JAPAN
He did not, however, immediately take steps to evince his disapproval of militant Christianity, nor when the time seemed ripe for proscribing it did he proceed to extremities. The crucifixion spear does not appear to have suggested itself to him as a prudent weapon for combating moral convictions. It is true that in the heat of his first anti-Christian demonstration he caused two men to be executed, and it is also true that he deprived a Christian noble of his fief by way of penalty for the constancy of his faith. But, for the rest, he remained content with the razing of a few chapels, and with a public declaration that he would not tolerate, on the part of Christian propagandists, any recourse to the violent methods of which the country had garnered such painful experiences in the case of the Buddhist Sōhei, and of which the Christians had already shown themselves ready employers. There is nothing to indicate that, had Christianity thenceforth relied solely on legitimate weapons, the pulpit, education, and example, paying due respect to the laws of the land and extending to others the toleration that it claimed for itself—there is nothing to indicate that it might not have retained, strengthened, and extended the footing it had gained in Japan, and that the Japanese might not then have finally entered the arena of international intercourse and competition, instead of isolating themselves for nearly three centuries until they had been almost
116
