Edicts of Toyotomi Hideyoshi on Christianity (1587)
Two edicts issued on successive days in 1587 by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the ruler who was unifying Japan. The first limits conversions of lords and their subjects to Christianity; the second orders the missionaries to leave within twenty days while trade continues.
The first edict, dated the eighteenth day of the sixth month, leaves it to each person’s conscience whether to follow “the padre” but forbids a lord to force the farmers or retainers of his domain to convert, and requires the holders of large fiefs to obtain permission before becoming Christians. The second, dated the next day, opens with the statement that Japan is the country of the gods. It charges the missionaries with having their followers destroy shrines and temples, says that they cannot be allowed to remain, and gives them twenty days to prepare to leave; the Portuguese ships, it adds, come to trade, which is a separate matter and may go on.
These are the ruler’s own orders and give his stated reasons. The Columbia text prints excerpts only. Missionaries were still in Japan ten years later, as the accounts of 1597 show, and the sentence of that year refers back to this prohibition.
Cited in
- 1597 to 1614, firm date