potent power in behalf of his brethren. With such a person at court, opposition cannot so easily gain head. Evil reports are warded off, occasional words in favor can be thrown in; but with the withdrawal of such a power from the court the foreign cause becomes powerless. Every one is ready to abuse, and to chime in to please his superior. There is no possibility of warding off the blows aimed. It is impossible to know whether the highest power knows anything of the edicts put out in his name. The Buddhists, a powerful body, would be ready to press down upon and thrust out opponents who had borne themselves so proudly in the day of their prosperity. Their own tactics recoiled upon the fathers; and when they were turned out of court, without friends or advocates, their cause became hopeless, and with their downfall the position of all other foreigners in the country was involved.

It is, perhaps, not a good defense of the policy adopted in Japan, to remember that it was nearly identical with that which England was compelled to adopt at the same time, and under similar circumstances. In both countries the change was conducted by the government, and in both the spirit of the people rose against the interference of a foreign priesthood with the national concerns. The truth is, that the doctrine of the Papal supremacy is an “exterritoriality clause” of itself, which, operating in a country professing another faith, creates an imperium in imperio, which becomes very embarrassing to a government, whether it be Japan or England. The confiscation of abbey-lands in England may be compared with, or was analogous to, the confiscation of the lands of the lords of Japan, while informers in each were rewarded by a gift of the property belonging to offenders of less note. The difficulty with which Japan had to cope was, that there was no mode of escape from persecution by going into exile into other countries until the storm had blown over.