August 25th, 1624: Five Heroic Men who Faced Hellish Fire for their Faith

            

     

       390 years ago, on August 25, 1624, five Christian heroes were executed “by slow fire” for the crime of bringing Christ to the Japanese.  Burned at the stake in Ōmura, east of Nag-asaki, were the Jesuit Father Miguel Carvalho, the Franciscan Fathers Luís Sotelo and Luís Sasada, the Dominican Father Pedro Vázquez, and Brother Luís Baba, a Lay Franciscan Japanese catechist who made his religious profession before his martyrdom.[i]  A decade had passed since the “retired” Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu had promulgated his ironclad Anti-Christian Edict, and all five of the holy martyrs knew full well that a grisly death awaited anyone caught in the act of obeying Christ, the Prince of Peace, in furthering His Great Commission; daring the flames of death, they all obeyed nonetheless.  

            Padre Miguel Carvalho, the Jesuit, had entered Japan in 1622 on a Portuguese trading-ship, disguised as a Portuguese soldier. The three Franciscans had been arrested on their return to Japan from an ambassadorial mission to King Philip III of Spain and the Vatican sponsored by a Japanese daimyō, Date Masamune.  Fray Pedro Vázquez, the dauntless Dominican, had once disguised himself as a Japanese official and gained entry to Nagasaki’s prison, where he heard the confessions of Catholic prisoners bound for execution.[ii]

            On the day of their martyrdom they were taken to the execution-ground with ropes around their necks, the four priests carrying crosses.  The Palme of Christian Fortitude (Douai, 1630) relates their ordeal thus:    

                They arrived at the place appointed for their death, a field called Hokonohara[iii], when giving thanks unto those who had conducted them, … the Priests lifting on high the crosses which they bare in their hands, they began to recite psalms with a loud  voice; when Father Carvalho, perceiving now a great multitude to be assembled, turning unto them, you must understand, said he, that we are Christians, and that we die of our free and voluntary accord, for the faith of Christ our Lord.  The admirable serenity of their     countenances put their joy so clearly in view of the beholders, that amazed thereat they said, these men seemed to go rather to  some feast or banquet, than unto death.[iv]

            They were loosely tied to their stakes in order that they might provide amusement to the crowd, flailing about in their agonies; the loose cords would also burn away quickly, giving each victim the chance to flee the flames and apostatize. 

            None did.  The first to die was Brother Luís Baba, the native Japanese catechist.  Freed by the burning cords, he ran to the stakes of his priest-companions to kneel and kiss their hands, 

    then exhorting with a loud voice the standers by to embrace the faith of Christ in which alone is true safety and salvation,  he returned generously unto the stake again, and leaning himself unto it, without any further tying … he endured, without ever moving himself, the fury of those flames, until at length he rendered his invincible soul to God.[v]

            The next to die was Father Carvalho, and then Father Luís Sasada, another native-born Japanese who tried, like Luís Baba, to leave his stake and do reverence to the surviving priests but could not move his feet, already burnt to cinders.  The longest survivors were Fathers Luís Sotelo and Pedro Vázquez, who endured the torment of a slow, smoky fire of straw “and other dry litter” artfully heaped in two piles about their feet to make their deaths as lingering and torturous as possible—to the end of effecting their apostasies. Needless to say, these two champions of Christ hung on "3 hours in the fire, ever immovable, consuming away in lingering slow flames; after which space of time they ended the course  of a combat so much [the] more glorious, as it was produced longer, upon the twenty-fifth of August 1624, by order of the Governors of Ōmura and Nagasaki."[vi]

            Five glorious examples of superhuman faith, five men to remember when asking for prayers in Heaven.

©2014 by Luke O’Hara

See:  Kirishtan.com

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[i] Directorio Franciscano, Año Cristiano Franciscano, at: http://www.franciscanos.org/agnofranciscano/m08/dia0825.html

[ii] Boxer, C. R. The Christian Century in Japan.  Manchester: Carcanet, 1993, p. 358.

[iii] Hōkonohara, now known as Hōkobaru.

[iv] Boxer, quoted on p. 436.

[v] Ibid, quoted on p. 437.

[vi] Ibid, quoted on p. 437.

June 23rd: Ōmura Sumitada, Champion of the Faith

            June 23, 1587 is a noteworthy date in human history, for it marks the death of Ōmura Sumitada (above), the first Japanese daimyō received into Holy Mother Church.  To his dying breath he was a champion of the Faith: a staunch warrior for Christ and a selfless donor of land and fortune to the Kingdom of Heaven.  He donated the port of Nagasaki to the Church—soon to become Japan’s window to the world—and the port-town of Mogi, too, which faced the Shimabara Peninsula and still connects by ferry to the isles of Amakusa.  Amakusa: the home of Amakusa Shiro, the seedbed of the Shimabara Rebellion and a longtime haven for Christian refugees from tyrants’ persecution.  But let us return to Ōmura.

            Ōmura, the sizeable domain ruled by Sumitada, was home to two ports suitable for hosting visits by the great sailing-ships of Portugal:  Nagasaki and Yokose-ura.  Overcome by the power of the truth of the Gospel, Sumitada offered the port of Yokose-ura to the missionaries of Christ as a home where they could live freely and preach their Gospel and convert whomever they could; to the Portuguese merchants who accompanied the missionaries he offered anchorage and trading-rights in Yokose-ura with the first decade tax-free.  As soon as he had been instructed in the basic tenets of the Christian faith, Sumitada declared that he was already a Christian in his heart.

Sumitada, Lord of Ōmura, felt that, for familial considerations, he was not yet able to receive baptism—he feared that his elder brother Yoshisada, Lord of Arima, would object—but he nevertheless had a golden cross made for himself and wore it proudly and publicly on his chest.  He even wore it on a visit to Yoshisada in Arima.  One must here understand that the male head of the family held, for all practical purposes, dictatorial power—even the power of life and death—in old Japan.   Seeing the cross on his brother’s chest, Yoshisada asked if he were Christian, and on hearing Sumitada’s ‘Yes,’ the elder brother “grieved not, whence Ōmura-dono received great contentment and happiness.”[1]  Yoshisada himself would sometime thereafter receive baptism as Dom André and, until his death, champion the Faith in his own domain of Arima.

            Sumitada thereafter went to visit Padre Cosme de Torres in Yokose-ura, only to learn that he was away, as it was Holy Week, a time of sadness and retreat from worldliness.  He humbly asked (through Brother João Fernandes) for permission to build the Padre a retreat house behind the church at Yokose-ura, although he himself, Lord of Ōmura, had donated the land and paid for the construction.  He also requested leave to have Christian laws written on placards and, according to Japanese custom, set up on posts in public places, in order that the people who came to that port from diverse places might “live in union and peace.”[2]

TO BE CONTINUED

Website:  Kirishtan.com

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[1] Luis Frois, Historia de Japam, Vol. 1, pp 278-279, my translation.

[2] Ibid, p. 279.

The 400th Anniversary of the Glorious Martyrdom of Blessed Adam Arakawa

Adam Arakawa: Samurai, Servant, and Martyr

(revised 9 June 2014)

         “Martyr” is a word much abused in our day; here’s one excellent definition from the mouth of Joseph Takami, the Archbishop of Nagasaki:  “True Christian martyrs forgive others.  Even while being killed by others, they forgive them.  They teach us the meaning of a death like Jesus’ death.” 

            Take Adam Arakawa, for example, one of the 187 Companions of Peter Kibe, beatified en masse by Pope Benedict XVI on 24 November 2008:  “He was a man of prayer,” Jesuit historian and pastor Father Diego Yuuki told me. “When the last missionary in Amakusa was expelled, he took the responsibility of the church, and for that reason he was killed.”

          Adam was a samurai, brought up in that proud martial tradition, but a samurai who had the humility to become a servant to his fellow-Christians after having been dismissed by his feudal lord.  He served the church at Shiki, in the Amakusa Islands.

          The Shōgun had banned the Faith in 1614, expelling all Christian missionaries, and Kawamura Jirōemon, the castellan of Tomioka Castle, which overlooked Shiki from a nearby mountaintop, was ordered by his lord to exterminate Christendom in the Amakusa Islands.  Humble old Adam, in his seventies, was the obvious primary target:  Kawamura thought that he could intimidate Adam into renouncing the Faith; then, he thought, the other local Christians would follow his example.

           Kawamura had misjudged his man:  when Adam, steely old Catholic samurai, heard that they were looking for him, he fell to his knees, thanking God, and asked Him to grant him martyrdom.  Friends warned Adam to abandon Christ, lest he be killed.  His answer is recorded in history: “’Disobey God,’ you’re telling me?  You’re telling me to shame my God?  Kawamura-sama’s orders or the law of the Shōgun of all Japan notwithstanding, please understand:  I am a Christian.  A true Christian puts Christ’s teaching above his own life.  No matter how they torture me, I cannot disobey Christ, true God.”

           Kawamura  had Adam brought to his castle for interrogation and bound to a pillar outside; to break the old man’s spirit he kept him out there all night.  Come morning, though, Adam’s spirit was unbroken. When Kawamura told him it was not just his own nor just his feudal lord’s command, but the very Shōgun’s orders that he apostatize, Adam replied, “A man’s soul is more important to him than his body.  I obey the true God, Deus, savior of souls.”  In old Japan, they called God by his Latin name, Deus, rather than using the Japanese translation of “god,” i.e. kami, to avoid confusing Him with the “gods” of superstition.

             On March 21, 1614, the Friday before Palm Sunday, Kawamura ordered Adam stripped naked, paraded through town, and then hung by his elbows from a cross-bar (or lintel) supported by two pillars; they tied his legs to these, with his tiptoes barely touching the ground.  Adam was in constant agony, straining against gravity, besides being exposed to the elements and public ridicule.  It was March—cold and windy—and Kawamura had had the pillars set up at land’s edge to expose him to the cold sea wind, but to keep from killing him, they untied him at night and took him indoors.  This torture lasted nine days.  Unable to join his hands while praying, Adam did his best to raise them toward Heaven.  Rather than show his pain, he encouraged the local Christians in their faith, speaking only of things of the soul.  He was finally untied on Holy Saturday, his faith untouched, and put in the hands of a local Christian, under house arrest—an internment that would last for sixty days.

            Kawamura eventually sent a message to Adam:  “We’ll cut your fingers off unless you renounce your faith.  Not all at once, but slowly.” They would cut off one piece at a time, allow the wound to heal, and then come back to cut off another bit, to prolong his agony to the maximum.  Adam’s response:  “I’m determined to bear any sort of torture.  God will surely strengthen me and give me perseverance to the end.  Even if I die after long suffering, having undergone repeated tortures, I’ll be happy to get it, for penance’ sake and for love of God.”  On hearing that, Kawamura, the castellan, ordered the cutting to begin; but his men, afraid of Heaven’s recompense should they mutilate such a good old man, held off.

          Finally Kawamura sent to Terazawa Hirotaka, his feudal lord up in Karatsu, in northern Kyushu, for orders, reporting Adam’s unshakable determination to hold onto his faith.  A courier came back at breakneck speed with new orders:  kill him.  Meanwhile, in his imprisonment, Adam had seen a vision of the Mother of God:  she was holding a cross in her hands, and Adam understood that he was to become a holy Martyr.

           Kawamura had Adam brought to his castle.  Along the way a crier kept blowing a conch shell and announcing that Adam would be executed in two or three days.  This was a lie:  they just wanted to put the local Christians off the track, lest they come in droves to his execution, seeking relics.  The next morning, at first cock’s crow, they took Adam out of the castle in the pre-dawn darkness and led him up a steep mountain path with a rope around his neck.  Anxious for martyrdom, Adam “climbed like a leaping deer,”[1] pulling the soldier with the rope in his grip right off his feet.  At the chosen place, Adam knelt and prayed.  He then advised his executioners to make their children study the Christian Faith, and he told them they had better become Christians too, and fast.

           The swordsman must have been unsteady on his feet on the steep slope, for his first slash went awry, into Adam’s shoulder:  Adam didn’t flinch; he was too busy praying to Jesus.  His head fell only on the third slash.

            They put Adam’s bloody remains in a net, weighted down with two large stones, took them out in a boat and sunk them into the sea, afraid, perhaps, of that eternal truth:  The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Faith.  The local Christians, though, scooped up the earth on that hillside that had drunk Adam’s sacred blood and saved this as a relic.

            Adam’s fearless testimony in blood did truly seed the Faith:  repentant Catholics all over the Amakusa Islands publicly declared their faith, emboldened by Adam’s example after having been cowed into silence by the Shōgun’s ban on Christ.  In one village alone, more than 150 emboldened souls declared their faith in the Truth that has overcome the world.

            One almighty Truth indeed, and terror to the Enemy of all men’s souls.

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Notes:

            Blessed Adam Arakawa, beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on 24 November 2008, is one of the 187 Companions of Blessed Peter Kibe Kasui. He was beheaded on or about Tuesday, June 5, 1614.  (The date is unclear; that his martyrdom was fulfilled on a Tuesday, before dawn, is established.)

            Father Diego Yuuki, consummate historian of Japanese Christendom, passed away on November 17, 2008 in Nagasaki, city of Martyrs.  As of today, June 10, 2013, Joseph Takami continues in the office of Archbishop of Nagasaki.

[1]Kataoka Yakichi, Nihon Kirishitan Junkyō-shi  (Tokyo: Jiji Tsushinsha, 1979) p. 252.

-End-

Copyright 2014 by Luke O’Hara

Website:  Kirishtan.com

Two Heroic Martyr-Priests, Part Two: Fray Pedro de la Asunción and Padre João Baptista Machado De Távora

Tokugawa Hidetada in all his Finery

Part Two

            When Padre João Machado walked into the prison, he was met by the Franciscan Friar Pedro de la Asunción, in prison since 8 April. Fray Pedro—born in Cuerba, near Toledo, Spain—had been caught via a stratagem employed by the sheriff of Nagayo (a town in Ōmura-dono’s domain about 9 miles NE of the port of Nagasaki), who, feigning a desire to confess his sins, had lured Fray Pedro into a trap.

            Fray Pedro had arrived in Japan in 1608 and had for some years been Father Superior of the Franciscan convent in Nagasaki.  Despite recent animosity between their two religious orders, however, this Franciscan Friar knelt to kiss the Jesuit Padre’s feet when he saw him walk through the prison door; Padre Machado would not allow this obeisance from his brother in Christ. 

            Ōmura-dono reported to the Shogunate that he had captured the two priests and then sat back to await the Shōgun’s orders; in the meantime, the imprisoned priests were celebrating daily Mass, hearing their fellow-prisoners’ confessions, and restoring korobi-kirish’tan (former Catholics who had been tortured or otherwise cowed into apostasy) to their proper home, Holy Mother Church.  On 21 May, the Shōgun Hidetada’s answer came:  kill the priests.  Since Pentecost they had been celebrating daily Mass together; that morning, during Mass, Fray Pedro said to Padre João, “We will not be celebrating many more Masses.”  The next morning he told him with certainty, “This will be our last Mass.”  Padre João agreed.

            A few hours later, Lino Tomonaga, Ōmura-dono’s apostate sheriff, came to visit the priests, talked with Padre João at length, never mentioning the death-sentence, and left; but he turned right around, came back in, and made his grave announcement.  Padre João Machado replied, “The three happiest days of my life have been: the day I entered school at Coimbra, the day I was arrested, and the day I received my death-sentence:  these three.”  The two priests burst into song: the Te Deum (Thee, O God, we Praise).  Offered a last meal, they refused.  Instead, they scourged themselves, confessed their sins to one another, and prayed.

            On their long march to Kōri Hill, Fray Pedro carried a crucifix with his scourge and the Franciscan Rule hanging from it; Padre João carried a bronze crucifix and his breviary.  All the way, they preached without ceasing.  When they arrived at the execution-ground, a Kirish’tan soldier baptized as Damian presented the holy martyrs with two cushions to kneel on.  Fray Pedro de la Asunción, the Franciscan, thanked him and said, “Now may dust return to dust.” 

            The two priests knelt beside one another, a few feet apart.  First Fray Pedro’s head fell in one slash of the sword.  The Jesuit, Padre João Machado, had a more prolonged ordeal, however:  he had to endure three slashes of the sword before he could meet his God.  Perhaps the swordsman had been wrestling with his conscience as he struggled to obey his earthly lord’s orders; afterwards, he would perhaps have taken some mystical consolation from seeing the two priests’ blood flows joining together into one pool:  a visual sign of their blood-brotherhood in Holy Martyrdom.  

            It was 22 May, Anno Domini 1617:  the start of a great outpouring of Christian Martyrs’ blood, a baptism of the very soil itself.   This heavenly rain, this testimony in blood to the truth of the Faith, to the Living Word who is Himself Truth, would seed a bountiful crop of steely faith throughout Japan, faith that would endure centuries of persecution to outlive the Shōguns and all their puny, merely-earthly power.

Two Heroic Martyr-Priests, Part One: Fray Pedro de la Asunción and Padre João Baptista Machado De Távora

            Website:  Kirishtan.com

                  In 1617 the Shōgun Hidetada (above) found out that the daimyō of Ōmura, whose Christian name was Bartolomeo (like his heroic, departed grandfather), was conniving at the hiding of Catholic priests in his domain in Kyushu, the westernmost of  the four home islands of Japan.  The Shōgun’s sledgehammer came down on this daimyō’s head:  he must expel the priests from his domain at once. 

            There were some who would rather give their lives for their flocks than be expelled; among these eternal lights were Fray Pedro de la Asunción of the Franciscan Order and Padre João Baptista Machado de Távora, S. J.  Both were beheaded on Kōri hill in the domain of Ōmura for the crime of clinging to the Truth:  for being faithful servants of the God who eternally commands, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 

            João Baptista Machado de Távora was born at Angra do Heroísmo (Cove of Heroism) on the island of Terceira, separated westward from Lisbon by about a thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean.  His father and mother were wealthy nobles, but his life-story proves that João was no spoiled aristocrat: at the age of ten, on hearing of the Catholic martyrdoms in contemporary Japan, the boy announced that he hoped to go there and become a holy martyr himself. 

            At age 16, on 10 April 1597 (64 days after the crucifixion of the 26 Martyrs of Nagasaki), he entered the Jesuit Order at Coimbra, Portugal, where he would have begun his studies at the Jesuit university.  He sailed for India in 1601 and there, at Goa, studied philosophy; next, at Macao (off the south coast of China), he studied theology, and in 1609 headed for Japan, where he made astonishing progress in Japanese.

           His assigned apostolate was in the region of Kyōto, the Imperial Capital, but in 1614, when the Tokugawa Shōgunate promulgated its Christian Expulsion Edict, Padre João Machado escaped to the port city of Nagasaki, a longtime Catholic refuge on the west coast of the westernmost of Japan’s four main islands.  His assigned apostolate was the far-flung Gotoh Islands.  These islands had become havens for Catholic refugees fleeing the Shogunate’s increasingly-bloody persecution; Padre Machado is reputed to have performed awe-inspiring miracles of healing there.  In April of 1617, detoured from an intended voyage to the islands, he said Mass at Sonogi, a village on the north coast of Ōmura Bay, a few miles north of Ōmura Sumiyori’s castle-town.  This daimyō (feudal lord), christened Bartolomeo, had been born and raised a Catholic; his grandfather had been none other than Bartolomeo Ōmura Sumitada, the very first Japanese daimyō to receive baptism, and a dauntless champion of the Faith unto his dying breath. Sumitada’s faithless son Yoshiaki, however, apostatized, and his son, the great Bartolomeo’s namesake, became a persecutor of the Church under pressure from the Shōgun.  His soldiers arrested Padre João Machado at Sonogi immediately after he had celebrated Mass; as all were practicing Catholics, every one of them was ashamed, and explained to the Padre that it was only for fear of their lives and those of their families that they were obeying their faithless feudal lord’s orders.   

            Thanks to contrary winds, the soldiers’ boat had to wait at Sonogi; thus, for a blessed space of days, Padre Machado celebrated daily Mass for both his flock at Sonogi and his captors.  No doubt word got out and the faithful came from far and wide to confess their sins and receive the Bread of Life. On 29 April, though, a fair wind having come, that boat with its life-giving cargo sailed for the faithless daimyō’s castle-town; en route, the Padre heard the contrite soldiers’ confessions.  From the dock at Ōmura, Padre Machado was led to the daimyō’s prison at Kōri in a torchlight procession, like Jesus being marched out of Gethsemane.     

(Read Part Two tomorrow.)

Website:  Kirishtan.com

The Unzen Martyrdoms, Part One

       A scar-faced volcano called Mount Unzen looms over the Shimabara Peninsula, a land once known as Arima, a thoroughly-Catholic land. At the mountain’s summit, shrouded in acrid steam, sulfurous volcanic springs boil and bubble up gases that sting the nose and eyes.  Just as the volcano’s occasional eruptions would raze and sculpt the Peninsula’s terrain, its boiling, sulfurous springs would prove many a human spirit and, in the process, temper the spirit of Arima’s Catholic faithful at large—steeling Arima’s very soul.

  

          

                               

          

          

     

            Paulo Uchibori, a Christian samurai who in his superhuman death glorified God, was among the first group of Christians to be tortured and killed for their faithfulness to Christ by being scalded to death in the boiling, sulfurous Unzen “Hell.” (above, right)

          Paulo Uchibori Sakuemon was born in the village of Arieh, a few scant miles up the coast from the Christian daimyo Arima Harunobu’s castle-town of Arima.  Harunobu was a staunch Catholic who offered his domain as a refuge for clergymen fleeing from the dictator Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s persecution—Hideyoshi had banned the Faith in July of 1587—and Paulo Uchibori was one of Harunobu’s samurai.

         In 1612, however, Harunobu was executed by order of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the de-facto Shogun.  Harunobu’s son and heir Naozumi apostatized on Ieyasu’s orders and, after an abortive effort to expunge Christianity from the Peninsula, requested transfer to some less-challenging turf.  Arima then passed into the hands of a crony of Ieyasu’s who did his utmost to drive out Christ by torturing, mutilating and dismembering hundreds of faithful Christians in Arieh and the castle-town of Arima.  This man, named Hasegawa, was soon recalled to the ruler’s palace, but he left behind in the fields of Arima two hills of human flesh:  one of chopped-up Christian bodies and the other of Christian heads.

          Then came the Matsukuras, father and son, to rule over the Peninsula in succession.  The father, Shigemasa, was at first willing to play live and let live with the Christian faithful of the old Catholic domain of Arima, but the new Shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, eventually infected Shigemasa with his own demonic, paranoiac hatred of Christ—for this Shogun, Iemitsu, was enslaved by pederasty and bloodlust, the latter of which he slaked by testing his sword on random victims wandering the streets of his capital at night.   

Iemitsu, 3^rd Tokugawa Shogun

Saint Valentine's Day 400 Years Ago in Tokugawa Japan

             Below: Tokugawa Ieyasu (left) and one of the many fruits of his rule (right)

Tokugawa Ieyasu

Japanese crucifixion

         















       On 14 February 1614, Tokugawa Ieyasu, “retired” Shogun and de-facto ruler of Japan, promulgated his Christian Expulsion Edict.  How ironic that he chose Saint Valentine’s Day to set in motion the juggernaut that would, like a steamroller, smash into oblivion every public, visible manifestation of Christianity—that “religion of love and union” that his predecessor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, had first attacked in 1587 with his own Expulsion Edict.  

            Ieyasu’s 1614 edict declared: “the Kirishitan band have come to Japan … longing to disseminate an evil law … so that they may change the government of the country, and obtain possession of the land.”[i]  Far from aiming to ‘change the government of the country, and obtain possession of the land,’ however, the Jesuit mission to Japan strove to win souls to Christ so that the people of Japan might ‘obtain possession’ of Heaven.

            Firstly, in point of fact, Saint Francis Xavier, who introduced Christianity to Japan in 1549, relied entirely on appealing to the rational minds of Japanese of all classes to effect their conversion, and with considerable success:  he reported to the Society of Jesus that:

             The bonzes [i.e. the native Buddhist clergy] were much displeased at [the mission’s success], and when they were present at the sermons and saw that a great number became Christians daily, they began to accuse them severely for leaving their ancestral religion to follow a new faith. But the others [i.e. the converts] answered that they embraced the Christian law because they had made up their minds that it was more in accordance with nature than their own, and because they found that we [Christian missionaries] satisfied their questions while the bonzes did not.[ii]

            Furthermore, Saint Francis Xavier held the Japanese in such high regard that, after his providential arrival in Kagoshima, he was inspired to report:

            By the experience which we have had of this land of Japan, I can inform you thereof as follows,--Firstly the people whom we have met so far, are the best who have as yet been discovered, and it seems to me that we shall never find among heathens another race to equal the Japanese.[iii]    

            He found no other race their equal because of the disposition of the Japanese to embrace the truth, once it had been clearly presented to them and all their doubts confuted.

            Thirdly, the mission’s goal was clearly not to ‘change the government of the country,’ and the missionaries’ reward was just as clearly not to ‘obtain possession of the land’ as Ieyasu had falsely claimed.  Rather, their goal was to change human hearts and lead sinners to Christ, and their reward was the joyful anticipation of hearing: ‘Well done, good and faithful servant … enter thou into the joy of thy lord’[iv] once they themselves passed from this life into Heaven.  Another letter of Saint Francis Xavier’s makes this clear:

     The labours which are undergone for the conversion of a people so rational, so desirous to know the truth and be saved, result in very sweet fruit to the soul. Even at Amanguchi [Yamaguchi], when the King allowed us to preach the faith and a vast concourse of people gathered round us, I had so much joy and vigour and delight of heart, as I never experienced in my life before. … These things made me so overflow with joy, that I lost all sense of suffering. Would to God that these divine consolations which God so graciously gives us in the midst of our labours might not only be related by me, but also some experience of them be sent to our European Universities, to be tasted as well as heard of! Then many of those young men given up to study would turn all their cares and desires to the conversion of infidels, if they could once taste the delight of the heavenly sweetness which comes from such labours, and if the world knew and was aware how well the souls of the Japanese are prepared to receive the Gospel, I am sure that many learned men would finish their studies, canons, priests, and prelates even, would abandon their rich livings, to change an existence full of bitterness and anxiety for so sweet and pleasant a life. And to gain this happiness they would not hesitate to set sail even to Japan.[v]

      Setting sail to Japan from Portugal in the mid-sixteenth century involved great risk:  besides the dangers of scurvy, amoebic dysentery, food poisoning, starvation, shipboard fires, and countless communicable diseases, there were typhoons, shipwreck, and pirates to be feared.  No wonder then that time and time again, when their Japanese hosts asked them why they had braved such dangers to sail to the very end of the earth, to faraway Japan, the missionaries’ answer was so astonishing:  they had come to save human souls, pure and simple.  

       Rather than ‘longing to disseminate an evil law … so that they may change the government of the country, and obtain possession of the land,’ then, the Jesuit mission that opened Japan to Christ sought a much more lasting reward, an eternal one, as described by Christ Himself:  ‘But lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven: where neither the rust nor moth doth consume, and where thieves do not break through, nor steal. For where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also.’[vi]

            Where Saint Francis Xavier’s heart and treasure were, he himself made clear in closing his letter of 29 January 1552:

       So now I will end though I know not how to end when I am writing to my dearest fathers and brothers, and about my joys in Japan too, the greatness of which I could never express, how ever much I might wish to do so. I end my letter then, begging and imploring God to vouchsafe to unite us some day in the bliss of heaven.  Amen.[vii]

                                           Website:  Kirishtan.com

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[i] C.R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan.  (Manchester: Carcanet, 1993) p. 318.

[ii] St. Francis Xavier: Letter from Japan, to the Society of Jesus at Goa, 1551

[iii] St. Francis Xavier: Letter from Kagoshima, Japan, to the Society of Jesus at Goa, November 1549.

[iv] Matthew 25:21, Douay Rheims Bible, excerpt.

[v] The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, v. 2, Henry J. Coleridge, S.J., ed. (London:  Burns and Gates, 1872.) p. 349.  

[vi] Matthew 6:20-21, Douay Rheims Bible.

[vii] The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, v. 2, Henry J. Coleridge, S.J., ed. (London:  Burns and Gates, 1872.) p. 349.

February 6th: the Dictator Hideyoshi and the 26 Martyrs, Part II

"I do not want this religion:  a religion of love and union, which is therefore harmful for this kingdom."   The Taikō Hideyoshi (pictured below)

              

            The 26 Martyrs started their death-march on the tenth of January, 1597.  They were marched from dawn till nightfall for twenty-seven days, paraded as criminals and outcasts through town after town.  The youngest of the martyrs was twelve, the oldest sixty-four.  Twelve-year-old Louis Ibaraki laughed when they clipped his ear, and thereafter marched along jauntily toward Nagasaki.  On their wintry road to Calvary Thomas Kozaki, fourteen, wrote to his mother, “You should not worry about me and my father Michael”—his father was marching with him to be crucified—“I hope to see you both very soon, there in Paradise,” he explained.¹ 

            At one point in their trek the guards grabbed Peter Sukejiro, a young believer accompanying the martyrs, robbed him of everything he had and threw him in with them, thus sentencing him to death on their own authority.  Rather than protest, Peter merely remarked, “Seeing that we all have to die anyway, it's better to die for the Faith,” ² thus proving his own fitness for martyrdom.

            Their last night on earth was miserable:  it was a bitterly frosty night and the Martyrs must have prayed and shivered all night long, since they were hunched together in open boats offshore of Togitsu, a Christian village north of Nagasaki, with musket-men guarding the shoreline.  Hideyoshi's sheriff, afraid of Christian violence, would not take the risk of putting them under a Christian roof for the night, as if he had something to fear from that “religion of love and union”.

            On the Fifth of February the martyrs were marshaled to their feet at dawn and marched double-time toward Nishizaka, the mountain slope atop which they would die; it would be a twelve-kilometer marathon.  The local Christians lined the roadside in silent reverence watching them pass, breathing not a whisper of hostility.  From time to time Jesuit Brother Paul Miki exclaimed, "Today is Easter Sunday for me!  The Lord has shown me such mercy!" as they climbed toward their Calvary.³   They arrived at half-past nine in the morning:  just about the time Our Lord was crucified.

             

            Up on their crosses the Twenty-Six awaited the coup de graçe that would end their Japanese-style crucifixions:  twin spear-thrusts from below, into their left and right sides and upward through their hearts and out their shoulders.  The false charges laid against them were painted on a placard stood in front of the row of crosses for all to see, but all of Nagasaki knew that they had been condemned merely for the crime of being Christian.  Paul Miki spent his last minutes preaching, just as he had been doing all the length of their twenty-seven day march to Calvary, proclaiming to the thousands of Nagasaki Christians blanketing the hillside below, "I greatly rejoice to die for this cause!"   

             When the soldiers unsheathed their spears, the crucified martyrs and the crowd all started shouting in one voice, "Jesus!  Mary!"  This holy cry resounded again and again until every last martyr’s heart was pierced; it resounded among the hills of Nagasaki, across the waters of the bay, through the rigging of the ships from halfway round the world that lay in Nagasaki Bay tethered to their moorings, their crewmen watching transfixed by the spectacle above, as if it were they themselves and their holy Faith whose hearts were being pierced.

            Twelve-year-old Louis Ibaraki had long been prepared for this moment.  Twenty-seven days earlier, at the start of their journey, the martyrs had been paraded in oxcarts around the capital and around nearby Sakai, the mercantile center of Japan, and in their oxcart the three youngest boys had brightly sung the Our Father and the Hail Mary as their just-clipped ears poured blood; now, raised on their crosses, the three sang a Psalm—Praise the Lord, O ye children, praise ye His Holy Name.  Louis alone among the Twenty-six was there entirely by personal choice, for he had been offered his freedom by Hanzaburō, the sheriff in charge of the execution, on condition that he give up the Faith.

Louis didn’t hesitate; his answer was swift and clear:  “I do not want to live on that condition, for it is not reasonable to exchange a life that has no end for one that soon finishes” 4:  a holy precocity reminiscent of Our Lord at age twelve in the Temple, “Sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at His understanding and His answers” (Luke 2:46b-47).

In that same spirit, on the Fifth of February in the Year of Our Lord 1597, atop that slope called Nishizaka that overlooked wholly-Catholic Nagasaki and its perfect harbor, the boy-Saint Louis Ibaraki shouted words that would carry His blessing to the ears and hearts of all the listening world, before the soldiers gouged their spears into his sides and up through his twelve-year-old heart:  “Paradise!  Paradise!” he shouted, struggling toward Heaven, “Jesus!  Mary!”

             

Website:  Kirishtan.com

Copyright 2007/2014 by Luke O’Hara

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¹ Diego Yuuki, S.J., The Twenty-Six Martyrs of Nagasaki (Tokyo, Enderle, 1998), 55.

² Yuuki, 56.

³ Yuuki, 70.

4 Yuuki, 60.