Nagasaki
Port in western Japan through which Portuguese and Spanish ships traded. Twenty-six Christians were crucified on a hill outside the town on 5 February 1597.
Nagasaki is a port on the island of Kyushu. Antonio de Morga describes it in the 1590s as the harbour between which and the Philippines trade was carried on (Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas chapter 6, on the galleon San Felipe). The Christians condemned by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1597 were brought here and crucified in a row on a hill in sight of the town and port (Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas chapter 6, on the crucifixion). Luís Fróis adds that the hill lay towards the sea and that the Portuguese of the town, who had asked that the usual place of execution not be used, hoped to build a church on the spot (Fróis, Account of the Martyrdom at Nagasaki chapter 14, sections 103–106 (p. 768)). See the Martyrs of Nagasaki and the Ban on Christianity in Japan.
What happened here
- 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.
- 17 March 1865, firm dateThe Hidden Christians of Japan Come Forward
On 17 March 1865 villagers from Urakami tell the French missionary Bernard Petitjean, in his new church at Nagasaki, that their hearts are the same as his. They had kept baptism in secret under the ban. Deported from 1868, the survivors come home in 1873.