Toyotomi Hideyoshi
Ruler of Japan who in 1587 ordered the Christian missionaries to leave the country and in 1597 had twenty-six Christians crucified at Nagasaki.
Hideyoshi’s two edicts of 1587 give his own reasons for acting against Christianity: Japan is the country of the gods; lords must not force their people to convert; the missionaries have had shrines and temples destroyed and must leave, though the foreign ships may still trade (Hideyoshi, edicts of 1587 Limitation, articles 1–2 and 8; Expulsion, articles 1–4).
The Spanish official Antonio de Morga, who calls him Taicosama and “sovereign of Japon”, describes him ten years later tolerating a Franciscan house in his capital, seizing the cargo of the wrecked galleon San Felipe, and being told that Spain’s friars prepared the way for its soldiers (Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas chapter 6, on the galleon San Felipe). Morga, no friend of his, puts the order to crucify the friars down to greed and anger (Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas chapter 6, on the arrests). The sentence that Morga prints gives a different ground: the condemned had stayed to preach a religion that he had forbidden (Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas chapter 6, sentence of the Combaco). 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.