The Martyrs of Nagasaki and the Ban on Christianity in Japan

In 1587 Toyotomi Hideyoshi, ruler of Japan, issued two edicts on Christianity. The first forbade lords to force the people of their domains to convert. The second called Japan the country of the gods, accused the missionaries of having shrines and temples destroyed, and ordered them to leave within twenty days, while the foreign ships might go on trading (Hideyoshi, edicts of 1587 Limitation, articles 1–2 and 8; Expulsion, articles 1–4). The missionaries did not all leave. Ten years later Jesuits were established in the country, and Franciscans from the Philippines kept a house and hospital in the capital with Hideyoshi’s sufferance (Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas chapter 6, on the galleon San Felipe).

In 1596 the Spanish galleon San Felipe, sailing from Manila for Mexico, lost its rudder in storms and ran aground on the Japanese coast, and Hideyoshi seized its cargo. Antonio de Morga, an official at Manila, reports that the ship’s pilot, showing a Japanese official a chart of the Spanish king’s dominions, said that the friars went in first to preach and the soldiers followed, and that this was repeated to Hideyoshi (Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas chapter 6, on the galleon San Felipe). He ordered the friars of the capital and their Japanese helpers to be crucified (Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas chapter 6, on the arrests). The sentence carried before them said that they had come from the Philippines as ambassadors and stayed “preaching the Christian religion, which in former years I have strictly forbidden” (Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas chapter 6, sentence of the Combaco).

They were taken to Nagasaki and crucified on a hill in sight of the town on 5 February 1597 (Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas chapter 6, on the crucifixion). The Jesuit Luís Fróis, writing that year, counts twenty-six: six Franciscans in the middle and ten Japanese on either side, three of whom belonged to the Society of Jesus. They were bound to the crosses and killed with lances. One of the three, the Japanese brother Paul Miki, spoke from his cross. He said that he was a Japanese and a Jesuit and was dying for having preached the gospel, that there was no way to salvation but the one the Christians hold, and that he forgave the ruler and all who had a part in his death and asked them to seek baptism (Fróis, Account of the Martyrdom at Nagasaki chapter 14, sections 104–110 (pp. 768–769)). The sentence and the friar’s letter that Morga prints speak of twenty-four (Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas chapter 6, sentence of the Combaco) (Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas chapter 6, letter of Fray Martin de la Ascension).

On 27 January 1614 the government of Tokugawa Ieyasu issued a proclamation ordering Christianity suppressed. It calls Japan “the country of gods and of Buddha”. The Christians, it says, have come “longing to disseminate an evil law” so as to “change the government of the country, and obtain possession of the land”; they honour condemned criminals; and they are to be swept out until “not an inch of soil remains to them in Japan”. Rules issued with it made Buddhist priests responsible for vouching for the religion of their parishioners (Ieyasu, proclamation of 1614 in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. 6, pp. 46–48).