Tokugawa Ieyasu
Ruler of Japan after Hideyoshi. In January 1614 his government issued the proclamation that ordered Christianity suppressed throughout the country.
The Spanish official Antonio de Morga, whose book was printed in 1609, calls him Yeyasudono, lord of “Quanto”, provinces in the north. He relates that Toyotomi Hideyoshi, dying, left the government to him and four others until his young son should be of age; that Ieyasu defeated the others in battle and remained “the supreme ruler of Japon”; and that he then took the name Daifusama (Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas chapter 6, on Japan after the death of Taicosama).
The proclamation of 27 January 1614 speaks in the ruler’s voice: “We have been blessed by the commission of Heaven to be lord in Japan”. It sets the way of the gods and the law of Buddha against the “evil law” of the Christians, charges them with seeking to change the government and take possession of the land, and commands that they be swept out of Japan (Ieyasu, proclamation of 1614 in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. 6, pp. 46–48). Its translator, Ernest Satow, prints it as the proclamation of Ieyasu (Ieyasu, proclamation of 1614 in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. 6, pp. 46–48). See the Martyrs of Nagasaki and the Ban on Christianity in Japan.
In the timeline
- 1597 to 1614, firm dateThe Martyrs of Nagasaki and the Ban on Christianity in Japan
In 1597 the Japanese ruler Hideyoshi has twenty-six Christians, foreign friars and Japanese converts, crucified at Nagasaki. In 1614 the Tokugawa government orders Christianity suppressed throughout Japan as a threat to the country of the gods and of Buddha.