persecution of Kirishitans in Japan.
Ray0808!
JamesMorrisPhDThesis_Hilites.pdf
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Chapter Two
Christianity and the Evolving Context of 16th
and 17th Century Japan
The earliest documented conversions to Christianity took place in the period
between the arrival of Francis Xavier (1506-1552CE)307 in 1549 and the last martyrdom of a
Christian missionary in Japan, Mancio Konishi (1600-1644CE) in 1644,308 a period known as
the Kirishitan Century. Traditionally English language scholarship on the period has focused
on southern Japan, especially Kyushu, however Christianity reached every corner of the
country. 309 Japan’s changing socio-political context was the most important factor
influencing, expanding, and restricting both the mission and conversion. The Kirishitan
Century traversed three periods of Japanese history, the end of the Muromachi Period
(Muromachi jidai が ６ , 1336-1573CE), the entirety of the Azuchi-Momoyama Period
307 Biographies include: Coleridge ed., The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, 2 vols; Xavier,
Epistolae S. Francisci Xaverii aliaque eius scripta: ex integro refecta textibus, introductionibus, notis, appendicibus auctua; Bartoli and Maffei, The Life of St. Francis Xavier: Apostle of the Indies and Japan; Cieslik, Furanshisuko Zabieru: kibō no kiseki; Venn, The Missionary Life and Labours of Francis Xavier. Lacouture, Jesuits: A Multibiography, 100-137.
308 For a brief chronology of the period, see: Kirishitan Bunkwa Kenkyu Kwai (Institute of Early Japanese Christian Culture) ed., Chronology of Kirishitan (Early Christian Era in Japan).
309 Cieslik and Ōta, Kirishitan, 85-108.
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(Azuchi Momoyama jidai は６ , 1573-1603CE), and the beginning of the Edo
Period (1603-1868CE),310 and consequently, also traversed Japan’s transformation from
medieval (Chūsei ) to early modern (Kinsei ).311 The mission was thereby subjected
to the shifting socio-political situation and governance associated with each period and the
transition between them. Crossing these contexts and time periods the Kirishitan Century
is often divided into two parts, a period of growth (1549-1614CE) and a period of
persecution and hiding which extends from 1614 beyond the end of the Kirishitan Century
until the re-emergence of the Kirishitan in 1865 and the end of persecution in 1873.312
This chapter describes the genesis of the Jesuit missions to Japan and the changing
Japanese political context within which the mission existed. It argues that the mission’s
success or failure was intimately tied to this changing political context. Moreover, the
chapter argues that the eventual turn of those in power against Christianity was the result
of cumulative factors including the Tokugawa bakufu’s consolidation of political power,
trade concerns, fear of colonization, and a series of seemingly random scandals. The chapter
concludes that anti-Kirishitan policy was part of a wider political shift through which the
Tokugawa bakufu, following their Oda and Toyotomi forbearers, attempted to control the
controllable and outlaw the uncontrollable elements of society.
310 Frédéric, “Historical and Artistic Periods,” 336. 311 Hall, Nagahara, and Yamamura, “Introduction,” 11; Ebisawa, Nanban bunka – Nichiō bunka kōshō,
2; Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 21. 312 Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 3-4. Miyazaki Kentarō provides a similar model. Miyazaki,
Kakure Kirishitan: Orasho, 18-21; Miyazaki, “Roman Catholic Mission in Pre-Modern Japan,” 4-5.
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The Arrival of the Jesuits in Japan
The Society of Jesus (Iezusukai ) emerged in what Jonathan Wright
terms a ‘new found frailty in Christendom’313 perhaps better described as a ‘shattering of
Christian unity’314 which followed the Sack of Rome in 1527, growing religious animosity,
the Reformation,315 and wider challenges and changes to traditional European systems of
knowledge. 316 Christianity as experienced by the Jesuit founders was complex, ‘local
environments routinely outflanked or complicated centralizing mandates’ 317 so that it
tolerated and encouraged a range of religious actors, and emphasized various
commitments and elements.318 Religious dissent and criticism were not exclusive to the
growing numbers of rebelling and persecuted Protestants in Europe, although they played
a central role in the creation of a divided Christendom.319 Rather, the Catholic laity also
demanded improvements to the clergy, sermons and other practices.320 Religious upheaval
was only one facet of the early 16th Century European context. Socio-political change was
spurred by Spain’s and Portugal’s emergence as new political, economic and military
powers, the discovery of the Americas which radically expanded the boundaries of the
313 Wright, The Jesuits: Missions, Myths and Histories, 14-15. Christopher Hollis notes that the division
of Christendom was not a new phenomenon, but had been developing long before the Reformation. Hollis, A History of the Jesuits, 7.
314 Alden, The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond 1540- 1750, 3.
315 Wright, The Jesuits, 14-15; Cieslik and Ōta, Kirishitan, 5, 24-27. 316 Foss, The Founding of the Jesuits, 1540, 26-58. 317 Homza, “The religious milieu of the young Ignatius,” 13. 318 Ibid., 13-26. 319 Wright, The Jesuits, 18-19. 320 Homza, “The religious milieu of the young Ignatius,” 13.
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known world, and naval developments which allowed the New and Old worlds to be easily
traversed.321 Globally, Christendom was further threatened by the rise of the Turks, and
associated risks to the sovereignty of Christian lands in the Mediterranean.322 The Church
responded with reforms following the Council of Trent (1545-1563), improvements to her
religious orders, the creation of new orders including the Jesuits,323 and the dispatch of
missionaries around the world.324 The Jesuits’ founding moments took place in Paris on
August 15th, 1534, in the midst of these highly complicated theological and political
situations.325 The Order was officially recognized by the Church in Pope Paul II’s papal bull,
Regimini militantis ecclesiae, in 1540.326 In Europe, the Order evolved to combat heresy,
however, for the early Jesuits and many who followed, it was pilgrimage and the spread of
the faith to distant lands which was of central importance. 327 Although the Jesuits
developed as a unique religious order, they were firmly the product of 16th Century
Catholicism, monastic tradition, and interaction with Europe’s contemporaneous
theological-political context.328
321 Ibid.; Boxer, Four Centuries of Portuguese Expansion, 1415-1825: A Succinct Survey, 1-21; Cieslik
and Ōta, Kirishitan, 28-31. 322 Alden, The Making of an Enterprise, 3; Foss, The Founding of the Jesuits, 3-25. 323 Alden, The Making of an Enterprise, 3; O’Malley, Saints or Devils Incarnate? Studies in Jesuit
History, 71-87. 324 Li, “Jesuit Missionaries and the Transmission of Christianity and European Knowledge in China,”
49. 325 Wright, The Jesuits, 20-25. 326 This was revised in Pope Julius III’s Exposcit debitum (1550). O’Malley, Saints or Devils Incarnate?,
37. 327 Laven, Mission to China: Matteo Ricci and the Jesuit Encounter with the East, 5. 328 Neill, A History of Christianity in India: The Beginnings to AD 1707, 134; Moran, The Japanese and
the Jesuits, 21; O’Malley, The First Jesuits, 23-50. J. Michelle Molina notes that whilst the Jesuits had monastic roots, the development of their tradition can also be viewed as a break from these roots. Molina, To Overcome Oneself: The Jesuit Ethic and Spirit of Global Expansion, 1520-1767, 23-49.
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The Jesuits reached India on May 6th, 1542, 329 following the establishment of
maritime relations with India by Vasco da Gama in 1498, the creation of the “State of India”
in 1505,330 and the establishment of the See of Goa by the Portuguese in 1534.331 In 1557,
Goa became an archbishopric and primatial See of the East Indies acting as the centre of
the Jesuits East Asian Mission, with the diocese of Funai エ 332 in Japan falling under its
remit from 1588.333 Following the Jesuit takeover of the administration of the College of
Goa in 1548, India became the Jesuit seat of learning in Asia.334 From this Indian base the
Jesuits followed the Portuguese throughout Asia, spreading to Malacca, Indochina,
Indonesia, the Maluku Islands and China.335 After capturing Malacca in 1511,336 the first
official Portuguese ambassadors travelled to China in 1517.337 Individual Portuguese traders
reached China as early as 1514, and although this led to successive attempts to open
permanent commercial and ecclesiastical relations with the mainland, these goals were not
achieved until the establishment of Macau 338 in 1557 and the permittance of Michele
329 Neill, A History of Christianity in India: The Beginnings to AD 1707, 134; Borges, The Economics of
the Goa Jesuits, 1542-1759: An Explanation of Their Rise and Fall, 17. 330 Boxer, Portuguese India in the Mid-Seventeenth Century, 1. 331 Üçerler, “The Jesuit Enterprise in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Japan,” 42; Boxer, The
Christian Century in Japan, 2-6. On the Jesuits in Goa, see: Matsuda, Ōgon no Goa seisuiki: Ōa no setten o tazunete, 12-79.
332 Modern day Ōita . 333 Üçerler, “The Jesuit Enterprise in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Japan,” 42. 334 Ibid., 43. 335 Boxer, Four Centuries of Portuguese Expansion, 40-41. 336 Ibid., 14; De Sá de Meneses, The Conquest of Malacca. Sar Desai, “The Portuguese Administration
in Malacca, 1511-1641,” 501-512. 337 Boxer, South China in the Sixteenth Century, xx. 338 Macau eventually served as the centre of the Jesuits’ East Asian mission. Souza, The Survival of
Empire: Portuguese Trade and Society in China and the South China Sea 1630-1754, 24; Brockey, Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579-1724, 35-41; Alden, The Making of an Enterprise, 528-551.
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Ruggieri (C. Luó Míngjiān ０ , 1543-1607CE) to reside on the mainland in Zhàoqìng
ェ in 1582.339 In comparison to India, Portuguese influence and power were weak in
Indonesia, Indochina and Malacca, and therefore traders and missionaries failed to have a
lasting impact.340 The difficulties faced by the Portuguese in these areas, alongside their
ability to act as middlemen in the facilitation of Sino-Japanese trade, which was officially
prohibited due to Wakō ご (pirate) raids on China, contributed to a Portuguese focus on
Japan.341
Although the Portuguese had met Japanese aboard vessels in Malacca as early as
1511, and had interacted with them elsewhere in Asia,342 interest in and knowledge of
Japan waned as establishing Sino-Portuguese relations took precedence.343 It was not until
the accidental Portuguese “discovery” of Japan in the early 1540s, that interest in the nation
increased.344 Portuguese interest in Japan seems to have been primarily rooted in trade,
339 Gregory, The West and China since 1500, 29-51; Laven, Mission to China, 3-19; Brockey, Journey
to the East, 27-41; Wills, Jr. “Relations with maritime Europeans, 1514-1662,” 336-345. 340 Boxer, Four Centuries of Portuguese Expansion, 40. 341 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 7-8, 91-93. 342 Anesaki, History of Japanese Religion: With Special Reference to the Social and Moral Life of the
Nation, 240-241. During the Muromachi period (Muromachi jidai が ６ , 1336-1573), Japan had re- established diplomatic relations with China, and established a large network of trade, piracy and overseas settlements (Nihon machi ） /） or Nihonjin machi ） /） ). Tanaka with Sakai, “Japan’s Relations with Overseas Countries,” 159-178; Kawazoe and Hurst III, “Japan and East Asia,” 396-446; Elisonas, “The Inseparable Trinity: Japan’s relations with China and Korea,” 235-330. On Nihonmachi, see: Adachi, “Emigrants from Japan,” 77-78; Cieslik, Sekai o aruita Kirishitan, 164-166; Tashiro, “Chōsen ni akareta Nihonjin machi,” 240-259; Matsuda, Ōgon no Goa seisuiki: Ōa no setten o tazunete, 160-222.
343 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 14. 344 Portuguese traders first came to Japan accidentally in or around 1543. Boxer disputes traditional
accounts that suggest that Japan was discovered by Fernão Mendes Pinto (1509-1583) in 1542/1543 arguing that other Portuguese likely visited before him. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 14-27; Gonzagowski, “The Subversion of Empire as Farce in Fernão Mendes Pinto’s Peregrinação,” 31-40; Wiessala, European Studies in Asia: Contours of a Discipline, 62-63. For Pinto’s account, see: Mendes Pinto, Peregrinaçam de
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and especially in their ability to facilitate and profit from trade between China and Japan.345
Traditionally, the Japanese desire for firearms and European knowledge have been
highlighted as two of the primary factors in the establishment of trade.346 However, whilst
it is true that there was a desire to procure firearms and European knowledge in Japan, to
conclude that this was the sole impetus behind Portuguese-Japanese trade relies on the
Orientalist assumption that the Japanese had little of “worth” to offer their “superior”
European trade partners. Conversely, the Portuguese ability to produce huge profits on the
trade of Japanese precious metals including silver, which at the time accounted for a third
of the world’s production, alongside the Jesuits’ successes, seems to have secured
Portuguese interest in the country.347 This interest was compounded by a strong Japanese
market for luxury goods including silk, deer skins, ivory and sandalwood,348 which would
create a highly profitable trade network for the Portuguese who held the monopoly on
European trade until the early 17th Century.349 Although Jesuit relations with Portuguese
Fernam Mendez Pinto; Mendez Pinto, The Voyages and Adventures of Ferdinand Mendez Pinto; Mendes Pinto, The Travels of Mendes Pinto.
345 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 7-8; Boxer, Four Centuries of Portuguese Expansion, 41. 346 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 28-31. 347 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 5-6; Flynn and Giràldez, “Born
with a ‘Silver Spoon’: The Origin of World Trade in 1571,” 201-221; Boxer, “The Affair of the ‘Madre de Deus.’ A Chapter in the History of the Portuguese in Japan,” 9-11; Atwell, “International Bullion Flows and the Chinese Economy circa 1530-1650,” 68-90. Xavier notes the potentially highly valuable trade of precious metals in his November 5th, 1549 letter to Father Antonio Gomez written in Kagoshima, and encourages Gomez to spread the word to Portuguese traders in Goa. His letter to Don Pedro de Silva, Commandant of Malacca written on the same date makes similar comments. Coleridge ed., The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, vol. 2, 270- 273, 279-281.
348 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 91-92; Cooper, “The Mechanics of the Macao-Nagasaki Silk Trade,” 423-433.
349 Boxer, “The Affair of the ‘Madre de Deus.’ A Chapter in the History of the Portuguese in Japan,” 8-10.
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traders were not always harmonious, it was expanding Portuguese trade and not conquest
that made the opening of the mission possible. 350 In fact, the conversion of native
populations existed in a symbiotic relationship with the Portuguese and Spanish systems of
navigation, conquest, colonization, and trade.351
If Portuguese interests in Japan were motivated by trade, the Jesuit mission, at least
initially, was linked to Xavier’s disillusionment with his mission to South East Asia352 and
after meeting his eventual translator, Yajirō ,353 in 1547, his growing hope that the
Japanese could be converted.354 Nevertheless, the possibility of commencing both trade
and mission activities in Japan was directly linked to the division of the East and West Indies
350 Boxer, The Church Militant and Iberian Expansion, 1440-1770, 56. Several sources pertaining to
Portuguese-Japanese trade and relations during the period are included in: Takase, “Kirishitan jidai no Nichipo gaikō ni okeru Iezusukai senkyōshi,” 51-109.
351 Takase, “A Igreja Cristã (Kirishitan) no Japão e os Poderes Unificadores Japoneses nos Séculos XVI e XVII – Kirishitan to tōitsu kenryoku (shōzen),” 186.
352 Cary, A History of Christianity in Japan, vol. 1, 18-19. 353 Alternatively spelt , also known as Anjirō , Anger, Angier, Paulo de Santa Fé,
Paul and other variations. Yajirō was Japanese. After murdering a man, he fled Japan, meeting Xavier in Malacca in 1547. A Shingon Buddhist, he subsequently converted to Christianity. The Jesuits regarded him as intellectually capable, due to his ability to grasp Christian concepts and learn Portuguese, and therefore sought to learn about the Japanese religious environment from him, however, he was likely illiterate in Japanese and uneducated. Scholars have argued that his death on a pirate raid and the use of pirate ships to transport Xavier’s party to and from Japan, illustrate that Yajirō was a pirate. Elison, Deus Destroyed, 32; Bartoli and Maffei, The Life of St. Francis Xavier, 299-312; Coleridge ed., The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, vol. 1, 417-422; Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” 307; Xavier, Epistolae S. Francisci Xaverii, vol. 2, no. 79, 71; Cieslik, Sekai o aruita Kirishitan, 10-43; Ebisawa, Kirishitanshi no Kenkyū, 228-252.
354 Cary, A History of Christianity in Japan, vol. 1, 19-27. Yajirō’s conversations with Xavier alongside reports from Portuguese merchants fomented this hope. In his first letter mentioning Japan written in Cochin on January 21st, 1548, Xavier notes several times that he has been assured that a mission to Japan would be more efficacious than his mission to India, and at several points links his hopes to Yajirō. In an account of Japan drawn from Yajirō’s testimony and dispatched to Loyola, written in Cochin in January 1549, Xavier notes religious similarities between Japanese religion and Catholicism, which doubtlessly also inspired his hopes of gaining converts there. Coleridge ed., The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, vol. 1, 417-421; Coleridge ed., The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, vol. 2, 208-215. See also: Bartoli and Maffei, The Life of St. Francis Xavier, 299-312; Yamato, “Kirishitan jidai saishoki ni okeru Kirisutokyō to Bukkyō no kōshō,” 109-139.
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between Portugal and Spain.355 In 1493, Pope Alexander VI promulgated the papal bulls
Eximiae devotionis, Inter caetera and Dudum siquidem, collectively known as the Bulls of
Donation or the Alexandrine Bulls, which divided the Indies, and provided Portugal and
Spain with the rights to civil and religious administration over the lands they discovered.356
The nations formalized this agreement a year later with the Treaty of Tordesillas.357 The
merging of the crowns in 1580 complicated the situation, although Spain and Portugal’s
respective colonial empires continued to be governed separately.358 Pope Gregory XIII’s
Supa specula (1576) created a diocese based in Macau that incorporated China and Japan,
and from 1585 to 1600 the Jesuits held exclusive rights to the mission allowing them to gain
a monopoly before other Orders entered the mission field. 359 Franciscans visited
intermittently before 1590, but did not establish a mission. 360 A Dominican came as
ambassador of the Spanish Philippines in 1592, a role which was taken over by the
Franciscans between 1593 and 1597.361 From 1598 to 1640, the Franciscans maintained a
355 Üçerler, “The Jesuit Enterprise in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Japan,” 41. 356 Ibid. For discussion, see: Hoffman, “Diplomacy and the Papal Donation 1493-1585,” 151-183;
Linden, “Alexander VI. And the Demarcation of the Maritime and Colonial Domains of Spain and Portugal, 1493-1494,” 1-20; Takase, “A Igreja Cristã (Kirishitan) no Japão e os Poderes Unificadores Japoneses nos Séculos XVI e XVII – Kirishitan to tōitsu kenryoku (shōzen),” 187-188.
357 Üçerler, “The Jesuit Enterprise in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Japan,” 41. 358 Moran, The Japanese and the Jesuits, 46. 359 Miyazaki, “Roman Catholic Mission in Pre-Modern Japan,” 10-11; Wiest, “Learning from the
Missionary Past,” 194. 360 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 160; Elison, Deus Destroyed, 80. Visits in 1582 and 1584 are
explored in: Willeke and Yanagiya, “Saisho no Furanshisuko kaishi no raichō,” 249-271. For an outline of Franciscan visits between 1582 and 1590, see: Tsuzukibashi, Nihon Furanshisukokaishi nenpyō: hōgo�hōyaku shiryō ni motozuku shian, 7-8.
361 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 160-171; Tsuzukibashi, Nihon Furanshisukokaishi nenpyō, 9-19.
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presence in Japan,362 the Dominicans and the Augustinians joined the mission field in 1601
and 1602 respectively.363 Despite the presence of other Orders, the Jesuits always remained
the most numerous in the mission field.364
In summation, although the birth of the mission stemmed from a combination of
Xavier’s disillusionment and hope, and was sustained by its success, its formation was
inextricably bound to European politics and the Vatican’s decisions. With the world divided
between Portugal and Spain the mission’s existence was also linked to Portuguese trade.
Ongoing Portuguese and missionary interest in Japan was driven by the Portuguese ability
to make large profits on this trade, their failures elsewhere in East Asia, and the mission’s
successes.
Sengoku Jidai
Richard Storry writes that the Muromachi Period was ‘marred by almost continuous
violence, amounting to full-scale civil war.’ 365 Nevertheless, the weakness of the
Muromachi bakufu が わエ (Muromachi shogunate) stemmed not from an inability to
gain possession of secular authority, but from its difficulty in exercising that authority.366
362 Tsuzukibashi, Nihon Furanshisukokaishi nenpyō, 20-81 363 Wilberforce, Dominican Missions and Martyrs in Japan, 3; Nawata Ward, Women Religious
Leaders in Japan’s Christian Century, 1549-1650, 6. 364 Miyazaki, “Roman Catholic Mission in Pre-Modern Japan,” 10-11. 365 Storry, A History of Modern Japan, 42. 366 Hall, “The Muromachi bakufu,” 175-177.
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The Ōnin War (Ōnin no Ran パ ) which began in 1467 from a succession dispute,367
led to the opening of a period of civil war and uprisings known as Sengoku jidai. The period
ended following successive phases of pacification and unification, under Oda Nobunaga,368
Toyotomi Hideyoshi,369 Tokugawa Ieyasu ニぽくキ (1542-1616CE)370 and their allies.371
Sengoku jidai was marked by a collapsing Japanese political system;372 the country was
ruled by approximately 120 locally autonomous daimyō, the majority of whom had only
recently emerged as political powers, many through gekokujō (the supplanting of
lords by their vassals).373 The bakufu わエ (shogunate) had provided the only effective
system of guaranteeing land rights and adjudicating disputes, but its decline spawned a
system without a superior authority, resulting in constant, widespread conflict between the
daimyō.374 The collapse of traditional authority spurred not only the emergence of and
367 Varley, “Warfare in Japan 1467-1600,” 60; Yamada, Sengoku no Katsuryoku, 18; Berry, Hideyoshi,
16-17. 368 Biographies include: Ōta, The Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga. Lamers, Japonius Tyrannus: The
Japanese Warlord Oda Nobunaga Reconsidered; Kanda, Oda Nobunaga; Kaneko, Oda Nobunaga “Tenkabuto” no jitsuzō; Ikegami, Oda Nobunaga.
369 Biographies include: Berry, Hideyoshi; Turnbull, Toyotomi Hideyoshi; Dening and Dening, The Life of Toyotomi Hideyoshi; Kuwata, Toyotomi Hideyoshi kenkyū; Kuwata, Taikō Toyotomi Hideyoshi; Suzuki, Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
370 Biographies include: Sadler, Shogun: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu; Sadler, The Maker of Modern Japan: The Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu; Totman, Tokugawa Ieyasu: Shogun; Kuwata, Tokugawa Ieyasu; Yamaji, Tokugawa Ieyasu, 2 vols; Futaki, Tokugawa Ieyasu.
371 Sengoku Jidai’s end date is debated, Yamada Kuniaki notes that some scholars date it to Nobunaga’s ascension in 1573, whilst others use Nobunaga’s entry into Kyoto in 1568, Hideyoshi’s victory over the Hōjō Clan (Hōjō shi ) in 1590, or the Siege of Osaka (Ōsaka no Jin ) in 1615. Yamada, Sengoku no Katsuryoku, 18; Hall, “The Muromachi bakufu,” 225. On the unification of the country see: Asao and Susser, “The sixteenth-century unification,” 40-95; Hall, Nagahara, and Yamamura, “Introduction,” 7-10.
372 Elison, “Introduction: Japan in the Sixteenth Century,” 1. 373 Berry, Hideyoshi, 26. Yamada, Sengoku no Katsuryoku, 146-148; Matsuoka with Arnesen, “The
Sengoku Daimyo of Western Japan: The Case of Ōuchi,” 64-65; Hall, Nagahara, and Yamamura, “Introduction,” 9. On the daimyō of the period, see: Okuno, Sengoku Daimyō.
374 Hall, “Japan’s Sixteenth-Century Revolution,” 7, 16.
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conflict between daimyō, but also the recurring resistance of the peasant classes, their
default on taxes and inter-domainal migration.375 Religious organizations also revolted, and
some held and administered their own provinces and militaries, notably the Jōdo Shinshū
sect Ikkō Ikki .376 The contextual elements associated with Sengoku
Jidai including political insecurity and conflict continued to inform the policy of leaders
during the subsequent periods of pacification and unification until the early Edo period.
Arriving in this context, the Jesuits’ fortunes could change overnight; they required
the protection of the daimyō in order to preach safely, but their progress risked destruction
following the potential capture of provinces by hostile forces or changes in policy at the
whim of their patrons.377 For example, daimyō Ōtomo Sōrin (1530-1587CE)378
baptized in 1578 held power over Bungo , Buzen , Chikuzen , Chikugo ,
Hizen , Higo , parts of Hyūga ） and Iyo , however, less than thirteen weeks
after his baptism the Ōtomo clan (Ōtomo shi ) lost much of their land and power
following defeat to the Shimazu clan (Shimazu shi へ ).379 Similarly, the missionaries
375 Matsuoka with Arnesen, “The Sengoku Daimyo of Western Japan: The Case of Ōuchi,” 71-75; Berry,
Hideyoshi, 23-26. On the peasantry of the era, see: Yamada, Sengoku no Katsuryoku, 210-225. 376 Hall, “Japan’s Sixteenth-Century Revolution,” 11; Richmond Tsang, War and Faith: Ikkō Ikki in late
Muromachi Japan; Matsuo, “Sengokuki Kaga no chiiki kenryoku to Honganji shugoken,” in three parts, 29-39, 41-50, 51-57; Kanda, “Ikkō Ikki to Sōkoku Ikki wa ikani kanren suru ka,” 231-241; Kanda, “Kaga Ikkō Ikki no hassei,” 1654-1672.
377 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 42; Elison, Deus Destroyed, 21. 378 Biographies include: Laures, Kirishitan daimyō, 5-25; Takemoto, Ōtomo Sōrin; Toyama, Ōtomo
Sōrin; Hakusui, Ōtomo Sōrin: Kirishitan daimyō; Cieslik, Kirishitan shikō, 76-85; Yūki, Kirishitan ni natta daimyō, 217-226.
379 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 21-25; Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” 335-343; Cieslik, Kirishitan shikō, 76-85.
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were expelled from Kyoto by Emperor Ōgimachi (1517-1593CE) in 1564, and could
only return after 1569.380 A later example is that of Ōmura Yoshiaki (1568-
1615CE),381 successor to Kirishitan daimyō , Ōmura Sumitada ビ
(1533-1587CE).382 In 1606, Yoshiaki expelled the Jesuits from Ōmura domain (Ōmura han
),383 an area with a large Kirishitan population,384 reverting the domain to Buddhism
due to a dispute over the governance of Nagasaki ぺ.385 Accordingly, in order to address
the high risk, volatile context in which they worked the missionaries required a widespread
base to reduce the risks associated with being attached to a single province or daimyō.386
In 1568, Oda Nobunaga entered Kyoto, leading to the instalment of Ashikaga
Yoshiaki ４ (1537-1597CE) as shogun (shōgun た人).387 The championing of a
pretender by a daimyō was not uncommon during the period.388 Nevertheless, Nobunaga’s
subsequent seizure of political and military power, his defeat of Yoshiaki and his allies, and
his concentration and centralization of political power marked the first steps towards
380 Nosco, “Secrecy and Transmission of Tradition: Issues in the Study of the ‘Underground’
Christians,” 5. 381 For biographical information, see: Yūki, Kirishitan ni natta daimyō, 43-52. 382 For biographical information, see: Yūki, Kirishitan ni natta daimyō, 35-43. 383 Overviews on the Kirishitan Century in Ōmura are included in: Elisonas, “Christianity and the
Daimyo,” 323-331; Cieslik, Kirishitan shikō, 338-345; Yūki, Kirishitan ni natta daimyō, 35-53; Kataoka, Nagasaki no Kirishitan, 18-22.
384 In 1574, Sumitada had decreed the complete conversion of his vassals and subjects, and the destruction of Japanese religious institutions. Cabral, “Coppie d’une letter escripte du P. François Gabriel Superieur de la Compagnie du nom de Iesus au Iappon,” 13-15; Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” 327- 328.
385 Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” 328; Lach and Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. 3, A Century of Advance, Book One, 172.
386 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 21. 387 Fujiki with Elison, “The Political Posture of Oda Nobunaga,” 149. 388 Ibid., 149-150.
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creating a unified Japan.389 By the time of his suicide following an assassination attempt in
1582, Nobunaga had extended influence over a third of the country. The total unification
and pacification of the country fell to his successor and former vassal, Hideyoshi, who
through a combination of conquest and diplomacy unified Japan by 1590.390 The mission
was ‘inseparably tied to the fates of the Country at War.’391 In other words, Japan’s socio-
political context restricted the potential success of the early mission due to its inherent
insecurity, civil war, and changes in local and national leadership. The end of Sengoku
spurred the rise of a new political context in which the Jesuits and the Kirishitan would face
a new set of challenges. For Jurgis Elisonas (George Elison) these changes led to the end of
Jesuit freedom.392 Nevertheless, although the end of Sengoku marked the beginning of new
challenges, the mission’s progress, tied as it was to the context of a country at war, had only
ever been tentatively in the Jesuits’ control.
Hideyoshi
The Jesuits garnered favour with Nobunaga, and whilst his actions against Buddhist
insurgency and his persecution of Buddhism benefitted the missionaries in the short
389 Naohiro and Susser, “The sixteenth-century unification,” 40-95; Berry, Hideyoshi, 41-65. 390 Berry, Hideyoshi, 66-98. 391 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 21. 392 Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” 331.
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term, 393 it also set the precedent for his successors’ anti-Christian policies. 394 Initially
Hideyoshi also tolerated Christianity, and following Nobunaga sought to limit the power of
the Buddhist priesthood.395 However, on the 19th of the 6th month of Tenshō 15
(1587CE), Hideyoshi issued the Bateren tsuihō rei 今 ,396 a decree ordering all
priests to leave within twenty days. Although this was not strenuously enforced due to
Hideyoshi’s preoccupation with completing the unification of Japan, it set a precedent for
the martyrdoms at Nagasaki in 1597 and the banning of Christianity by Ieyasu in 1612 and
1614.397 It is unlikely that the genesis of Hideyoshi’s policy was either the result of drunken
rage or a long term conspiracy against Christianity made impossible through the Jesuits’
role in essential Portuguese trade, as was asserted by contemporary Christian writers,
although the Jesuit role in trade did limit the degree to which the decree was enforced.398
Nor was it primarily the result of theological concerns, although the author (a former
Buddhist monk named Yakuin Zensō , 1526-1600CE) declared Japan to be “the
393 Joan-Pau Rubiés notes that Nobunaga could use the Jesuits and Christianity to weaken the power
of Buddhism. Rubiés, “The Concept of Cultural Dialogue and the Jesuits Method of Accommodation: Between Idolatry and Civilization,” 254. See also: Kitagawa, “Japanese Religion,” 321.
394 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 2, 25-27; Fujiki with Elison, “The Political Posture of Oda Nobunaga,” 162- 163, 186, 190-191. On Nobunaga’s policy towards Buddhism, see: McMullin, Buddhism and the State in Sixteenth-Century Japan.
395 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 139. On Hideyoshi’s policy towards Buddhism, see: McMullin, Buddhism and the State in Sixteenth-Century Japan, 236-263.
396 Alternatively 今 . Japanese text included in: Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 69- 70; Ebisawa, Nihon Kirishitanshi, 266-267. English translations included in: Elison, Deus Destroyed, 115-116; Elisonas, “Decree,” 168. Elison’s translation is found in edited form in: Andrea and Overfield eds., The Human Record: Sources of Global History, Volume II: Since 1500, 119. Photographs of the handwritten text are included in: Cieslik and Ōta, Kirishitan, 190-191.
397 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 55-66. 398 Ross, A Vision Betrayed, 76; Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 150-154.
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Land of the gods” in the first clause of the decree, this section served not to establish the
truth of theological claims, but to provide Hideyoshi with political legitimacy and external
authority.399 Rather, Hideyoshi’s policy was a pragmatic and rational response to an aspect
of society which potentially threatened the socio-political order he was attempting to
create.400 Fujita views this as relating to Hideyoshi’s “unwarranted” ‘suspicion of the Jesuits
possessing some covert plan to topple his government and take over the whole country’401
and the “misunderstanding” that Christianity was part of the European colonial scheme.402
Fujiwara similarly argues that Hideyoshi needed an external enemy in order to unite the
Japanese, and therefore sought to spread suspicions regarding Portugal.403 Nevertheless,
such conclusions which place Europe at the centre overlook the fact that his policy was
primarily concerned with internal affairs.404 Furthermore, construing Hideyoshi’s conduct
as grounded in unwarranted and irrational suspicion and misunderstanding is problematic.
That the Jesuits had political intentions was not a mere suspicion, it was grounded
firmly in their conduct. It is perhaps a step too far to assert that the cession of Nagasaki and
Mogi in 1580 and Urakami in 1584 established the Jesuits as the holders of their
own domains, as these provinces can neither be described as colonies nor completely
399 Fujita, Japan’s Encounter with Christianity, 117-119. 400 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 58-59. 401 Fujita, Japan’s Encounter with Christianity, 120, 259. 402 Ibid., 260. 403 Fujiwara, Theology of Culture in a Japanese Context, 167. 404 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 132.
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independent from the daimyō with which they were temporally associated.405 However,
alongside their independent involvement in trade, the fortification and stockpiling of
weaponry and munitions in these provinces under Valignano406 and the targeting of the
politically powerful for conversion,407 established the Jesuits as a potential threat to the
political order. Although, the Portuguese and Spanish never drew up proposals to conquer
Japan,408 and Christianity was not imposed at ‘the point of the sword,’409 the Jesuit founders
instilled a combative spirit into the Order whose members would serve as the soldiers of
God.410 The Jesuits’ militaristic attitudes are perhaps best illustrated in the actions of
Superior and Vice-Provincial, Gaspar Coelho (1530-1590CE),411 who not only met Hideyoshi
aboard his own ship adorned with artillery less than a week before the decree was
promulgated, but on several occasions had made failed requests for Iberian military
405 Pacheco, “The Founding of the Port of Nagasaki and its Cession to the Society of Jesus,” 312-323;
Hesselink, The Dream of a Christian Nagasaki: World Trade and the Clash of Cultures, 1560-1640, 52-57, 66- 68, 72; Kataoka, Nagasaki no Kirishitan, 29-32; Cieslik and Ōta, Kirishitan, 77-79.
406 Hesselink, The Dream of a Christian Nagasaki, 68-69; Takase, “Kirishitan senkyōshi no gunji keikaku (jō),” 305-336; Takase, “Kirishitan senkyōshi no gunji keikaku (chū),” 429-463; Takase, “Kirishitan senkyōshi no gunji keikaku (ge),” 433-466; Takase, “A Igreja Cristã (Kirishitan) no Japão e os Poderes Unificadores Japoneses nos Séculos XVI e XVII – Kirishitan to tōitsu kenryoku (shōzen),” 193; Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” 330; Takahashi, Iezusukai no sekai senryaku, 107-108.
407 Fukatsu, “Nihonjin to Kirisutokyō - Kirishitan dendō no baai,” 6-7. 408 Boxer, The Church Militant and Iberian Expansion, 56. Rotem Kowner suggests that the Portuguese
were using a tactic of gradual take over saved for strong communities. This tactic included building commercial ties, establishing evangelical activities, and interfering in local politics, and after securing a strong position invasion. Kowner, From White to Yellow: The Japanese in European Racial Thought, 1300-1735, 110-111.
409 Boxer, Four Centuries of Portuguese Expansion, 37. 410 De Lucca, Jesuits and Fortifications: The Contribution of the Jesuits to Military Architecture in the
Baroque Age, 1-12; O’Malley, Saints or Devils Incarnate?, 39-40. See also the discussion of Jesuit founder Ignatius Loyola’s (1491-1556) life in: Brodrick, The Origin of the Jesuits, 1-33.
411 Coelho succeeded Cabral in 1581, and oversaw the mission during Valignano’s absence from Japan (1581-1590). Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 140-149.
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intervention in Japan.412 He had furthermore promised to unite the Kirishitan daimyō in
Kyushu to support Hideyoshi during his invasion in early 1587, and to arrange the loan of
two Portuguese ships for the planned invasions of Korea and China.413 Following the 1587
decree, Coelho sought to unite the Kirishitan daimyō, and sent failed requests for soldiers
and arms to Manila, Macau and Goa in order to resist Hideyoshi’s policy.414 Hideyoshi did
not conceive that the Jesuits were acting as a fifth column,415 although there was certainly
a precedent for this.416 Rather the Jesuits’ actions identified them as a potential internal
political threat, which was exacerbated by the fact that they derived their authority from
Rome, and therefore fell outside of Hideyoshi’s potential control.417
Hideyoshi’s conception of the Kirishitan as a political threat is made clearer in his
“Notice”418 promulgated a day prior to the decree on the 18th of the 6th month of Tenshō 15.
This addressed a Japanese audience rather than the Jesuits and Portuguese as the decree
had done.419 Whereas the decree is reprinted in several sources, the notice exists only in
one. 420 The two principle themes therein are the proscription of forced conversions
412 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 114-115. 413 Ibid., 112-114. 414 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 149; Elison, Deus Destroyed, 133-134. 415 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 132. 416 Takase, “A Igreja Cristã (Kirishitan) no Japão e os Poderes Unificadores Japoneses nos Séculos XVI
e XVII – Kirishitan to tōitsu kenryoku (shōzen),” 192-193. 417 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 59. 418 Japanese text in: Ebisawa, Nihon Kirishitanshi, 268. English translation in: Elison, Deus Destroyed,
117-118; Elisonas, “Notice,” 166-168. Elison’s translation is found in edited form in: Andrea and Overfield eds., The Human Record: Sources of Global History, vol. 2, Since 1500, 118-119. Photographs of the handwritten text are included in: Cieslik and Ōta, Kirishitan, 190-191.
419 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 117-118. 420 It was found in the Ise Jingū Bunko き カ text the Goshuin Shishoku Kokaku ド り下
. Ebisawa, Nihon Kirishitanshi, 267.
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‘elaborated into a general assertion of central authority’s control over the actions of feudal
subordinates’421 and the likening of the Kirishitan to the Ikkō Ikki.422 The Ikkō Ikki, a Jōdo
Shinshū Buddhist sect who were defeated by Nobunaga after a ten year war ending in 1580,
were a prominent Sengoku power ruling provinces and competing as an independent
faction in the Sengoku power struggles.423 The notice states that the Kirishitan rely more on
supplication to external elements than the Ikkō Ikki, and that the forced conversion of
retainers by Kirishitan daimyō is more undesirable and potentially more harmful than the
Ikkō Ikki establishment of temple precincts (the control of regions by monks connected to
a temple).424 In other words, the Kirishitan were more dangerous than the religious rebels
of recent memory. The need to bring control over the Kirishitan daimyō manifested itself in
the refusal of Takayama Ukon は (1552-1615CE)425 to apostatize426 on Hideyoshi’s
orders, an event that for several contemporaneous writers was understood to be the basis
421 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 119, 124-132. 422 Ibid., 119. 423 Ibid., 119-124; Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” 361; Berry, Hideyoshi, 44, 46-47, 63-64. 424 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 118; Andrea and Overfield eds., The Human Record: Sources of Global
History, vol. 2, 118-119. 425 Biographies include: Cieslik, Takayama Ukon shiwa; Ebisawa, Takayama Ukon; Cieslik, Kirishitan
shikō, 93-100; Yūki, Kirishitan ni natta daimyō, 142-168. A short description of his life is given in: Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, vol. 2, 80-81.
426 In Japanese the term apostasy is Kikyō or Haikyō becoming a verb with the addition of suru (Kikyō suru or Haikyō suru ). During the Kirishitan Century and following periods of persecution the terms korobu (to fall down) and korobi (falling down) were commonly used. The Kōjien notes that korobu and korobi are specific terms referring to the conversion (apostasy) of Kirishitan. According to the Kōjien the verb korobu means ‘a Kirishitan converts’ (‘ テ ’), and the noun or adjective korobi refers to the conversion of a Kirishitan to Buddhism as a result of the anti- Kirishitan persecutions (‘ ６ セ ’). Shinmura ed., Kōjien, 1068. On Kikyō and Haikyō, see: Shinmura ed., Kōjien, 665, 2217.
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of Hideyoshi’s policy.427 Consequently, Ukon was stripped of his domain and sent into exile,
repercussions he did not hesitate to accept. 428 According to George Elison all other
important Kirishitan daimyō had likely apostatized (at least externally), pledging their
allegiance to Hideyoshi over their religion shortly before the decree was promulgated. 429
Although a few continued to covertly follow Christianity and fund the mission,430 their
apostasy reflected ‘the essential nature of the Christian daimyo: they pursued their own
interests first and their religion second.’431 Nevertheless, the existence of Christianity in
Japan was of little importance to Hideyoshi’s ruling; the notice restricted the conversion of
the wealthy and land owning classes432 who would be required to obtain official permission
to do so, and prohibited forced conversion. 433 This illustrates that at the centre of
Hideyoshi’s action was his desire to extend his power over the daimyō. Indeed, the lower
classes were of little concern and were therefore permitted to convert.434 Both the theme
of asserting authority over the daimyō and the analogy drawn between the Kirishitan and
427 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 145-146; Elison, Deus Destroyed, 124-126, 131; Cieslik,
Takayama Ukon shiwa, 210-219. 428 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 146. Cieslik and Ebisawa explore the order of exile and its
repercussions for Ukon. Cieslik, Takayama Ukon shiwa, 210-385; Ebisawa, Takayama Ukon, 123-236. 429 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 124. 430 Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” 362-363. 431 Ibid., 365. 432 Specifically those who owned above 200 chō , and/or had an income of 2,000–3,000 kan .
Elison, Deus Destroyed, 118. Chō is a measurement of approximately 9917m2 (2.541 acres) of land, whereas one kan is a measurement of currency equivalent to 1,000 copper coins. Inoue and Nakamura, Fukutake kogo jiten, 355, 675; Tōdō, Matsumoto, Takeda, and Kanō eds., Kanjigen, 1055, 1510. A conversion table is included in: Lu, Japan: A Documentary History, vol. 2, The Late Tokugawa Period to Present, Appendix, 1-2.
433 Elisonas, “Notice,” 166. 434 Item 1 of the Notice states that becoming a Kirishitan ‘shall be the free choice of the person
concerned.’ Elison, Deus Destroyed, 117-118.
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the Ikkō Ikki confirm the policy’s grounding in the perceived socio-political threat posed by
the Jesuits and their converts.
Despite attempts developed by Valignano to pursue a policy through which the
Jesuits sought to 'accommodate themselves to the Japanese way of doing things,' 435
Hideyoshi’s decree and notice illustrate the Jesuits’ failure or perceived failure to acquiesce
to Japanese modes of thought and ways of doing things. A central theme in both the decree
and notice is the concept that the missionaries and their followers forced peasants to
become Christian.436 In the decree this is directly linked to the destruction of shrines and
temples, and the stirring up of the lower classes.437 The notice includes two injunctions,
originally posed as questions to Coelho shortly before the documents’ promulgation;438 a
ban on the trade of Japanese humans based on the Portuguese trade of Japanese slaves,439
and a ban on the trade and slaughter of cattle and horses for food.440 The Jesuits refrained
from using indigenous Japanese slaves, relying on Africans and non-Japanese Asians,441 and
even appear to have opposed the trade of Japanese slaves, however, their deferral to the
Portuguese and Japanese authorities to bring this trade to an end damaged Japanese-Jesuit
435 Moran, The Japanese and the Jesuits, 54. The policy of accommodation was known as
Accommodatio (Tekiō shugi パ ). 436 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 116-118. 437 Ibid., 116. 438 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 145-147; Elison, Deus Destroyed, 115. 439 Boxer, “Muitsai in Macao,” 222-241; Seijas, Asian Slaves in Colonial Mexico: From Chinos to Indians,
49-61; Kitahara, Porutogaru no shokuminchi keisei to Nihonjin dorei. 440 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 118. 441 Kowner, From White to Yellow, 148-150; Borges, The Economics of the Goa Jesuits, 48.
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relations.442 The Portuguese trade of Japanese slaves was so widespread that King Sebastian
I of Portugal (1554-1578CE) prohibited it in 1571 fearing it hindered the mission, although
his ruling doesn’t appear to have been enforced.443 In 1605, King Philip III of Spain and
Portugal (1578-1621CE) responded to criticisms of both the slave trade and its prohibition,
decreeing that the illegal taking of Japanese slaves remained prohibited whilst the trade of
those legally obtained was permissible.444 African and Asian slaves were an important
resource that allowed the Jesuits to reduce their financial liabilities and constraints on their
low numbers of personnel. Despite the secular rulings and Jesuit Superior General (L.
Praepositus Generalis), Francis Borgia’s (1510-1572CE), 1569 decree demanding that the
Jesuits free all slaves kept by the Society,445 the Japanese perceived the Jesuits to be
involved in the trade of not only foreign, but native slaves. According to the
contemporaneous Japanese source, the Kyūshū godōzaiki まド オ乱:
they bought up several hundred Japanese (man or woman regardless) for the Black
Ships, where they were taken with iron shackles on arms and legs, and thrust down
into the bottom hold, with tortures exceeding those of hell.446
442 Moran, The Japanese and the Jesuits, 106-111. In 1590, Valignano argued that the Portuguese
bore no guilt for the slave trade; rather it was the Japanese who forced their countrymen onto the traders with low prices and solicitations. Elisonas, “Notice,” 166-167.
443 Nelson, “Slavery in Medieval Japan,” 463. 444 Ibid., 464. 445 Borges, The Economics of the Goa Jesuits, 47-48. 446 Quoted in: Elison, Deus Destroyed, 125.
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Valignano banned cattle slaughter and placed restrictions upon their consumption
in 1583, however, it appears that this ruling was ignored by his successors.447 The notice’s
final two injunctions, therefore, appear to reflect the possibility that although the Jesuits
successfully adopted some of the outward manifestations of Japanese customs and modes
of thought, such as etiquette,448 the use of Japanese style architectural styles, and some
dietary requirements, 449 they failed on a fundamental level to acquiesce to Japanese
patterns of behaviour and understanding. Moreover, whilst the Jesuits sought and perhaps
failed to adequately change their behavioural patterns, they demanded that their converts
undergo a complete change in attitude both religiously and secularly.450 Simultaneously,
they conducted theological (and personal) attacks on the Japanese religions and their
adherents which they judged as heathen and pagan, 451 and demanded the Kirishitan
447 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 59-60; Matsuo, “Bunken ni miru Edo Jidai no gyūnikushoku ni tsuite,” 301-
306. 448 Moran, The Japanese and the Jesuits, 134-135. 449 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 58-60. 450 Ibid. 61. 451 Anesaki, “Japanese Criticisms and Refutations of Christianity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries,” 1; Cohen, The Japanese Translations of the Hebrew Bible, 18; Yamato, “Kirishitan jidai saishoki ni okeru Kirisutokyō to Bukkyō no kōshō,” 121-139. One example is Cabral’s May 31st, 1575 letter which attacks Buddhist priests (referred to by the Jesuits as bonzes, bonzos or bonzas) for their obstinacy, their misleading of the people, and their greed. Cabral, “Coppie d’une letter escripte du P. François Gabriel Superieur de la Compagnie du nom de Iesus au Iappon,” 6. In his first letter from Japan, dated November 11th, 1549, Xavier similarly attacks the bonzes and nuns, noting their lust, promiscuity, lax rules, and use of abortion medication. Later in a Letter to the Society in Europe (January 29th, 1552), Xavier describes the bonzes as the Jesuits’ greatest enemies. Coleridge ed., The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, vol. 2, 238-240, 339. Anti-Buddhist material was not limited to inter-Jesuit correspondence, the Jesuits also composed Japanese language anti- Buddhist treatises. A pertinent example is the first part of Myōtei mondō 、 (1605) known as Buppō no shidai ryaku nukigaki . The text is reprinted in: Ebisawa, Buppō no shidai ryaku nukigaki, 103-112. An English summary of its contents are given in: Elison, Deus Destroyed, 442-443. See also: Baskind, “ ‘The Matter of the Zen School’ Fukansai Habian’s Myōtei mondō and His Christian Polemic on Buddhism,” 307-331.
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daimyō dismantle these institutions in their domains. The Jesuits were thereby brought into
conflict with the Japanese religious and political systems. A situation that contributed to
Hideyoshi’s ruling. Accordingly, the decree’s fifth and final item states:
From now on all those who do not disturb Buddhism…may freely travel from the
Kirishitan Country and return.452
Despite all this, the Jesuits’ ability or inability to acquiesce to Japanese manners and
customs does not appear to be a prime factor in the decree’s genesis. The immediate cause
of the decree’s promulgation appears to be the potential, internal political threat posed by
Christianity and the desire to control the daimyō; however, it must also be understood as
the result of wider trends. Nobunaga had ‘established a pattern of aggressive national
rule’;453 many of his policies and the organizational pattern to which he adhered set the
precedent for the policies of his successors.454 As Elison notes, the Jesuits were unable to
accommodate to these organizational and political changes.455 Moreover, Nobunaga’s
campaign against the Ikkō Ikki, marked the beginning of a religious policy which sought to
‘eliminate the threat which organized religion’s competing cadres of loyalty posed to the
452 Quoted in: Elison, Deus Destroyed, 116. 453 Berry, Hideyoshi, 67. 454 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 83; Elison, “The Cross and the Sword: Patterns of Momoyama History,”
68-69. 455 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 83
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regime’456 foreshadowing Hideyoshi and Ieyasu’s anti-Kirishitan legislation.457 Hideyoshi’s
decree was formulated within the context of his own religious policy, through which the
activities of temples were restricted and their independence forfeited.458 On the other hand,
whilst the decree appears to be mostly concerned with internal affairs, it can also be viewed
alongside Hideyoshi’s moves to centralize the management of foreign trade and ban
piracy.459 In exercising control over Christianity, he ensured that the missionaries’ power to
influence trade was weakened and the government’s influence increased. Finally, the
decree can be understood in the context of pre-existent anti-Jesuit sentiment, which had
existed since the mission’s genesis due to their clashes with Buddhists, and is encapsulated
in the decree’s disdain at the Kirishitan led destruction of temples and shrines.460
Elizabeth Berry and Andrew Ross claim that Hideyoshi’s policy sought not to end
Christianity, but acted as a warning and an attempt to address potential issues.461 Contrary
to this, that Hideyoshi confiscated Jesuit property, closed Churches, took over the
administrative control of Nagasaki, Mogi and Urakami (against which fines were levied), and
ordered in a further decree the removal of Christian symbols from the armour and
equipment of Samurai,462 suggests his policy was intended to have wider effects than those
456 Elison, “The Cross and the Sword: Patterns of Momoyama History,” 69. 457 Ibid., 70-72. 458 McMullin, Buddhism and the State in Sixteenth-Century Japan, 238-241. 459 Berry, Hideyoshi, 133-135. 460 Kitagawa, Religion in Japanese History, 144; Elison, Deus Destroyed, 35-36, 116; Elisonas,
“Christianity and the Daimyo,” 309-310. 461 Berry, Hideyoshi, 226; Ross, A Vision Betrayed: The Jesuits in Japan and China, 1542-1742, 76. 462 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan: 1549-1650, 149.
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ascribed to it by Berry and Ross. Valignano’s letter sent from Macau on November 6th, 1588
to Philip I of Portugal (1527-1598CE) also attests to the large material losses inflicted upon
the Church through Hideyoshi’s legislation.463 However, since he was seeking material
assistance for the mission his claims may have been exaggerated. Hideyoshi did not rescind
the decree464 and Valignano continued to fear an intensification of persecution465 pointing
to its potential continuing relevance and validity as law. A letter466 presented to Valignano
in 1591 in his capacity as the Viceroy of India’s ambassador, and drafted for Hideyoshi by
Buddhist priest, Saishō Jōtai (1548-1607CE),467 condemned Christianity through
a comparison of the universality and plurality of East Asian concepts of the divine found in
the Three Teachings (Shinto, Confucianism, and Buddhism) with the particularity of
European concepts.468 The letter threatened the expulsion of the Bateren 469
(Jesuits) should they seek to proselytize.470 It is clear, therefore, that the policy was not a
mere inconsequential blip in Hideyoshi’s career. The failure to forcibly exile the missionaries
463 Valignano, “Fr. A. Valignano S. J., Visitor, to Philip I, King of Portugal, Macao, November 6, 1588,”
836. 464 Timon Screech notes that Bishop of Funai (1592-1598), Pedro Martins’s (1542-1598), claim that
Hideyoshi had apologized for his decrees in a personal conversation. Screech, “The English and the Control of Christianity in the Early Edo Period,” 7.
465 Valignano, “Fr. A. Valignano S. J., Visitor, to Fr. Cl. Acquaviva S. J., General, Nagasaki, February 15, 1592,” 773.
466 Japanese version in: Kuwata, Toyotomi Hideyoshi kenkyū, 253-255. English translation in: Elisonas, “Letter to the Viceroy of India,” 168-171.
467 Sometimes rendered Seishō Shōtai. 468 Elisonas, “Letter to the Viceroy of India,” 169-170. 469 Also written . 470 Elisonas, “Letter to the Viceroy of India,” 171.
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as outlined in the decree,471 continued Jesuit power in Nagasaki,472 and occasional Toyotomi
support for the missionaries,473 point to Hideyoshi’s pragmatism and the fact that he had
other more pressing focuses; Japan’s unification, war with Korea and his succession.474
Moreover, it was not possible for the Jesuits to enter exile in accordance with the decree as
no ship was due to leave Japan within twenty days of its ratification.475 Once a ship was
ready for this purpose, Coelho persuaded Hideyoshi that the ship was unable to take so
many passengers.476 Fears that persecuting the missionaries would invite military action
against Japan may have also contributed to the lax enforcement of the decree.477 In any
case, whilst the legislation appears to have had short-term negative material consequences
on the Church, the 1591 Annual Letter of the Province of India claims that some 21,000
converts were made in Japan between October 1589 and October 1590,478 suggesting that
the legislation had little influence on conversion.
In 1596, a Spanish ship, the San Felipe, wrecked off the coast of Shikoku .479
Hideyoshi’s agent Mashita Nagamori (1545-1615CE)480 and Tosa daimyō
471 The only to leave were three iruman (P. irmãos - Jesuit brothers) who were sent to
Macau for ordination, however they later returned. Elison, Deus Destroyed, 133. 472 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 149, 151. 473 Berry, Hideyoshi, 92-93. 474 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 59; Berry, Hideyoshi, 226-227;
Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” 365. 475 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 148; Elison, Deus Destroyed, 133. 476 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 148; Elison, Deus Destroyed, 133. 477 Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, vol. 2, 81. 478 Martins, “Annual Letter of the Province of India by Fr. Pedro Martins S. J., Provincial, Goa,
November 30, 1591,” 711. 479 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 136. 480 Including his title: Mashita Uemon no Jō Nagamori .
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Chōsokabe Motochika (1539-1599CE) issued orders for the cargo to be
confiscated. 481 The chain of events which followed are marked by a series of Jesuit-
Franciscans ‘aspersions, counter-claims and philippics’ 482 which have transmogrified
historical reality so that at times the events cannot be clearly reconstructed beyond
speculation.483 Jesuit accounts claimed that the ship’s pilot, Francisco de Olandía, had in
anger boasted to Mashita about Spanish conquest and colonization, and the dispatch of
missionaries as forerunners to invasion, which was subsequently reported to Hideyoshi.484
The Franciscans and Spaniards argued that the Portuguese and Jesuits disseminated such
rumours to Mashita prior to his interview of the pilot.485 Elison believes that the Franciscan
account is more likely to be true, but notes that this cannot be established with certainty.486
Other scholars have favoured the Portuguese-Jesuit account; Timon Screech for instance
argues that the building of an extravagant Franciscan Church in Kyoto was part of the
provocation for Hideyoshi’s response, 487 whereas Boxer argues that the Franciscans
exacerbated the situation by conducting themselves as if the 1587 decree did not exist.488
One thing is clear, as a result Hideyoshi crucified twenty-six men, now known as the
“Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan” (Nihon Nijūroku Seijin ） 三 ), on the 19th of the
481 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 136. 482 Ibid. 483 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 60. Some lengthy quotations of
primary sources are given in: Okada, Kirishitan�Bateren, 105-114. 484 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 138. 485 Ibid., 138-139. 486 Ibid., 139. 487 Screech, “The English and the Control of Christianity in the Early Edo Period,” 7. 488 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 162.
119
12th month of Keichō 1 (1597) in Nagasaki, amongst whom were 6 Franciscans, 3
Jesuits and 17 lay converts.489 This marked the temporary end of Franciscan presence in
Japan,490 but did not result in wide scale anti-Kirishitan persecution due to Hideyoshi’s
preoccupation with ongoing war in Korea and his succession.491 Nevertheless, it was the
first persecution ordered by the centralized government to be marked by the spilling of
Kirishitan and missionary blood.492 It led to the humbling of the Jesuits;493 25 fled the
country, and 120 churches were destroyed.494 The event marked the end of the first half of
the Kirishitan Century with a shift in context that changed the nature of the mission. Elison
writes:
[Japanese Christianity’s] problem after 1597 [was] no longer that of acceptance but
of survival.495
489 Yamamoto, Nijūroku Seijin junkyō shiwa; Matsuda, “Nihon Nijūroku Seijin no jinmei ni tsuite,” 3-
39; Kataoka, “Saigo no michi,” 87-105; Uyttenbroeck and Schneider, The Twenty-Six Martyrs of Japan: Historical Background Authentic Biographical Stories; Nihon 26 Seijin Junkyō 400 Nensai in Kyōto Kinenshi Henshū Iinkai ed., Michi ga Kyōto kara: Nihon 26 seijin junkyō 400 nensai in Kyōto. Refer also to the contemporaneous record of Louis Fróis: Fróis, Relatione dela gloriosa morte di XXVI. Posti in croce per comandamenta del Re di Giappone, alli 5. di Febraio 1597. de quali sei furno Religiosi di San Francesco, tre della Compagnia di Giesù, et dicesette Christiani Giapponesi.
490 Tsuzukibashi, Nihon Furanshisukokaishi nenpyō, 18-19. 491 Berry, Hideyoshi, 226-227; Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” 365. 492 Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” 365. Persecution on a local scale had existed since the
mission’s inception. Xavier’s Letter to the Society at Goa (July 1551) and Letter to the Society in Europe (January 29th, 1552) for instance note that the bonzes in Kagoshima had persuaded the local daimyō, Shimazu Takahisa へ 交 (1514-1571CE), to forbid conversion to Christianity under the punishment of death during the first year of the mission. This was also influenced by the arrival of Portuguese traders in Hirado rather than Kagoshima. Coleridge ed., The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, vol. 2, 295-296, 335; Cieslik, Kirishitan shikō, 33-34.
493 Berry, Hideyoshi, 227. 494 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 170. 495 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 140.
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The Tokugawa
Following Hideyoshi’s death in 1598, the Franciscans returned to Japan,496 and anti-
Kirishitan persecution continued sporadically. For example, between 1603 and 1609,
Kirishitan fled Higo where Katō Kiyomasa (1561-1611CE) persecuted several
Kirishitan retainers following their refusal to apostatize.497 Under Kiyomasa, the Kirishitan
population in his domain dropped from 80,000 to 20,000. 498 Similarly, in 1609 three
Kirishitan were put to death on the island of Ikitsuki as a warning and example to the
communities there.499 Whilst localized anti-Kirishitan persecution was permitted under the
rule of Tokugawa Ieyasu following his seizure and consolidation of power, 500 like his
predecessors he initially showed favour to the Jesuits, 501 and even permitted the
Dominicans and Augustinians to enter the mission field.502 He also gave the influential Jesuit
João Rodrigues a level of authority over the governance of Nagasaki, 503 although
496 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 170-171. 497 Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 212-226. 498 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 412, n. 59. 499 They were Gaspar Nishi and his family. Turnbull, “The Veneration of the Martyrs of
Ikitsuki (1609-1545) by the Japanese Hidden Christians,” 301; Turnbull, The Kakure Kirishitan of Japan, 32-34; Matsumoto, Ikitsuki no Kirishitan, 3; Cieslik, “Junkyōsha ichizoku� Ikitsuki no Nishika,” 124-127; Nihon Katorikku Shikyō Kyōgikai - Ressei Reppuku Tokubetsu Iinkai ed., Petoro Kibe to 187 Junkyōsha, 18-20.
500 For an account of Ieyasu’s rise to power, see: Sadler, Shogun; Sadler, The Maker of Modern Japan; Totman, Tokugawa Ieyasu: Shogun; Totman, Politics in the Tokugawa Bakufu: 1600-1843, 8-31.
501 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 179-183. 502 Hesselink, The Dream of a Christian Nagasaki, 16. 503 Elisonas, “Nagasaki: The Early Years of an Early Modern Japanese City,” 85.
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Rodrigues’s position and the incorporation of Ōmura lands into the city in 1605 led to the
aforementioned breakdown in relations between the Jesuits and Ōmura Yoshiaki.504
The “resurgence” and strengthening of anti-Kirishitan policy under the retired
Ieyasu and his successor, Hidetada ビ (1579-1632CE),505 who ruled from 1605-1623,506
followed a governmental scandal. Kirishitan daimyō Arima Harunobu (1567-
1612CE)507 bribed Okamoto Daihachi び , a senior Kirishitan in the service of one of
Ieyasu’s councillors, in hopes of acquiring additional lands.508 To accomplish this Okamoto
provided Harunobu with forged documents.509 In 1612, the conspiracy was exposed, and
Okamoto was executed, but not before he could accuse Harunobu of conspiracy to murder
the Nagasaki bugyō ぺ (administrator of Nagasaki).510 Harunobu forfeited his fief
and was executed. His son, Naozumi (1586-1641CE),511 apostatized and was given
charge of his father’s domain in Hizen and the ensuing anti-Kirishitan persecutions there.512
504 Ibid.; Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 186; Cieslik, “Early Missionaries in Japan 7, Father Joao
Rodriguez (1561-1632): ‘The Interpreter,’” 10. 505 Biographies include: Kawai, Nidai Shōgun Tokugawa Hidetada: nintai suru bonjin no seikō
tetsugaku; Tobe, Tokugawa Hidetada, 2 vols; Fukuda, Tokugawa Hidetada: Gō ga sasaeta nidaime Shōgun; Ōwada, Tokugawa Hidetada: “bonyō na nidaime” no kōseki.
506 Ieyasu retained much of his power in his role as Ōgosho ド (retired Shogun). Frédéric, “Tokugawa Hidetada,” 976.
507 For biographical details, see: Cieslik, Kirishitan shikō, 58-70; Yūki, Kirishitan ni natta daimyō, 59- 66, 94-97.
508 Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” 366. 509 Ibid. 510 Ibid. 511 For biographical details, see: Yūki, Kirishitan ni natta daimyō, 66-72, 105-110. 512 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 314-315, 328-330; Ebisawa, Nihon Kirishitanshi, 307;
Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” 366-377. On the early persecutions in Arima, see: Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 187-194; Kanda, Shimabara no ran, 90-93. Nihon Katorikku Shikyō Kyōgikai - Ressei Reppuku Tokubetsu Iinkai ed., Petoro Kibe to 187 Junkyōsha, 21-23.
122
With Harunobu’s execution and Naozumi’s apostasy, there were no prominent Kirishitan
daimyō left in Japan.513 During the fallout Ieyasu issued an injunction514 banning Christianity,
however, it was not enforced vigorously 515 and failed to specify the punishment for
practice.516 The injunction also prohibited certain practices imported by the Portuguese
including smoking, and like Hideyoshi’s 1587 decree placed restrictions on animal
slaughter.517 The Kirishitan in Ieyasu’s service were made to apostatize or were exiled.518
The Franciscan Churches in Kansai and Kanto (Kantō ) were closed, but the Jesuit
institutions were spared due to the intercession of daimyō and Kyōto Shoshidai
(governor of Kyoto), Itakura Katsushige (1545-1624CE).519
The Okamoto incident was not the sole impetus behind the “resumption” of
persecution by the central government. The Jesuits were no longer the only group able to
act as intermediaries in Portuguese-Japanese trade; merchants had taken Japanese wives
and learnt Japanese, and a number of Japanese had acquired Portuguese skills.520 The
importance of Portuguese trade had also declined.521 The Dutch had arrived in 1600,
513 Boxer, “The Affair of the ‘Madre de Deus’ (A Chapter in the History of the Portuguese in Japan),”
50, n. 1. 514 Japanese text reprinted in: Ebisawa, Nihon Kirishitanshi, 307. Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi,
187. Shimizu Hirokazu notes that according to the Tōshōgū Gojikki きドお乱 (1843) anti-Kirishitan legislation began in 1611, however no other sources refer to this, and it is generally agreed that Ieyasu’s first piece of anti-Kirishitan legislation was the 1612 injunction. Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 97-98.
515 Screech, “The English and the Control of Christianity in the Early Edo Period,” 8. 516 Ebisawa, Nihon Kirishitanshi, 307. 517 Screech, “The English and the Control of Christianity in the Early Edo Period,” 8. 518 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 315; Ebisawa, Nihon Kirishitanshi, 307; Kataoka, Nihon
Kirishitan junkyōshi, 185. 519 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 317. 520 Ibid., 308. 521 Ibid.
123
although voyages were uncommon until their establishment of the Hirado ん trading post
in 1609.522 The ship that brought the Dutch in 1600 was piloted by an Englishman, William
Adams (1564-1620),523 who was instrumental in establishing Anglo-Japanese Trade through
the creation of the English East India Company trading station at Hirado in 1613.524 In 1609,
two Spanish ships travelling from the Philippines to Mexico were forced to stop in Japan.525
This resulted in the reestablishment of trade between the Spanish Philippines and Japan.526
The Japanese had also expanded their overseas trade efforts, through which tensions with
the Portuguese emerged. In 1608, a junk dispatched to Champa (Chanpakoku
/Chanpa Ōkoku ) stopped at Macau in order to avoid the monsoon season.527
However, numerous brawls, disputes and skirmishes with the residents led the Captain-
Major of Macau, André Pessoa, and his forces to besiege the residences of the crew and the
Japanese residents who supported them, imprisoning those who surrendered, and killing
those who refused.528 Pessoa travelled to Japan the following year abroad the Madre de
522 Boxer, “The Affair of the ‘Madre de Deus’ (A Chapter in the History of the Portuguese in Japan),”
6-7, 39-42; Matsūra Shiryō Hakubutsukan ed., Shito Hirado - nenhyō to shidan -, 94-97; Goodman, Japan and the Dutch 1600-1853, 9-10; Nagazumi “Orandajin ga mita Nihon” 338-355. On Dutch expansion in Asia prior to their arrival in Japan, see: Cieslik and Ōta, Kirishitan, 36-38.
523 Biographies include: Corr, Adams the Pilot: The Life and Times of Captain William Adams: 1564- 1620; Farrington, The English Factory in Japan, 1613-1623, 2 vols.
524 Screech, “The English and the Control of Christianity in the Early Edo Period,” 4; Matsūra Shiryō Hakubutsukan ed., Shito Hirado, 97-98; Hiradoshi Shihensan Iinkai ed., Daikōkaijidai no bōkenshatachi, 89- 130. On the establishment of the trading post, see: Saris, “The Voyage of Captaine Saris in the Cloave, to the Ile of Japan,” 379.
525 Boxer, “The Affair of the ‘Madre de Deus’ (A Chapter in the History of the Portuguese in Japan),” 48.
526 Ibid., 49. 527 Ibid., 37. 528 Ibid., 38; Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 174-175.
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Deus (also known as the Nossa Senhora da Graça). 529 Arima Harunobu requested
permission to seize the ship as revenge for the insult in Macau, however, Ieyasu did not
permit the attack until he was confirmed in the knowledge that the Dutch and Spanish could
supply Japan, should Portuguese trade cease as a result.530 Harunobu and his forces sank
the fleeing Madre de Deus on the 12th of the 12th month of Keichō 14 (1610), killing the
Captain-Major in the process.531 Following the event João Rodrigues was exiled to Macau.532
Trade relations were restored after a Macanese embassy in 1611, partially due to Ieyasu’s
realization that the Dutch and Spanish couldn’t fulfil Japan’s trade needs.533 Boxer believes
that the event’s repercussions ended with this resumption of trade,534 however, Ieyasu’s
ability to act against the Portuguese without severe repercussions, doubtlessly influenced
his decision to issue the injunction following the Okamoto incident in 1612. In 1611 and
1612, tensions with the Spanish also emerged following the arrival of Spanish navigator,
Sebastián Vizcaíno (1548-1624CE), who came to survey the Japanese coast. 535 Adams
warned that this was likely a reconnaissance mission for a future Spanish invasion.536 The
529 Boxer, “The Affair of the ‘Madre de Deus’ (A Chapter in the History of the Portuguese in Japan),”
41. 530 Ibid., 48-49. 531 Ibid., 49-53. Pierre François-Xavier de Charlevoix’s account found in his Histoire du Japon (1754)
is included as an appendix to Boxer’s paper, see pages: 66-74. 532 Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 178-180 533 Boxer, “The Affair of the ‘Madre de Deus’ (A Chapter in the History of the Portuguese in Japan),”
55-59. 534 Ibid., 61. Letters from Japanese and Portuguese sources leading up to this resumption in trade are
translated in: Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 428-434. 535 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 312. 536 Ibid.
125
situation was aggravated by Vizcaíno’s refusal to conform to Japanese etiquette, and his
petitions for the free entry of the Franciscans and the expulsion of the Dutch.537
By 1613, Adams (already a close confidant of Ieyasu) had filled the place left by
Rodrigues at court, helping to foster anti-Catholic opinions and fears of a potential Christian
fifth column.538 Meanwhile, Kirishitan scandals continued to rock the government. After the
death of bureaucrat and daimyō, Ōkubo Nagayasu , in 1613, it came to light
that in his role overseeing gold and silver production he had falsified the accounts to
procure personal profit.539 Furthermore, he was accused of plotting with missionaries to
dispatch a force to aid Kirishitan against the bakufu. 540 Consequently, his sons were
executed or ordered to commit suicide, and a number of his relatives and associates
implicated in the crime were punished by extension.541 In the same year, a Kirishitan called
Jirobee 542 was caught illegally purchasing silver and was crucified for the crime.543
537 Ibid., 313. 538 Ibid., 308-310, 312-313; Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 62;
Cieslik and Ōta, Kirishitan, 196-197. Anti-Catholic sentiment amongst the English was mirrored by anti- Protestant sentiment amongst the missionaries. Richard Cocks (1566-1624), the head of the British East India Company in Hirado, for instance notes the spread of anti-English sentiment amongst Kirishitan converts by the missionaries. Thompson ed., Diary of Richard Cocks, Cape-Merchant in the English Factory in Japan, 1615- 1622, with Correspondence, vol. 1, 139-140.
539 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 315-316. 540 Ibid., 316. 541 Guilt by association was based on the principals of enza オ (extending complicity to family
members) and renza オ (extending complicity to a larger social group i.e. a village). Sansom, A History of Japan, vol. 3, 1615-1867, 12-13; Henderson, “The Evolution of Tokugawa Law,” 223; Deal, Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan, 102.
542 Sometimes romanised Jirobioye. 543 Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 198; Murdoch with Yamagata, A History of Japan, vol. 2, 501,
n. 25.
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Nagasaki bugyō, Hasegawa Fujihiro ぽ シ,544 petitioned the bakufu noting the
dangers of Christianity with reference to the Okamoto and Jirobee incidents.545 The petition
alongside mass Kirishitan demonstrations during the persecutions in Arima seems ‘to have
disposed of any hesitations which Ieyasu may still have felt.’546
On the 19th day of the 12th month of Keichō 18 (1614), Ieyasu began preparing a new
law to expel the bateren. He summoned Konchiin Sūden べ ,547 who drafted
important bakufu documents, to Edo , and asked him to prepare the text, approving it
the next day and forwarding it to Hidetada for his seal.548 The result was the Bateren tsuihō
no fumi 今 also called the Hai Kirishitan bun .549 It stated:
[The Kirishitan] recklessly desire to spread a pernicious doctrine, confound true
religion, change the governmental authority of this realm, and make it their own
possession...the Bateren, contravene the aforesaid governmental regimen, traduce
the Way of the Gods, calumniate the True Law, derange righteous and debase
544 Also known by his title Sahyōe む . 545 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 316-317. 546 Ibid., 317; Ross, A Vision Betrayed, 1542-1742, 94. 547 Also known as Ishin Sūden ネべ . 548 Screech, “The English and the Control of Christianity in the Early Edo Period,” 8. 549 Japanese text in: Ikoku Nikki Kankōkai ed., Ikoku nikki: Konchiin Sūden gaikō monjō shūsei: Eiinbon,
33-34; Ebisawa ed., “Hai Kirishitan bun,” 419-421; Ebisawa, Cieslik, Doi, and Ōtsuka eds., Kirishitan sho: Haiya sho, 451-452. English translation in: Elisonas, “Statement on the Expulsion of the Bateren,” 171-174. Screech notes that the circulation of legal documents was uncommon, unlike traditional legal documents it was written in the discursive language of kanbun , and was accompanied by a framework of enforcement. As such Screech argues that the edict offered a new statement of thinking, a manifesto. Screech, “The English and the Control of Christianity in the Early Edo Period,” 9.
127
goodness...If they are not banned immediately, the state will be sure to suffer grief
in the future. Indeed, unless they are checked, those in charge of enforcing the
ordinances shall themselves become the targets of the punishment of Heaven. So
purge Japan of them! Expel them quickly without giving them an inch of land to
grasp, a foot of ground to stand on! And if any dare to resist these orders, they shall
be executed.550
Reflecting its authorship the majority of the text concerns Shinto, Confucianism and
Buddhism,551 and provides a theological justification for banning Christianity, making it the
enemy of both the state, and according to the text’s rhetoric, the mutually coexistent and
fundamentally unified Japanese religions (Sankyō ichiron ). 552 According to
Screech, the text’s theological concerns illustrate one of its prime functions, not the ban of
Christianity, but the provision of ‘a theorization of the sacred life of the state’553 with which
Christianity was incompatible. This theological theorization of nation (shinkoku shisō
プラ) was grounded in political concerns. It allowed the Tokugawa to:
550 Elisonas, “Statement on the Expulsion of the Bateren,” 173-174. 551 Elisonas argues that the edict resembles the argument produced for Hideyoshi by Saishō Jōtai in
his “Letter to the Viceroy of India” however whilst similarities exist (Jōtai and Sūden were contemporaries of the same school), the concepts present in the edict had undergone a great deal of development. Elisonas, “Statement on the Expulsion of the Bateren,” 172; Ebisawa, Kirishitan nanban bungaku nyūmon, 253-256.
552 Guillaume, “Misdirected Understandings: Narrative Matrices in the Japanese Politics of Alterity Toward the West,” 99. On the use of sankyō ichiron in the text, see: Ebisawa, Kirishitan nanban bungaku nyūmon, 253-256; Hazama, “Nihon oyobi Chūgoku ni okeru Iezusukai no fukyō hōsaku: Varinyāno no ‘Tekiō Shugi’ o megutte,” 63-65.
553 Screech, “The English and the Control of Christianity in the Early Edo Period,” 9.
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develop a more complete sense of belonging to a special, orderly, harmonious place,
unified under one ruler…[and] provided grounds on which a conception of a
centralized bureaucratic state…became possible, through the development of a
sense of within and without.554
Shinkoku shisō contrasted Japan’s relations with East Asia which were acceptable,
and her relations with Europe which were best controlled.555 It served as a framework
through which the Other, and therefore Christianity could be understood.556 In affirming
Japan’s distinctiveness, it illustrated the need to defend this distinctiveness against
Christianity.557 Shinkoku shisō affirmed that lord-vassal relationships were divine because
the oaths of fealty were sworn before the gods and Buddhas.558 Foreign deities could not
be allowed to interfere in this divine covenant.559 The development of such a concept
allowed the Tokugawa to achieve:
554 Guillaume, “Misdirected Understandings: Narrative Matrices in the Japanese Politics of Alterity
Toward the West,” 95-96. 555 Ibid., 96. 556 Ibid., 96-97. 557 Hur, Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan: Buddhism, Anti-Christianity, and the Danka
System, 41, 43-47. 558 Ibid., 41-42. 559 Ibid., 42.
129
a tightly knit, hierarchical social-religious-political organism, a form of “immanental
theocracy” supported by subservient ecclesiastical institutions.560
Shinkoku shisō placed Shinto, Buddhism and Confucianism at the centre of Japanese life,
but the edict which functioned as a more general means to centralize the control of religion,
marked only the genesis of its development. The edict captures a moment in the early
development of the Tokugawa’s use of shinkoku shisō, however, the creation of a “national
theology” is a later phenomenon that drew upon multiple factors including Ieyasu’s
instatement as a kami .561 The edict should be understood as part of a wider policy
developed by Ieyasu that sought to create a system by which religious, philosophical and
ethical systems upheld and cooperated with the ‘objective of establishing a hierarchically
controlled social political organism’562 whereas systems which did not, needed to be purged.
Whilst the edict was spurred by a series of scandals and functioned to control
religion through the ban of Christianity, it was motivated primarily by political concerns. The
Kirishitan scandals and growing tensions between Japan and the Iberian nations illustrated
to the bakufu that the bateren provided an alternative locus of power, which led their
followers to subvert central authority. This realization was fanned by Dutch and English
560 Kitagawa, On Understanding Japanese Religion, 77. 561 Williams, “Religion in Early Modern Japan,” 187; Gerhart, The Eyes of Power: Art and Early
Tokugawa Authority, 107-140; Totman, Politics in the Tokugawa Bakufu, 243-245; Lehmann, The Roots of Modern Japan, 113-114; Boot, “The death of a shogun: deification in early modern Japan,” 144–166; Breen and Teeuwen, A New History of Shinto, 52-65.
562 Kitagawa, On Understanding Japanese Religion, 77.
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warnings of the Iberian threat, as well as the Spanish and Portuguese attempts to implicate
each other in such conspiracies.563 Unlike previous policy the edict functioned effectively,
leading to the Jesuits’ expulsion, the proscription of Christianity and its promulgation, and
the persecution and martyrdom of those who refused to comply.564 Like Hideyoshi’s policy,
the edict functioned as an internal policy attempting to bring control over a potentially
uncontrollable element of Japanese society, however, under Hidetada and Iemitsu く
(1604-1651CE)565 it developed as foreign policy also. Like their immediate predecessors,
the power of the Tokugawa was based on the tradition of warrior chieftains, which dictated
that rivals be destroyed until they could effectively control affairs and secure family
interests.566
The edict was circulated in Kansai’s major cities in early 1614.567 Kansai’s churches
were destroyed and the resident Jesuits and Franciscans (31 in total) were sent to
Nagasaki.568 Most Kirishitan in the area chose to apostatize.569 The Jesuits, who were
required to provide a register of all staff in Kansai, provided a false account in order that
some might remain to covertly assist Kirishitan there.570 Apostates (korobi Kirishitan
563 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 310-312. 564 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 61-66; Boxer, The Christian
Century in Japan, 317. 565 Biographies include: Fujii, Tokugawa Iemitsu; Yamaoka, Tokugawa Iemitsu, 4 vols. 566 Totman, Politics in the Tokugawa Bakufu, 236. 567 Screech, “The English and the Control of Christianity in the Early Edo Period,” 9. 568 Ibid. 569 Ibid. 570 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 319-320.
131
)571 were forced to produce certificates of temple registration (korobi Kirishitan
terauke shōmon せ予 ) as evidence of their conversion to Buddhism.572
The missionary personnel, both European and Japanese, were gathered in Nagasaki
alongside leading Kirishitan including Takayama Ukon, who had also received their
extradition orders.573 Prior to disembarking, the missionaries moved and reburied the dead,
and removed religious items from their institutions, which were repossessed by Japanese
officials in late 1614.574 Despite this, the authorities destroyed known Kirishitan gravesites
and confiscated religious items and artefacts.575 Most missionary personnel were exiled,
those who managed to remain hidden in Japan numbered 47, including 27 Jesuits,576 7
Franciscans, 7 Dominicans, 1 Augustinian, and 5 secular clergy, almost 30% of their previous
number.577 Approximately 200578 native lay catechists (dōjuku け)579 were able to remain
571 This term referred to ordinary believers who had apostatized. The terms korobi bateren
and korobi iruman referred to apostate priests and brothers respectively. Shinmura ed., Kōjien, 1068.
572 Tamamuro, “The Development of the Temple-Parishioner System,” 16. 573 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 320. 574 Ibid., 327. Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 203-211. 575 Tamamuro, “The Development of the Temple-Parishioner System,” 16-17. 576 18 were priests and 9 were iruman. Takase, Kirishitan jidai no bunka to shosō, 39. 577 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 322, 327. Miyazaki’s numbers differ, he notes that 26 Jesuits,
6 Franciscans, 7 Dominicans, and 1 Augustinian remained in Japan. Over 350 were exiled including prominent Kirishitan and their families. Miyazaki, “Roman Catholic Mission in Pre-Modern Japan,” 12.
578 Boxer states more than 100 remained behind, but also notes that figures are not given in any sources. The calculation here is based on the number of lay catechists in 1612 (250) and the numbers who were exiled in 1614, 15 to Manila and 50 to Macau. The figure is problematic, as the number of lay catechists would have changed between 1612 and 1614. There would be increases through recruitment, but also decreases through the pre-1614 persecutions. For instance, whilst there were 59 lay catechists in Arima in 1612, this number could have decreased through the persecutions there. Ross therefore argues that the numbers of native missionary personnel who remained are unknown. For figures see: Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 322, 327-328; Ross, A Vision Betrayed, 96.
579 The term and the position were modelled on Buddhist positions such as jisha and the young helpers of Buddhist clergy. Nosco, “Secrecy and Transmission of Tradition: Issues in the Study of the
132
due to their ability to conceal themselves amongst the native population.580 Moreover, the
proscription meant that the remnant missionary personnel were unable to travel or preach
openly.581 Some exiled Kirishitan and those fleeing later persecutions joined expatriate
Japanese communities in South East Asia causing alarm amongst officials who feared that
they may rally behind a former Toyotomi supporter or another form of opposition.582
Internal exile also took place; 71 noble Kirishitan were banished to northern Japan, although
some moved voluntarily rather than apostatize. 583 The severity of persecution varied
according to domain.584 In Kokura domain (Kokura han ) 2047 Kirishitan were
arrested.585 However, some tozama daimyō 586 such as Date Masamune
(1567-1636CE) in Sendai domain (Sendai han ) did not instate the law.587 Of the
martyrs for whom details are known 63 Japanese were martyred that year, however, such
a figure does not include those who died in prison or through torture, and therefore
represents an absolute minimum.588
‘Underground’ Christians,” 5-6; Moriwaki, “Kirishitan ‘dōjuku’ ron: ‘sei’ to ‘zoku’ ni ikita Nihonjin,” 246; Moran, The Japanese and the Jesuits, 56; Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 150-151.
580 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 327. 581 Cieslik, “The Great Martyrdom in Edo 1623: Its causes, Course, Consequences,” 4. 582 Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, 74. 583 Cieslik, “The Great Martyrdom in Edo 1623: Its causes, Course, Consequences,” 3; Ross, A Vision
Betrayed, 96. 584 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 331. 585 Tamamuro, “The Development of the Temple-Parishioner System,” 16. 586 Tozama daimyō were those daimyō who had risen independently of Ieyasu. They retained some
independence. Tsuji and Bolitho, “Politics in the eighteenth century,” 430; Hesselink, Prisoners from Nambu: Reality and Make-Believe in Seventeenth Century Japanese Diplomacy, 9; Totman, Politics in the Tokugawa Bakufu, 33; Scalapino, Democracy and the Party Movement in Prewar Japan: The Failure of the First Attempt, 8-9.
587 Persecution in Sendai didn’t begin until 1620. Takagi, Tōhoku no Kirishitan junkyōchi o yuku, 174; Urakawa, Tōhoku Kirishitanshi, 114-222.
588 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 334, 448.
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In 1614, as a result of dissatisfaction amongst former Toyotomi vassals,589 an anti-
Tokugawa coalition headed by Hideyoshi’s heir, Toyotomi Hideyori 伯 (1593-
1615CE), was formed.590 Daimyō defeated by Ieyasu when he unified the country in 1600
and numerous rōnin and Kirishitan, amassed a force of 90,000 men at Osaka Castle
(Ōsaka jō ).591 The Kirishitan bore crosses and Christian insignia on their banners.592
Three Franciscans, two Jesuits, and two native clergy were also present. 593 Ieyasu
responded with a force of approximately 180,000 men, and a peace was negotiated in early
1615.594 Hideyori amassed his forces a second time.595 The rebellion was crushed in mid-
1615, and Hideyori committed suicide.596 The Siege of Osaka (Ōsaka no Jin ) and
589 Ieyasu had denied giving Hideyori’s retainers court status, and then refused to allow the court to
intercede in this matter. Naohiro with Jansen, “Shogun and Tennō,” 261. Several letters recording the downward spiral in Ieyasu and Hideyori’s relations, and Hideyori’s request of military assistance from Shimazu Tadatsune へ ビペ (1576-1638CE, also known as Iehisa く ) are translated in Sources of Japanese Tradition, Volume Two: 1600 to 2000, see: Boot “Account of Tokugawa,” 20-21; Boot “Letter from Honda Masazumi and Konchiin Sūden to Katagiri Katsumoto,” 21-22; Boot “Letter from Toyotomi Hideyori to Shimazu Iehisa,” 22. The Japanese texts of the respective documents are found in: Kuroita ed. Tokugawa jikki, vol. 1, 331-332; Tōkyō Daigaku Shiryō Hensanjo ed., Dai Nihon shiryō, vol. 12, part 14, 457; Kagoshimaken Ishin Shiryō Hensanjo ed., Kyūki zatsuroku, kōhen, vol. 4, 550.
590 Davis, Besieged: 100 Great Sieges from Jericho to Sarajevo, 125. On the events of the rebellion, see: Turnbull, Osaka 1615: The Last Battle of the Samurai.
591 Davis, Besieged, 125. Streich, “Osaka Castle, Battle of (1614-1615),” 302. 592 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 331. 593 Ibid. 594 Davis, Besieged, 125, 127; Streich, “Osaka Castle, Battle of (1614-1615),” 302. 595 Davis, Besieged, 127. 596 Ibid., 127-128; Streich, “Osaka Castle, Battle of (1614-1615),” 302; Murdoch with Yamagata, A
History of Japan, vol. 2, 550.
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consequential rapid changes to legislation,597 gave a short respite to the Kirishitan, and all
but one clergyman present at the castle escaped.598
After the 1614 edict, anti-Kirishitan decrees were reissued successively on an almost
yearly basis.599 Following Ieyasu’s death, and likely influenced by the presence of priests at
the Siege of Osaka,600 Hidetada issued a decree (the nikō seigen rei /minato
seigen rei )601 in 1616, strengthening former anti-Kirishitan measures. Hiding or
assisting Kirishitan was made punishable under the penalty of death. 602 Hidetada’s decree
also banned foreigners from staying in major cities,603 prohibited the Kyushu daimyō from
conducting trade within their domains,604 and confined foreign trade to Nagasaki and
Hirado.605 This illustrates an evolution in anti-Kirishitan policy, whereby it became not only
a matter of internal affairs, but also had an impact on and relation to trade and foreign
597 The rapid legislative changes of 1615 included Buke shohatto く事 , which regulated the
conduct of warriors and their households, Kinchū narabi ni kuge shohatto く事 , which regulated the conduct of the emperor and nobility, and subordinated the Buddhist hierarchy to the court, and the Ikkoku ichijō rei , which reduced the number of castles to one per province. English translations are found in: Boot “Code for the Warrior Households (Buke Shohatto),” 12-14; Boot “Code for the Imperial Court and Court Nobility (Kinchū Narabi ni Kuge Shohatto),” 14-18. The Japanese texts are found in: Tōkyō Daigaku Shiryō Hensanjo ed., Dai Nihon shiryō, vol. 12, part 22, 19-22, 161-164. On the Ikkoku ichijō rei, see: Takayanagi, “Genna ikkoku ichijō rei,” 863-888; Mitchelhill, Castles of the Samuria: Power and Beauty, 67.
598 Boxer and Ross claim that all lived and could go free, however, Elison notes that native priest Tōan Francisco was killed during the siege, and Murdoch argues that the reason the other priests lived was their escape rather than the authorities’ leniency. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 330-331; Ross, A Vision Betrayed, 96; Elison, Deus Destroyed, 161; Murdoch with Yamagata, A History of Japan, vol. 2, 542, n. 18.
599 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 74. 600 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 332. 601 Partial Japanese texts are included in: Ebisawa, Nihon Kirishitanshi, 315; Zhāng, “Tokugawa Ieyasu
no Sunpu gaikōtaiksei: Sunpu no kōsō ni tsuite,” 205. See also: Cieslik and Ōta, Kirishitan, 207-208. 602 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 332; Kitagawa, Religion in Japanese History, 147; Ross, A
Vision Betrayed, 97. 603 Kamstra, “Kakure Kirishitan: The Hidden or Secret Christians of Nagasaki,” 141. 604 Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, 78; Ebisawa, Nihon Kirishitanshi, 315. 605 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 332.
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relations.606 Whilst correspondence between Ieyasu and the Spanish Governor-General of
Manilla included references to Christianity, a legal framework seeking to control both trade
and the Kirishitan had not previously been formulated.607
The control and centralization of trade began under Hideyoshi who issued passes
(shuinjō ) to those who wished to trade with Japan.608 The shuinsen system
sought to limit piracy, and was adopted by Ieyasu in 1601 allowing the bakufu to directly
control all trade in Japan and limit the revenue of the Kyushu daimyō.609 Like Hideyoshi,
Ieyasu also employed bugyō to administer Nagasaki.610 Moreover, he took direct
control of Japan’s commercial centres.611 In 1604, he created the itowappu (P.
Pancada), a system for the control of the trade of raw silk with the Portuguese, which
established fixed prices and gave Japanese merchants a monopoly to purchase raw silk.612
Through the inclusion of anti-Kirishitan injunctions in an edict on trade, Hidetada
extended the scope of both anti-Kirishitan and trade policies, which were to be henceforth
intimately linked.613 This illustrates the primary motivation of the bakufu’s anti-Kirishitan
606 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 70. On the control of trade
under the bakufu and its relation to anti-Kirishitan policy, see: Ebisawa, Nihon Kirishitanshi, 288-314. 607 Takekoshi, The Economic Aspects of the History of the Civilization of Japan, vol. 2, 109. 608 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 11-12; Ebisawa, Nihon
Kirishitanshi, 289. 609 Takekoshi, The Economic Aspects of the History of the Civilization of Japan, vol. 2, 12. 610 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 11; Ebisawa, Nihon Kirishitanshi,
290; Nabemoto, “Edo Jidai shoki ni okeru ryōshu kenryoku to ‘Nagasaki Bugyō’ no kakusho: ‘Igirisu shōkanchō nikki’ o chūshin ni shite,” 51-88.
611 Lehmann, The Roots of Modern Japan, 54. 612 Deal, Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan, 128; Totman, Early Modern Japan,
75; Ebisawa, Nihon Kirishitanshi, 290-296. 613 Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 127.
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stance: control over all aspects of Japan. Despite all this, because persecution was carried
out on a domainal level its severity varied based on the choices of individual daimyō.614
Boxer argues that until 1618, a blind eye was generally turned toward anti-Kirishitan laws,615
a phenomenon that Ross describes as a ‘strange period of calm.’616 Persecution was mostly
confined to Arima as a continuation of the 1612 injunction and the ramifications of the
Okamoto incident.617 Nevertheless, martyrdoms continued and Hidetada’s strengthening of
the law resulted in the first bakufu ordered execution of foreign missionaries (representing
all the religious orders) in 1617.618
In 1618, a further scandal rocked the court, however, as with the San Felipe incident
historical truth is blurred by politicized and diverging accounts.619 Murayama Tōan は
(1562-1619CE),620 the Nagasaki daikan ぺ う (governor of Nagasaki), became the
centre of a dispute when Suetsugu Heizo ん (1546-1630) accused him of corruption,
being a Kirishitan, and concealing Kirishitan.621 Evidence emerged that Tōan’s son, a priest,
had been present at the Siege of Osaka on the Toyotomi side where he was killed, and that
614 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 331. 615 Ibid., 332. 616 Ross, A Vision Betrayed, 96. 617 Ibid. 618 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 332. 619 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 160. 620 Alternative spellings include: , ガ, ガ. 621
Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 274, 333. Yosaburo Takekoshi provides a more detailed account, however, it is at times confusing due to his failure to distinguish clearly between Heizo and relatives of the same name. Takekoshi, The Economic Aspects of the History of the Civilization of Japan, vol. 2, 84, 185- 187. For greater clarity compare with: Elisonas, “Nagasaki: The Early Years of an Early Modern Japanese City,” 86; Elison, Deus Destroyed, 159-164.
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Tōan himself had sent provisions to assist the anti-Tokugawa forces.622 Heizo also accused
Tōan of killing a family of 17 or 18 Japanese for refusing to allow him to have one of their
daughters.623 This reflected the trial’s general theme; Tōan’s corruption.624 Both men were
Kirishitan, but Heizo chose to apostatize.625 The court ruled in favour of Heizo who was
appointed daikan.626 Tōan and his family were executed in late 1619, whilst his eldest son,
Tokuan ニ ,627 was executed for concealing missionaries one month earlier.628 As a last
attempt to save himself, Tōan supplied the bakufu a list of hidden priests629 compiled by
apostates including a man named Habian (1565-1621CE).630 Habian had been a
prominent Jesuit apologist and author, but apostatized in 1608 or 1609.631 The extent to
which he acted as a government informant is unclear.632 In 1619, a native ex-Jesuit priest
who trained in Rome, but had been dismissed from the Society on moral charges, Araki
Ryōhaku 中 (baptized Thomas), was arrested in Ōmura and apostatized joining the
622 Takekoshi, The Economic Aspects of the History of the Civilization of Japan, vol. 2, 186; Elison, Deus
Destroyed, 161. 623 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 333; Thompson ed., Diary of Richard Cocks, Cape-Merchant
in the English Factory in Japan, 39. 624 Takekoshi, The Economic Aspects of the History of the Civilization of Japan, vol. 2, 186; Elisonas,
“Nagasaki: The Early Years of an Early Modern Japanese City,” 86; Elison, Deus Destroyed, 160. 625 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 333. 626 Ibid., 334. 627
Alternatively spelt ニガ. 628 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 163; Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 334. 629 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 162-163. 630 Also known as Fabian, Fukansai Habian を や佐ガ, Hapian , Habiyan , and
Fukan を. Paramore, Ideology and Christianity in Japan, 10. Biographical information in: Elison, Deus Destroyed, 142-184; Paramore, Ideology and Christianity in Japan, 10-51; Hibbard, Refutation of Deus by Fabian, xi-xviii; Baskind and Bowring, “The Myōtei Dialogues in Early Edo Thought,” 5-7.
631 Paramore, Ideology and Christianity in Japan, 10-11; Hibbard, Refutation of Deus by Fabian, xvi. 632 Hibbard, Refutation of Deus by Fabian, xvii.
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Tokugawa side as an informant and member of the bakufu’s inquisition.633 The Tōan affair
and Araki’s and Habian’s testimony revealed that missionaries continued to exist in hiding,
and therefore the persecutions intensified, leading to the complete destruction of the
closed ecclesiastical buildings in Nagasaki and their reconstruction as Buddhist temples or
new streets. 634 The bodies of deceased Kirishitan were exhumed and graveyards
desecrated.635
In 1618, the total numbers of martyrs increased by 240% to 68 from 20 in the
previous year, and almost 30% more the next year when they reached the number of 88.636
From 1619, the bakufu began offering rewards (Kenshō sonin ン ) for informants
(Sonin ).637 These were listed on wooden notice boards (kōsatsu /seisatsu )
in Nagasaki.638 In 1619, the reward was 30 silver coins for a bateren.639 The following year
Habian published his Ha Daiusu 」,640 wherein he discussed Christian doctrine
reinforcing contemporaneous criticisms. 641 Anti-Kirishitan works were not a new
phenomenon, in 1606 Neo-Confucian, Hayashi Razan は (1583-1657CE),642 wrote Hai
633 Cieslik, “The Case of Christovão Ferreira,” 29, n. 107; Alden, The Making of an Enterprise, 136. 634 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 334. 635 Ibid. 636 These figures include four Europeans in 1617, one in 1618, and two in 1619. Boxer, The Christian
Century in Japan, 448. 637 Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 500. 638 Ibid., 500-501. 639 Ibid., 502; Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 178. 640 Occasionally rendered Ha Deus. Japanese text in: Ebisawa ed., “Ha Daiusu,” 423-447. English
translations include: Hibbard, Refutation of Deus by Fabian; Elison, Deus Destroyed, 259-291. A description is provided in: Anesaki, “Japanese Criticisms and Refutations of Christianity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” 2-5.
641 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 143. 642 Also known as Hayashi Dōshun 仙 .
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Yaso ,643 the record of a discussion between the then Jesuit, Habian, and himself,
although this was not published until fourteen years after Razan’s death in 1671.644 Habian’s
Ha Daiusu, the first published anti-Kirishitan text, became the most effective and widely
distributed of its kind, and was used as a model for further anti-Kirishitan writings.645 Its
publication and the bakufu’s employment of informants, marked a more thorough
centralization of the mechanisms of persecution and their popularization. Nevertheless,
1620 and 1621 saw a dramatic decrease in the number of martyrs.646
In 1620, Augustinian missionary, Pedro de Zuñiga, and Dominican, Luis Flores,
disguised as Spanish merchants, were captured at sea by the English and turned over to the
Dutch to be taken to Japan as prisoners.647 With Araki’s assistance the Dutch and English
attempted to prove that they were illegal missionaries, however, the Nagasaki bugyō,
Hasegawa Gonroku ぽ , who knew Zuñiga personally, postponed hearings and
refused to accept the evidence put before him.648 The two men eventually confessed under
643 Japanese text in: Ebisawa ed., “Hai Yaso,” 413-417; Ebisawa, Cieslik, Doi, and Ōtsuka eds.,
Kirishitan sho: Haiya sho, 490-491. English translation in: Elison, Deus Destroyed, 149-153. Descriptions provided in: Anesaki, “Japanese Criticisms and Refutations of Christianity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” 2; Ebisawa, “Seiyō tenmongaku no denrai,” 33-36; Muller, “Hai-Yaso – Anti-Jesus. Hayashi Razan’s antichristlicher Bericht uber eine konfuzianisch-christliche Disputation aus dem Jahre 1606,” 268-275.
644 Anesaki, “Japanese Criticisms and Refutations of Christianity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” 2, 7-8; Muller, “Hai-Yaso – Anti-Jesus. Hayashi Razan’s antichristlicher Bericht uber eine konfuzianisch-christliche Disputation aus dem Jahre 1606,” 268.
645 Ross, A Vision Betrayed, 101, 110; Elison, Deus Destroyed, 156. Conversely, Anesaki notes that only three copies of the text have survived and therefore ascertaining the extent of its distribution is difficult. Anesaki, “Japanese Criticisms and Refutations of Christianity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” p. 2 n. 2, and p. 3.
646 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 448. 647 Ross, A Vision Betrayed, 98; Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 345-346; Kataoka, Nihon
Kirishitan junkyōshi, 272-274. 648 Ross, A Vision Betrayed, 98; Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 346.
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Dutch torture,649 forcing Gonroku’s hand resulting in the execution of the missionaries and
smugglers in 1622.650 This was only the tip of the iceberg of a persistent problem facing the
bakufu; the illegal smuggling and entry of missionaries into Japan in spite of both their exile
and the prospect of execution.651
Alongside smuggling, the persistence of Christianity and continued baptisms,652 led
Hidetada to intensify his policy again in 1622.653 He ordered all imprisoned members of the
religious orders, and the families who had concealed them to be executed.654 55 were killed
at Nishizaka near Nagasaki, including 19 members of religious orders (13 Europeans,
6 Japanese). 655 At the subsequent martyrdoms of Zuñiga and Flores many Kirishitan
649 Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 274-277. 650 Ibid., 277-279; Ross, A Vision Betrayed, 98. An account is given in a Spanish document written in
Manilla (1623) including details exempt from Boxer’s, Ross’s and Kataoka’s accounts. The author writes that a Dominican priest had gone to Hirado to attempt to covertly release Flores, and succeeded in releasing several imprisoned Christians, however, the plot was uncovered and all were recaptured. This invoked the wrath of the authorities, who then sought to punish the smugglers, friars, and other imprisoned Christians and their relatives. During the trial, he writes that none apostatised, and all rejoiced over the prospect of martyrdom. Although the truth of his testimony is unclear it is also noteworthy that the author writes that the smugglers (Hirayama Jōchin んは and his crew of 12) were Christians, and that the smuggling of priests was generally undertaken by Christian captains. The text entitled Relacion breve de los grandes y rigurosos martirios que el año passado de 1622 dieron en el Iapon a ciento y diez y ocho iustissimos Martyres, sacada principalmente de las cartas de los Padres de la Compañia de Iesus que alli residen: y de lo que han referido muchas personas de aquel Reyno, que en dos Nauios llegaron a la Ciudad de Manila a 12 de Agosto de 1623 is printed with English translation in: A short description of the Great and Terrible Martyrdoms which took place in Japan in the year 1622, translated from an old Spanish pamphlet published in Madrid in the year 1624, with full size photographic reproduction of the original.
651 Elisonas notes that in 1614 there were only 27 Jesuits left in Japan, increasing to a figure of 36 by 1621. Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” 368. Boxer notes that more than 20 entered Japan between 1615 and 1616 on Iberian ships. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 355.
652 Around 17,000 converted between 1614 and 1626. Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” 368. 653 Ross, A Vision Betrayed, 98. 654 Ibid. 655 Elisonas, “Nagasaki: The Early Years of an Early Modern Japanese City,” 95; Boxer, The Christian
Century in Japan, 448. A contemporaneous account of the 1622 martyrdoms can be found in: A short description of the Great and Terrible Martyrdoms which took place in Japan in the year 1622.
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gathered and sang psalms.656 Such witnessing was common during the martyrdoms that
had taken place since 1614.657 Hidetada now sought to restrict such practice, the bodies of
the executed were burnt and ashes cast into the sea so that they couldn’t be used as
relics.658 Orders were given to punish anyone who prayed or sang at execution sites; men
were to be executed and women humiliated through public nudity.659 The number of
martyrdoms that year increased to 132, an increase of 560% from the previous year’s 20.660
Despite this, persecution continued to vary according to domain as did the responses to
those witnessing at execution grounds.661 For Ross, the intensifications of 1622 marked the
beginning of the realization that the current methods of martyrdom were doing little to
destroy Christianity or abate conversions.662
In 1623, Hidetada was succeeded by his son Iemitsu, although he held authority until
his death in 1632.663 Iemitsu was the first Tokugawa leader to be born a shogun rather than
a daimyō, and as most of the formerly powerful Sengoku daimyō had died, he was able to
wield real authority over his peers.664 Ross writes:
656 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 342-343. The aformentioned Spanish account states that
the captain Jōchin preached to the crowds until his death. It also notes that the crowds were not only present for the execution, but continued to visit the site day and night worshipping there, and were able to obtain relics including all the remnants of de Zuñiga, despite some visitors being beaten by the guards. A short description of the Great and Terrible Martyrdoms which took place in Japan in the year 1622.
657 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 342; Ross, A Vision Betrayed, 98. 658 Ross, A Vision Betrayed, 98. 659 Ibid. 660 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 448. 661 Ibid., 344. 662 Ross, A Vision Betrayed, 98. 663 Sansom, A History of Japan, vol. 3, 25. 664 Cieslik, “The Great Martyrdom in Edo 1623: Its causes, Course, Consequences,” 13.
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Iemitsu not only brought in new approaches to the problem of extirpating
Christianity, he also enforced the existing edicts in a more organized and thorough
way than either of his predecessors.665
However, such an intensity was not exclusive to anti-Kirishitan policy, rather under Iemitsu
‘all…were ruthlessly subjected to the regime.’666 The intensity of Iemitsu’s 1623 and 1624
persecutions was provoked by the discovery of a Kirishitan community and priests in Edo.667
In late 1623, he martyred 50 Kirishitan including two European priests in Edo.668 A further
37 were killed a few weeks later.669 Of the latter group only 24 were Kirishitan, the others
were those who had sheltered or assisted Kirishitan in some way, including Iemitsu’s
bodyguard, Matsūra Sannosuke , who had been unaware of the Kirishitan
hidden in his house.670 For Cieslik, the executions were staged to make an impression on
the daimyō, a fact illustrated by their taking place on the Tōkaidō 仙 (the busiest road
665 Ross, A Vision Betrayed, 99; Cieslik, Kirishitan shikō, 267-271. 666 Cieslik, “The Great Martyrdom in Edo 1623: Its causes, Course, Consequences,” 13. 667 Ross, A Vision Betrayed, 99; Cieslik, “Edo no Daijunkyō,” 55-105. 668 The known names of 37 of these martyrs are listed in: Cieslik, “The Great Martyrdom in Edo 1623:
Its causes, Course, Consequences,’ 30-32; Cieslik, “Edo no Daijunkyō,” 87-89. Originally there were 51, but one apostatized prior to execution. Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 360; Nihon Katorikku Shikyō Kyōgikai – Ressei Reppuku Tokubetsu Iinkai ed., Petoro Kibe to 187 Junkyōsha, 33-35.
669 Cieslik, “The Great Martyrdom in Edo 1623: Its causes, Course, Consequences,” 32; Ross, A Vision Betrayed, 353-362.
670 Ross, A Vision Betrayed, 99; Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 357; Cieslik, “The Great Martyrdom in Edo 1623: Its causes, Course, Consequences,” 32, 34.
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in Japan) rather than at the execution grounds in the city.671 By 1624, all daimyō showed
their loyalty by increasing anti-Kirishitan measures in their domains.672 The annual Jesuit
letter from that year notes that:
there was not a single Christian who did not in some degree or other bear the marks
of its fury. Many were put to death, many cast into prison, many more driven into
exile. Others retired into hiding; others again abandoned their homes rather than
run the risk of apostasy in the pagan community…day after day new officials arrive
whose sole duty…is to break the spirit of the Christians by threats and torture.673
The execution of non-Kirishitan led to an increase in the number of informants.674 In 1625,
the reward for informants of priests was increased to as much as 300 silver pieces, although
generally appears to have been set at 100 pieces, with kōsatsu having been erected in Kyoto
and Edo since 1622 and 1623 respectively.675
Ross argues that the implementation of anti-Kirishitan policy lacked rigour in 1625
and 1626.676 Statistically Ross’s thesis appears to be true,677 however, Cieslik argues that
671 Cieslik, “The Great Martyrdom in Edo 1623: Its causes, Course, Consequences,” 25; Cieslik, “Edo
no Daijunkyō,” 101-105. Under Ieyasu the daimyō had been encouraged to establish residences in Edo, and in 1610 it became compulsory for them to send hostages there. Tsukahira, Feudal Control in Tokugawa Japan: The Sankin Kōtai System, 8; Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, 144.
672 Ross, A Vision Betrayed, 99. 673 Quoted in: Cieslik, “The Great Martyrdom in Edo 1623: Its causes, Course, Consequences,” 15. 674 Cieslik, “The Great Martyrdom in Edo 1623: Its causes, Course, Consequences,” 34. 675 Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 178; Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 502-503. 676 Ross, A Vision Betrayed, 99. 677 There were a total of 29 martyrs. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 448.
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rather than lacking rigour, the low number of martyrdoms resulted from the emergence of
a new approach that focused on making apostates rather than martyrs.678 From 1627, the
machinery needed in order to definitively rid Japan of the Kirishitan was developed and
efficaciously implemented.679 The resurgence of severe persecutions in 1627 resulted from
Nagasaki bugyō, Mizuno Morinobu’s あ (1588-1637CE) implementation of a variety
of new measures to persecute the Kirishitan.680 Such was the severity with which Morinobu
acted, that it undoubtedly inspired harsher persecutions amongst the daimyō not desiring
to fall out of favour with Iemitsu or to be exposed as inactive. Cary argues that it was
Morinobu’s capture of a Franciscan missionary unable to destroy a list detailing the
members of the Order present in Japan that forced Iemitsu to demand more stringent
nationwide enforcement of the policy,681 but this is not verified in other sources. Two major
events in 1627 may have also aided in triggering more severe persecutions. First, the
Manchu invaded Korea. 682 Iemitsu dispatched a reconnaissance mission and offered
military assistance, however, his actions were too late; Korea had surrendered in April.683
Iemitsu’s measures were inspired by the “memory” of the Mongol invasions (Genkō ご,
678 Cieslik, “The Great Martyrdom in Edo 1623: Its causes, Course, Consequences,” 41. 679 Under Iemitsu the martyrdom of missionary personnel almost doubled, from 46 between 1614
and 1623, to 88 between 1624 and 1639. Similarly, the martyrdom of ordinary believers almost quadrupled from 390 to 1520 in the same periods. Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 173.
680 Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 354; Cary, A History of Christianity in Japan, vol. 1, 210-212. 681 Cary, A History of Christianity in Japan, vol. 1, 212. 682 Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa
Bakufu, 112-113. Commonly known as the Later Jīn Invasion of Joseon, Dīngmǎo zhànzhēng (Chinese), and Teibō koran 丑 (Japanese).
683 Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan, 113-114.
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1274 and 1281) three centuries earlier, and sought to reduce the possibility of a Manchu
invasion of Japan.684 Perhaps the reinforced fear of external threats illustrated to Iemitsu
the continued need to eliminate other threats to his sovereignty. Second, was the shie
chokkyo jiken (the purple robe incident).685 Since 1613, the bakufu had
attempted to limit the imperial household’s ability to award titles and robes to Buddhist
monks, however, these regulations were ignored.686 In 1627, the bakufu therefore stripped
150 clerics of their imperially awarded rank, eliciting a strong rebuke and criticism of the
bakufu on the part of numerous Buddhist leaders.687 Consequently, in 1629 several monks
were exiled and Emperor Go-Mizunō (1596-1680) abdicated.688 Strained bakufu-
imperial household relations lasted until Iemitsu pardoned those involved in 1634 following
Hidetada’s death.689 Nevertheless, the event ended any real political power the imperial
household held, and brought Buddhism further under bakufu control.690 The resurgence of
persecution in 1627 was therefore necessitated by the fact that a potential external and
internal threat (the Kirishitan) still existed, but was also linked to continued attempts by the
bakufu to increase its control over religion.
684 Totman, Early Modern Japan, 113. 685 Williams, “The Purple Robe Incident and the Formation of the Early Modern Sōtō Zen Institution,”
27-43. 686 Ibid., 34-35. 687 Ibid., 35; Levine, Daitokuji: The Visual Cultures of a Zen Monastery, 5. 688 Ibid., 35-36. 689 Bruschke-Johnson, “Insincere Blessings? Court-Bakufu Relations and the Creation of Engi Scrolls
in Honour of Tokugawa Ieyasu,” 160. 690 Sansom, A History of Japan, vol. 3, 27-28.
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The machinery of persecution built by Iemitsu almost universally had its origins in
the policies of his predecessors and peers. As noted, the system of remunerations for
informants began under Hidetada in 1619. Miyazaki Kentarō argues that kōsatsu were
introduced to all regions under direct bakufu control in 1633,691 however they already
existed in Kyoto and Edo by this time.692 In 1636, rewards increased from 200 to 300 silver
pieces for a bateren.693 In 1638, the price for religious brothers (J. iruman / , P.
irmãos) increased to 100 silver pieces.694 30-50 pieces were offered for lay believers.695
Kōsatsu were used until the early Meiji period being scrapped in 1873, and reached a
maximum remuneration of 500 silver coins for bateren, 300 for iruman, 100 for dōjuku, 100
for lay believers, and 300 for apostates (those who reconverted to Christianity) during the
late 17th Century.696 The number of informants and therefore the efficacy of the policy are
unclear. The Jesuit Annual Letter of 1624 notes the disdain with which an informant of the
Great Martyrdom of Edo was treated by other non-Kirishitan.697 However, Cieslik notes an
691 Miyazaki, “Roman Catholic Mission in Pre-Modern Japan,” 12. 692 Kataoka charts their spread to different cities in: Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 503. A
translation of a kōsatsu is included in: Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 64. The Laures Kirishitan Bunko Database (Rauresu Kirishitan Bunko Dēta Bēsu, カ
) includes 9 kōsatsu, Japanese transcriptions and English translations have been provided for three. Laures Kirishitan Bunko Database ed., “Christian Artefacts, 4: Anti-Christian Decrees (Kōsatsu).”
693 Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 178. Tamamuro notes that 200 silver coins when converted to rice, was the equivalent of twenty years’ consumption for a family of four. Tamamuro, “The Development of the Temple-Parishioner System,” 20.
694 Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 178. 695 Ibid. 696 Ibid., 178-179; Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 502. See also: Takekoshi, The Economic
Aspects of the History of the Civilization of Japan, vol. 3, 87-88. 697 Cieslik, “The Great Martyrdom in Edo 1623: Its causes, Course, Consequences,” 30.
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increase in the number of Kirishitan informants following the executions.698 Tamamuro
Fumio suggests that kōsatsu were a motivating factor for many informants, but notes that
documents recording the payment of informants are sparse, and that it was possibly a ploy
to expose Kirishitan.699 Truthfully, the number of informants is unimportant, the kōsatsu
acted as a constant reminder of the law, and their renewal illustrated the continued
relevance of bakufu policy. If the system had remained necessary for finding informants
after the major persecutions of the 17th Century, this would be an admission of the failure
of bakufu policy,700 and it therefore appears that it acted, at least during later periods,
primarily as propaganda.
In 1642, the system of remuneration was combined with the goningumi
(groups of five families); neighbourhood associations based on units of five households.701
The goningumi provided a form of surveillance; the members were obliged to watch their
families, employees and tenants, for whose actions they were responsible and whose
transgressions they were expected to inform to their superiors, however, these groups also
acted as mutual assistance networks covering all aspects of local administration.702 Due to
698 Ibid., 34. 699 Tamamuro, “The Development of the Temple-Parishioner System,” 20-21. 700 Nosco, “Secrecy and Transmission of Tradition: Issues in the Study of the ‘Underground’
Christians,” 21-24. 701 Miyazaki, “Roman Catholic Mission in Pre-Modern Japan,” 12. In Laver’s translation of a 1682
kōsatsu it states that if it was revealed that a person had hidden a Kirishitan, the village head, the goningumi and one’s relatives would be punished. Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 64. Principal works on the goningumi system include: Hozumi and Hozumi, Goningumi hōkishū, 3 vols; Nomura, Goningumichō no kenkyū; Nishimura, Goningumi seido shinron.
702 Takekoshi, The Economic Aspects of the History of the Civilization of Japan, vol. 3, 392, 395-396; Turnbull, The Kakure Kirishitan of Japan, 44.
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the principle of renza オ, a crime committed by one member of the group could render
all responsible and punished.703 If a member was discovered to be a Kirishitan, the other
group members could be subjected to punishments including fines and execution
dependent on their locality.704 Although similar systems had existed for centuries, the direct
predecessor to the goningumi was Hideyoshi’s creation of goningumi for samurai, and a
ten-man group system for farmers (jūningumi ), the main goals of which were order
and policing.705 Under the Tokugawa the goningumi sought not only to police, but also to
foster agriculture, industry and education.706 The goningumi system was instated on a
national level in 1633; however, it was not until its combination with the system of
remuneration in 1642 that the discovery and persecution of Kirishitan was made the explicit
responsibility of these groups.707 Whilst this resulted in several incidences of non-Kirishitan
family members reported on their Kirishitan relatives,708 the goningumi system also offered
Kirishitan the ability to practice their faith underground by organizing themselves into these
groupings thereby subverting the system.709
703 Frédéric, “Renza,” 788. A system of renza shobatsu オ (punishment by implication in a
crime/link to a criminal) was not exclusive to the goningumi system; those related to people caught hiding Kirishitan, but not part of the same goningumi could be punished by implication. Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 499.
704 Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 194; Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 499-500. 705 Takekoshi, The Economic Aspects of the History of the Civilization of Japan, vol. 3, 391; Tonomura,
Community and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan: The Corporate Villages of Tokuchin-ho, 176-177. 706 Takekoshi, The Economic Aspects of the History of the Civilization of Japan, vol. 3, 391; Tonomura,
Community and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan, 176-177. 707 Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 193. 708 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 68. 709 Nosco, “Secrecy and Transmission of Tradition: Issues in the Study of the ‘Underground’
Christians,” 8; Nosco, “The Experiences of Christians during the Underground Years and Thereafter,” 89; Harrington, “The Kakure Kirishitan and Their Place in Japan’s Religious Tradition,” 324-325. Hitomi Tonomura
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Under Ieyasu apostates were required to register at temples in order to gain
certification of their conversion to Buddhism.710 From the 1630s, this system was gradually
expanded to the general populace as a system of temple certification (terauke seido せ予
/danka seido く ) through which non-Kirishitan and Kirishitan alike were forced
to become temple parishioners in order to affirm their non-Kirishitan religious identity.711
In 1635, the Office of Temples and Shrines (jisha bugyō せ ) was established.712
Through this office administrative head temples (furegashira jiin せ ) were created
for each sect, which ‘would require their branch temples to expose Christians in all
villages.’713 This structure served to create a network of religious monitoring.714 By 1638,
certificates (terauke shōmon せ予 ) were necessary for all Japanese.715 All temples
were required to certify non-Kirishitan, after which village heads or local officials compiled
an annual register.716 Nam-lin Hur notes therefore that two processes were occurring;
notes that villagers largely controlled the governance of their own village, as such it is probable that the system could have easily been subverted by majoritarian Kirishitan villages. Tonomura, Community and Commerce in Late Medieval Japan, 176.
710 Tamamuro, “The Development of the Temple-Parishioner System,” 16. Reader, Religion in Contemporary Japan, 85-86.
711 Hur, Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan, 15; Reader, Religion in Contemporary Japan, 85- 86. A concise history is provided in: Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 181-184.
712 Tamamuro, “The Development of the Temple-Parishioner System,” 17. The Office was established on a domainal basis in 1664 known by the same name or by the term shūmon bugyō . Tamamuro, “Local Society and the Temple-Parishioner Relationship within the Bakufu’s Governance Structure,” 262.
713 Tamamuro, “The Development of the Temple-Parishioner System,” 17-18. 714 Ibid., 18. 715 Tamamuro, “Local Society and the Temple-Parishioner Relationship within the Bakufu’s
Governance Structure,” 262. Miyazaki and Shimizu provide the earlier date of 1635. Miyazaki, “Roman Catholic Mission in Pre-Modern Japan,” 12-13; Miyazaki, Kakure Kirishitan: Orasho, 20; Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 182.
716 Hur, Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan, 16. The registers’ format was standardised in 1671. Tamamuro, “Local Society and the Temple-Parishioner Relationship within the Bakufu’s Governance Structure,” 262.
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terauke seido, the certifying by an abbot that those affiliated with a temple were not
Kirishitan, and the creation of a register by the locality’s official.717 The system was not
solely concerned with investigating Kirishitan, but also recorded ‘ages…marriages,
departures for service elsewhere, deaths, births, and changes of residences.’718 Temples
and the Buddhist clergy thereby increased their control over parishioners and
simultaneously became state organs.719 This radically altered the nature of Japanese
Buddhism, expanding the number of temples, providing them with legal responsibility for
their parishioners’ religion, and the authority to ‘insist on a strong parishioner relationship
with the temple.’ 720 It created a permanent relationship between parishioner and
temple,721 which involved participation in annual rituals, the performance of funerals, and
financial obligations,722 providing Buddhism with complete domination over ancestral and
funeral rites, and guaranteeing its prosperity and continued existence through funerary
fees.723 The terauke seido system ended in the early Meiji period.724
717 Hur, Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan, 16. 718 Tamamuro, “Local Society and the Temple-Parishioner Relationship within the Bakufu’s
Governance Structure,” 263. 719 Rowe, Bonds of the Dead: Temples, Burial, and the Transformation of Contemporary Japanese
Buddhism, 21. 720 Tamamuro, “The Development of the Temple-Parishioner System,” 22. 721 Hur, Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan, 16. 722 Reader, Religion in Contemporary Japan, 86. 723 Ibid. 724 Namihira, “The Characteristics of Japanese Concepts and Attitudes with Regard to Human
Remains,” 65.
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In 1633, Christovão Ferreira (1580-1650CE), who was both Vice-Provincial (L.
Provincialis vices gerens)725 and Vicar General (until another could be appointed following
the arrest of his predecessor Sebastião Vieira), apostatized under torture, providing a major
gain for the bakufu.726 Renamed Sawano Chūan ビガ, he was made to marry a
Japanese widow.727 Apostates were used to full effect in Japanese propaganda;728 however
Ferreira’s apostasy was pertinent not because of the bakufu’s ability to use him as an
example of the falsehood of Christianity, but due to his involvement in the anti-Kirishitan
inquisition.729 The Kiyō zakki ぺ 伝乱 states that Ferreira alongside the aforementioned
Thomas Araki, and the apostate priest Miguel Gotō Ryōjun ,730 began a
system of taking written oaths from apostates in order to prevent recantation.731 Apostates
725 Vice-Provincial has two meanings; ‘a Superior nominated by Rome to administer a Vice
Province…Praepositus Vice-Provinciae…[or] a Provincialis vices gerens, who is nominated by an actual Provincial to take his place during his absence or in case of incapacity. The Japanese Province…was cut off almost completely from contact abroad. It had therefore been decided that, in the event of the sudden death or arrest of the Provincial of Japan, the oldest professed Jesuit in the country would automatically take charge.’ (Cieslik, 1974; 12). Ferreira was a Vice-Provincial of the second kind. He had also been officially appointed as a Vice-Provincial (Praepositus Vice-Provinciae) by the Superior in Rome in 1632, but this news had not reached him. In Japanese the term for Vice-Provincial is jun kanku chō . During the persecutions when the Provincial (kanku chō ) was absent the term fuku kanku chō was used. Cieslik, “The Case of Christovão Ferreira,” 12; Takase, Kirishitan jidai no bunka to shosō, 37-38. For further exploration of the positions, see: Alden, The Making of an Enterprise, 241-247.
726 Cieslik, “The Case of Christovão Ferreira,” 1, 11-12, 16, 26. 727 Ibid., 16. 728 Ibid., 26. 729 Cieslik notes that Japanese sources refer to him as a meakashi ０ (government spy), however,
there is no evidence that he participated in searching for missionaries and Kirishitan. Cieslik, “The Case of Christovão Ferreira,” 28.
730 Boxer’s list of apostate fathers includes neither Araki (because he had left the Jesuit Order prior to his apostasy) nor Ryōjun (because he was a member of the secular clergy). Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 447. On other high ranking apostates, see: Cieslik, Kirishitan shikō, 279-302.
731 Quoted in: Cieslik, “The Case of Christovão Ferreira,” 29.
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were made to sign the oath (korobi kakimono )732 countersigned by the three
apostate priests during examinations.733 One example of these oaths states:
a true revocation of apostasy is quite impossible without the mediation of a padre.
A secret revocation is not possible.734
The signing of an oath thereby became an irreversible declaration of apostasy. Whilst
evidence of Ferreira’s countersigning of these documents exists, it appears that korobi
kakimono predated Ferreira’s apostasy; Kataoka argues that they were first used in 1616,
and spread nationwide in 1635.735 Korobi kakimono were based on kishōmon 予
(written oaths) used since the Heian period (Heian jidai ん ６ , 794-1185CE).736 Like the
korobi kakimono, kishōmon threatened divine retribution if broken.737 In the Heian period,
732 Translations of these oaths are included in: Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 441-442; Cieslik,
“The Case of Christovão Ferreira,” 30-31. A photo of Boxer’s source document, and a partial transcription of an oath are included in: Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 506-507. Japanese versions are included in: Cieslik and Ōta, Kirishitan, 214-216. Two primary types of written oaths have been discovered, those used in Kyoto developed by Itakura Shigemune (1586-1657CE) and categorized as Itakura Suō no Kami kei
あ , and those used in Nagasaki developed by Takenaka Shigeyoshi (?-1634CE) and categorized as Takenaka Uneme no Kami kei 仮 あ . Examples of both versions are printed in: Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 195-198. The oaths were also known as Nanban seishi 乎 , Kirishitan korobi kakimono , Kirishitan shuramento , korobi seishi
and korobi shōmon . Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 195. See also: Takekoshi, The Economic Aspects of the History of the Civilization of Japan, vol. 3, 88-89.
733 Quoted in: Cieslik, “The Case of Christovão Ferreira,” 29. 734 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 441-442. 735 Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 505. See also: Higashibaba, Christianity in early Modern Japan,
145. 736 Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 505. 737 Blomberg, The Heart of the Warrior: Origins and Religious Background of the Samurai System in
Feudal Japan, 93; Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 505.
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these oaths were used as agreements to protect Buddhist temples, and in the Muromachi
period they were used during crises to confirm land rights, rank, and warriors’ duties.738
During Sengoku jidai they became common, and like some korobi kakimono used a seal of
the signatory’s blood to illustrate their commitment.739 Like the Muromachi period oaths,
the korobi kakimono were used during a crisis in order to confirm status; in this case the
religious identity of the signatory.
Korobi kakimono were often used in conjunction with a ceremony known as ebumi
or efumi .740 Developed in the late 1620s, at first efumi was a ceremony in which
apostates were made to step on Christian objects and representations (fumie )741 in
order to confirm their apostasy, and later developed to test whether or not a person was
Kirishitan.742 Efumi became widespread, and was used to test a large portion of the
indigenous population.743 In Kyushu, efumi became a yearly or bi-yearly occurrence.744 Its
efficacy for discovering Kirishitan and reaffirming a former believer’s apostasy745 led it to
738 Blomberg, The Heart of the Warrior, 93. 739 Ibid., 93-94; Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 506; Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 197. 740 Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 504-505. 741 Fumie are also referred to as imazen or imāhen (S. Imagen), goei ,
miei (goei and miei are can be written ドダ) and fumasee . Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 187; Gonoi, Nihon Kirisutokyōshi, 236. Cieslik and Ōta, Kirishitan, 217.
742 Fumie were probably first used under Morinobu or his successor Takenaka in Nagasaki. Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 187-190; Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 504; Da Costa Kaufman, “Interpreting Cultural Transfer and the Consequences of Markets and Exchange: Reconsidering Fumi-e,” 143-144; Okada, “Fumie ni suite,” 159-162. On fumie see: Kataoka, Fumie: Kinkyō no rekishi; Shimada and Shimada, Fumie: Gaikokujin ni yoru fumie no kiroku.
743 Da Costa Kaufman, “Interpreting Cultural Transfer and the Consequences of Markets and Exchange: Reconsidering Fumi-e,” 140.
744 Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan junkyōshi, 504; Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 190-192. 745 Miyazaki, “Roman Catholic Mission in Pre-Modern Japan,” 14.
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become a central element of the inquisitional methodology adopted by Iemitsu,746 however,
unlike most of the other aspects of Iemitsu’s persecution efumi was a recent invention.
All these systems were combined under the shūmon aratame (Inquisition)
and the office of shūmon aratame yaku チ (Inquisitor) established in 1640.747 The
first shūmon aratame yaku was Inoue Masashige (1585-1661CE),748 a possible
former Kirishitan who apostatized in 1625.749 He served Hidetada from 1608,750 and in 1625
was promoted to the rank of metsuke (inspector).751 In 1627, he received a lower
junior rank (jugoi no ge デ ) and the title Chikugo no kami あ, and in 1633 he
was appointed Ōmetsuke (inspector-general), before finally becoming a daimyō and
the shūmon aratame yaku.752 Based on Inoue’s experience, which had taught him that
martyrdom did not discourage the spread of Christianity,753 he adopted the methods of
persecution established by Takenaka Shigeyoshi (?-1634CE) and to a lesser extent
Morinobu, which stressed apostasy over martyrdom. 754 For Boxer, such a focus was nothing
746 Whelan, “Religion Concealed: The Kakure Kirishitan on Narushima,” 370. Its occurrence ended in
1857. Kamstra, “Kakure Kirishitan: The Hidden or Secret Christians of Nagasaki,” 141, n. 11. 747 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 195. Alongside issues relating to the Kirishitan, the shūmon aratame yaku
was involved in the supervision of Dutch trade and the daimyō. On the position, see: Shimizu, “Shūmon aratame yaku nōto,” 42-56. For biographical information, see: Cieslik, Kirishitan shikō, 271-276.
748 Referred to by his title Chikugo no Kami あ. 749 Screech, “The shogun’s lover’s would-be Swedish boyfriend: Inoue Masashige, Tokugawa Iemitsu
and Olof Eriksson Willman,” 106. Elison accepts that Inoue was once a Kirishitan, but notes that contemporaneous evidence is sparse. Elison, Deus Destroyed, 445, n. 28.
750 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 191. 751 Blussé, “The Grand Inquisitor Inoue Chikugo no Kami Masashige, Spin Doctor of the Tokugawa
Bakufu,” 27. 752 Ibid; Hur, Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan, 69. The position of Ōmetsuke can also be
referred to by the terms Sōmetsuke ヨ and Daikansatsu し. 753 Hur, Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan, 71. 754 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 187, 191-196.
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new, the persecutors had always aimed to make apostates rather than martyrs, however,
until now the pursuit of apostasy had only met limited success.755 The apparent change in
focus was certainly not the pioneering work of Inoue alone. Methodology developed in
Kyushu, where bakufu officials had started relying on the Buddhist clergy to assist in the
conversion of Kirishitan to Buddhism, was soon taken up by the central government.756
Furthermore, the occurrence of several famines, epidemics and natural disasters in the
early 1640s caused the bakufu to highlight the importance of nurturing the people (a
concept known a bumin ) during the now compulsory, domainal, anti-Kirishitan
inspections.757 The focus of the persecution, therefore, shifted to discrediting Christianity
and converting Kirishitan to Buddhism.758 If apostasy could not be drawn by persuasion
alone then it would be reached through torture,759 and if torture failed execution was a final
option.760 Foreign apostates with official or lay rank were offered rice and silver rations,
provided with Japanese names and wives, and were housed in Inoue’s prison, the Kirishitan
755 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 389. 756 Hur, Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan, 72-74. 757 Ibid., 71-72. For instance, the Kirishitan Monogatari (1638) advises on the
treatment of retainers. Elison, Deus Destroyed, 372-372. An English translation of the text is included in: Elison, Deus Destroyed, 319-374. Japanese versions of the text are reprinted in: Hiyane ed., Kirishitan monogatari: hoka sanshu; Tōhō Shoin ed., “Kirishitan Monogatari,” 1-20. Original versions are available online at: Waseda University Library, “Kirishitan Monogatari. Kan daijō, ge.”
758 Hur, Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan, 73. 759 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 196, 203. Popular torture methods included ana tsurushi
(suspension in a pit) and mokuba (a sort of torture in which victims sat astride a object with weights hung from their feet). For descriptions, see: Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 353-354, 392; Elison, Deus Destroyed, 191; Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan, 481-498.
760 Blussé, “The Grand Inquisitor Inoue Chikugo no Kami Masashige, Spin Doctor of the Tokugawa Bakufu,” 27.
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yashiki , built in Koishikawa ぽ in Edo in 1646.761 Boxer questions the
efficacy of Inoue’s approach, noting that many apostate missionaries and dōjuku revoked
their apostasy and were consequently executed as common criminals (by decapitation).762
He goes so far as to state that the majority of high ranking apostates eventually ‘revoked
their apostasy…and returned to the Faith.’763 In contrast, Elisonas writes that the office and
its practices proved so effective that ‘there were practically no Christians left by the
1660s.’764 In 1665, all domains were required to establish their own offices of religious
investigation, known as shūmon bugyō .765 Under Iemitsu’s successor, Ietsuna く
(1641-1680CE), these offices were made responsible for compiling the aformentioned
local registers that followed temple certification. The registers (shūmon ninbetsu aratame
chō ろ)766 classified members according to their religious membership,767 but
also recorded demographic information.768 From 1680, following the succession of the fifth
761 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 391-392. On the Kirishitan yashiki, see: Kataoka, Nihon
Kirishitan junkyōshi, 477-480; Mayama, Kirishitan yashiki kenkyū; Yamamoto, Edo Kirishitan yashiki no shiseki; Kubota Meiji, Kirishitan yashiki monogatari. Prior to this, other prisons had housed captured Kirishitan. Contemporaneous descriptions of these prisons are found in: A short description of the Great and Terrible Martyrdoms which took place in Japan in the year 1622, page numbers not given; Cieslik, “The Great Martyrdom in Edo 1623: Its causes, Course, Consequences,” 22-23.
762 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 392-393. 763 Ibid. 764 Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” 370. 765 Ibid. Shimizu provides a detailed discussion of the development and workings of these offices.
Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 205-225. The position of shūmon bugyō was also known as Kirishitan bugyō . 766 Also referred to as the shūshi ninbetsu chō ， ろ. Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 225-232.
These registers had numerous alternative names some of which are explored in: Matsūra “Shihai keitai to shūmon aratamechō hyōdaimei,” 1-19.
767 Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” 370. 768 See: Imamura, “Kinsei shoki shūmon ninbetsu aratame no tenkai ni tsuite,” 53-108; Cornell and
Hayami, “The Shumon Aratame Cho: Japan’s Population Registers,” 311-328.
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shogun, Tsunayoshi (1646-1709CE), these offices were also required to compile
registers (Kirishitan ruizoku chō 伴 ろ) concerned solely with recording data
on apostate Kirishitan and their descendants.769
The need to discredit Christianity led to a focus on attacking Christian theology to
support the bakufu’s stance that the missionaries were a fifth column, and to illustrate the
subversive, heretical and undesirous nature of Christian doctrine. Apostates confirmed the
subversive nature of Christianity, admitting that:
it is no sin to kill a heathen who is hostile to the Creator…but on the contrary it is a
service rendered to Heaven.770
The 1630s saw an increase in anti-Kirishitan publications. The persecutors required greater
knowledge of Christianity to question suspects and increase the efficacy of the
persecution.771 Publications also aided the bakufu in creating a system of loyalty and
obligation, and through diverting ‘anxieties to the outside reinforced the factors of
homogeneity…already strong within Japan.’772
769 Shimizu, Kirishitan kinseishi, 228-232. 770 Admission of apostate missionary Guiseppe Chiara (1602-1685), given the name Okamoto
Sanemon び following apostasy, quoted in: Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 394. 771 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 203. 772 Ibid., 212.
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In 1636, the Kengiroku 773 was compiled by Ferreira and his Japanese
editors.774 Cieslik describes the text as a Confucian refutation of Catholicism.775 The text
directly describes Christianity as a political threat. Following a discussion on original sin and
Christian ethical conduct, it states:
They make fabrication their teachings’ base; their plot is to spread disturbance
throughout the land and to pervert society.776
Another example from the text is the description of tithing as ‘a pretext for crude
agglomeration of domains.’777 The Kirishitan Monogatari , published two
years later, is replete with evidence of the heresy and foolishness of the Kirishitan and their
doctrine, which act as the text’s primary focus. One chapter is devoted to the theme of
Japan’s political subjugation. Therein is the story of an ex-Iruman turned Buddhist monk
who revealed to the court that the Kirishitan planned to subjugate Japan through the
diffusion of their religion.778 Finally, whilst the majority of Suzuki Shōsan’s (1579-
773 English translation in: Elison, Deus Destroyed, 294-318. Japanese version in: Masamune, Myōtei
mondō, Ha Daiusu, Kengiroku, 5-15. A brief description is provided in: Anesaki, “Japanese Criticisms and Refutations of Christianity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” 11-15.
774 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 203. There are some issues with authorship and compilation. Cieslik, “The Case of Christovão Ferreira,” 36-38.
775 Cieslik, “The Case of Christovão Ferreira,” 38-39. 776 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 302. 777 Ibid., 307. 778 Ibid., 355-356.
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1655CE) Ha Kirishitan 779 (written between 1642 and 1645, published in 1662)
sought to refute Christian doctrine from a Buddhist standpoint, it also demarks the
Kirishitan as a political threat concluding that the missionaries wished to annex Japan and
delude its people.780 Like the Bateren tsuihō no fumi, these texts provided both religious
and political justification for the rejection of Christianity, and aided in the building of a
“national theology” used to support the bakufu’s position. In providing an intellectual
challenge to Christianity, these works became a tool for the persecutors. Furthermore,
these texts all illustrated support for the bakufu position, namely that the Kirishitan sought
to subjugate Japan. Such support allowed the bakufu to further strengthen its power,
through a continued focus on the threat of once internal, but now more or less external
elements.
The shūmon aratame yaku was only half of the system instituted by Iemitsu, the
pinnacle of internal anti-Kirishitan policy under which all other aspects of the persecution
were merged and systematized. Elisonas writes:
Toward the inside, the bakufu asserted its supremacy by making the scrutiny of all
possible traces of Christianity an instrument of social control throughout the
country.781
779 English translation in: Elison, Deus Destroyed, 377-389. Japanese version in: Ebisawa ed. “Ha
Kirishitan,” 450-457. A description is included in: Anesaki, “Japanese Criticisms and Refutations of Christianity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” 6-7.
780 Elison, Deus Destroyed, 230, 387. 781 Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” 369.
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Interactions with other nations had always affected policy and contributed to the genesis
of anti-Kirishitan decrees, and since Hidetada’s nikō seigen rei foreign and anti-Kirishitan
policy were explicitly linked. In 1623, the English closed their trading post and left Japan,
due to their inability to turn a profit following the growing success of the Dutch who held
the higher market share, and the lack of market for English goods.782 The Thirty Years’ War
in Europe also contributed, affecting the amount of English trade and resulting in an
overspill of poor Anglo-Dutch relations into the Japanese public sphere.783 The English and
Dutch had cooperated for mutual benefit establishing the Anglo-Dutch Defence Fleet in
1619 which sought to combat Iberian interests, however, the treaty of defence between
the English and Dutch East India Companies ended in 1623 inconclusively.784 The following
year the Japanese severed relations with the Spanish.785 For Boxer, this was the direct result
of the capture of Zuñiga and Flores which convinced the bakufu that Manilla would never
withdraw support for the religious orders.786 However, the decision was also influenced by
the Spanish refusal to relinquish their monopoly on trans-Pacific trade and the associated
inability of the bakufu to open trade with Mexico.787 The Dutch cemented their position in
782 Miyazaki, “Roman Catholic Mission in Pre-Modern Japan,” 13; Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the
Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 10. 783 Puga, The British Presence in Macau, 1635-1793, 18. 784 Ibid; Poot, Crucial years in Anglo-Dutch relations (1625-1642): The political and diplomatic
contacts, 84; Gaastra, “War, Competition and Collaboration: Relations Between the English and Dutch East India Companies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” 52.
785 Miyazaki, “Roman Catholic Mission in Pre-Modern Japan,” 13; Ebisawa, Nihon Kirishitanshi, 317. 786 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 367. 787 Lach and Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. 3, A Century of Advance, Book One, 36.
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East Asia the same year through the occupation of Taiwan, and an informal agreement to
trade with Chinese merchants there which allowed them to act as middle men in Sino-
Japanese trade.788 The bakufu took further measures to centralize trade and from 1631
required all traders to possess an additional guarantee issued by the rōjū (the shogun’s
council of elders), alongside shuinjō.789 Furthermore, trade permits were restricted to a
group of seven families with particular ties to the Tokugawa.790
The tightening of controls on trade led from 1633 to the issuance of a series of
edicts791 commonly known as the Sakoku rei (more appropriately termed kaikin rei
)792 which provided a new set of trade regulations and restrictions.793 Michael Laver
views the 1635 edict794 as the start of the first definitive version of these laws, due to it
being the first to outline punishments for non-compliance and the first to contain the
788 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 10; Hiradoshi Shihensan Iinkai
ed., Daikōkaijidai no bōkenshatachi, 135-138, 142-143. On the Dutch presence in Taiwan, see: Chiu, The Colonial ‘Civilizing Process’ in Dutch Formosa, 1624-1662; Roy, Taiwan: A Political History, 15-20; Wills, Jr. “The Seventeenth-Century Transformation: Taiwan Under the Dutch and the Cheng Regime,” 84-106; Shepherd, Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier: 1600-1800, 47-90.
789 Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, 75. 790 Ibid. 791 “Edict” should be taken as a loose description, the documents were in fact ‘letters of instruction
to provincial officers directing them how to carry out the policy of the central government.’ Sansom, A History of Japan, vol. 3, 36.
792 Kaikin rei was the term used contemporaneously. The term sakoku entered Japanese as the result of Shizuki Tadao’s バ ビ会 (1760-1806CE) 1801 translation of Engelbert Kaempfer’s History of Japan. Gunn, First Globalization, 151. The term sakoku often translated as “national isolation” or “closed country” is misleading, suggesting that Japan was completely closed to foreign relations. Rather under sakoku policy Japan maintained relations with Ezo , Ryūkyū , Korea, China and the Netherlands. Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 187-188.
793 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 1, 14-17. 794 An English translation is contained in: Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa
Hegemony, 16-17. Boxer includes a translation of the 1636 edict, which illustrates a further hardening and expansion of the law in: Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 439-440. Ebisawa offers a comparison between all the Sakoku edicts dated; 1633, 1634, 1635, 1636 and 1639. Ebisawa, Nihon Kirishitanshi, 319-332.
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signatures of all bakufu councillors, illustrating its unanimous acceptance. 795 The law
banned Japanese overseas travel and the return of Japanese from abroad under
punishment of death (ending the shuinsen system), proscribed Christianity, offered
remuneration for informants, and outlined regulations for trade and purchasing
commodities.796 The 1636 edict includes further injunctions outlining the exile of the
offspring of foreigners and families with adopted foreign children.797 In the same year, the
Portuguese were confined to the man-made island of Dejima へ798 in Nagasaki, where
they were guarded and rigorously searched in line with the edicts, as an attempt to find
potentially hidden missionaries or Christian contraband.799 Finally, in mid-1639, relations
with the Portuguese were terminated.800 The Dutch were moved from Hirado to Dejima in
795 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 14. 796 Ibid. 797 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 439. Initially 287 children of Iberian ancestry and their
mothers were sent to Macau. By 1640, the children and Japanese wives of the Dutch were exiled to Batavia, and eventually the wives and children of the Chinese were also encouraged to return to China (although they were not forced to depart). Once the Dutch were moved to Dejima in 1641, they were no longer permitted to have Japanese wives or mistresses, although prostitutes (yūjo 他 ) were sent to the island. Following the work of Asao Naohiro, Laver argues that this ruling resulted from the concept that religion was a hereditary trait and that the authorities did not want foreign or Kirishitan descendants to become land holders. The children of prostitutes were brought up as Japanese, and were unlikely to inherit property because they tended to be poor. Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 147-158; Wakita and Gay, “Marriage and property in Premodern Japan from the Perspective of Women’s History,” 73-99; Leupp, Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900; Matsui, “The Debt-Servitude of Prostitutes in Japan during the Edo Period, 1600-1868,” 173-186; Kamoto, “Creating spatial hierarches: the koseki, early international marriage and intermarriage,” 79-92; Shiraishi, Nagasaki Dejima no yūjo: Kindai e no mado o hiraita onnatachi.
798 Studies include: Katagiri, Dejima: ibunka kōryū no butai; Katagiri, Hirakareta sakoku: Nagasaki Dejima no hito� mono�jōhō; Yamaguchi, Nagasaki Dejima. Nishi, Nagasaki Dejima Oranda ikoku jijō; Goodman, Japan and the Dutch 1600-1853.
799 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 368, 439; Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 16. The importation of Christian books had been banned under Hidetada. Sansom, A History of Japan, vol. 3, 25.
800 Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 384; Ebisawa, Nihon Kirishitanshi, 331-332.
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1641,801 becoming the only European power to maintain relations with Japan until the mid-
19th Century.802
Betraying the Eurocentrism and Christo-centrism at the heart of scholarship on the
Kirishitan century, Elison writes:
At the root of the Sakoku – “Closed Country” – decision was the problem of the
Christian ideology. If the anti-Christian element is taken out of the Closed-Country
consciousness, then all its constituents collapse.803
Despite noting the difficulties with Christo-centric and Euro-centric views of the Kaikin rei,
Jean-Pierre Lehmann concurs stating that ‘Sakoku…was originally an essentially anti-
Christian edict.’804 The edicts contained anti-Kirishitan elements in line with the tradition of
Hidetada’s nikō seigen rei, however, to reduce the sakoku edicts to a primarily anti-
Kirishitan development risks completely decontextualizing them. The injunctions are
concerned primarily with non-Kirishitan concerns.805 For Laver, the edicts placed Japan at
the centre of its own foreign relations, so that trade could be conducted on Japanese
terms.806 Every injunction:
801 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 159-181. 802 On Dutch-Japanese relations from 1600, see: Goodman, Japan and the Dutch 1600-1853. 803 Elison, “The Cross and the Sword: Patterns of Momoyama History,” 81. 804 Lehmann, The Roots of Modern Japan, 43. 805 Laver notes that only five of the seventeen injunctions of the 1635 edict can be understood as
anti-Kirishitan. Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 66-76. 806 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 184, 187.
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had as its basis some rationale that would allow the bakufu to strengthen its own
position relative to the daimyo throughout the country.807
Unregulated trade between the Kyushu daimyō and foreign powers risked fostering growth
which if allowed to continue uncontrolled might threaten the bakufu’s power.808 This was
not an irrational fear; a number of these daimyō, who happened to be Kirishitan or rule
domains where Christianity was popular, had fought against the Tokugawa at the Battle of
Sekigahara (Sekigahara no tatakai ) in 1600, and therefore their loyalty
remained doubtful.809 By limiting foreign traders to the bakufu controlled port of Nagasaki
and regulating the ability of the Japanese to conduct overseas trade, these daimyō were
prevented from gaining the financial ability to challenge the Tokugawa locus of power,
whilst the bakufu gained a monopoly on trade profits.810 The edicts thereby acted as
‘rational measures directed against those elements of society that posed the greatest threat
to the shogunal house.’811 This was the perfection of the centralized trade policy begun by
Hideyoshi and Ieyasu, but was not entirely unique to Japan; Qīng China, Korea and Tonkin
pursued similar policies that restricted foreign trade, issued merchant licenses, limited the
807 Ibid. 808 Sansom, A History of Japan, vol. 3, 43; Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa
Hegemony, 185. 809 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 186. 810 Sansom, A History of Japan, vol. 3, 43; Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 372-373. 811 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 186.
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areas from which foreigners could conduct trade, and restricted the movement of their
citizens overseas.812 The kaikin rei were therefore a wider East Asian phenomenon.813 The
anti-Kirishitan injunctions within the edicts were not insignificant, but should be understood
within the overall theme of trade and as oriented towards attempting to end the smuggling
of missionaries.814 George Sansom drawing on the commentary of Huáng Zōngxī 位
(1610-1695) who visited Japan in 1646 concludes:
it is unlikely that fear of Christianity was the compelling reason for [sakoku
policy]…the underlying reason was the determination of the Tokugawa to secure
internal peace and prosperity, and to avoid any foreign involvement likely to
jeopardize those aims…the measures they took were typical of Confucian China,
which was always isolationist and preoccupied with internal security…815
812 Ibid., 184-186, 188-189. On trends in Chinese and Korean trade, see: Van Dyke, The Canton Trade:
Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700-1845; Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macao: Politics and Strategies in Eighteenth-Century Chinese Trade; Schottenhammer ed., The East Asian Maritime World 1400- 1800: Its Fabrics of Power and Dynamics of Exchanges; Zhuang, Tea, Silver, Opium and War: The International Tea Trade and Western Commercial Expansion into China in 1740-1840; Edwards, “The Old Canton System of Foreign Trade,” 360-378; Lin and Zelin eds., Merchant Communities in Asia, 1600-1980; Robinson, “Shaping Maritime East Asia in the 15th and 16th Centuries through Chosŏn Korea,” 185-210.
813 Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 188-189. 814 Injunctions prescribing the searching and guarding of ships, and outlining rewards for informants,
point to ongoing issues pertaining to the link between foreign trade and the smuggling of missionaries and Christian goods. Laver, The Sakoku Edicts and the Politics of Tokugawa Hegemony, 66-76.
815 Sansom, A History of Japan, vol. 3, 44.
