came to their relief, but a few—notably the Jesuit provincial Ferreyra—apostatized. Matsukura and Takenaka were so strongly obsessed by the Spanish menace that they contemplated the conquest of the Philippines in order to deprive the Spaniards of a Far-Eastern base. But timid counsels then prevailed in Yedo, where the spirit of a Nobunaga, a Hideyoshi or an Iyeyasu no longer presided. Of course the measures of repression grew in severity as the fortitude of the Christians became more obdurate. It is not possible to state the exact number of victims. Some historians say that, down to 1635, no fewer than 280,000 were punished, but that figure is probably exaggerated, for the most trustworthy records indicate that the converts never aggregated more than 300,000, and many of these, if not a great majority, having accepted the foreign faith very lightly, doubtless discarded it readily under menace of destruction. Every opportunity was given for apostatizing and for escaping death. Immunity could be secured by pointing out a fellow-convert, and when it is observed that among the seven or eight feudatories who embraced Christianity only two or three died in that faith, we must conclude that not a few cases of recanting occurred among the commoners. Remarkable fortitude, however, is said to have been displayed. If the converts were intrepid their teachers showed no less courage. Again and again the latter defied the Japanese authorities by coming to the country or returning thither after having been deported. Ignoring the orders of the governors of Macao and Manila and even of the king of Spain himself, they arrived, year after year, to be certainly apprehended and sent to the stake after brief periods of propagandism. In 1626 they actually baptized over 3000 converts. Large rewards were paid to anyone denouncing a propagandist, and as for the people, they had to trample upon a picture of Christ in order to prove that they were not Christians.
Meanwhile the feuds between the Dutch, the Spaniards and the Portuguese never ceased. In 1636, the Dutch found on a captured Portuguese vessel a report of the governor of Macao describing a two days’ festival which had been held there in honour of Vieyra, the vice-provincial whose martyrdom had just taken place in Japan. This report the Dutch handed to the Japanese authorities “in order that his majesty may see more clearly what great honour the Portuguese pay to those he has forbidden his realm as traitors to the state and to his crown.” Probably the accusation added little to the resentment and distrust already harboured by the Japanese against the Portuguese. At all events the Yedo government took no step distinctly hostile to Portuguese laymen until 1637, when an edict was issued forbidding any foreigners to travel in the empire, lest Portuguese with passports bearing Dutch names might enter it. This was the beginning of the end. In the last month of 1637 a rebellion broke out, commonly called the “Christian revolt of Shimabara,” which sealed the fate of Japan’s foreign intercourse for over 200 years.
The promontory of Shimabara and the island of Amakusa enclose the gulf of Nagasaki on the west. Among all the fiefs in Japan, Shimabara and Amakusa had been the two most thoroughly christianized in the early years of The Shimabara Revolt. Jesuit propagandism. Hence in later days they were naturally the scene of the severest persecutions. Still the people would probably have suffered in silence had they not been taxed beyond all endurance to supply funds for an extravagant chief who employed savage methods of extortion. Japanese annals, however, relegate the taxation grievance to an altogether secondary place, and attribute the revolt solely to the instigation of five samurai who led a roving life to avoid persecution for their adherence to Christianity. Whichever version be correct, it is certain that the outbreak ultimately attracted all the Christians from the surrounding regions, and was regarded by the authorities as in effect a Christian rising. The Amakusa insurgents passed over to Shimabara, and on the 27th of January 1638 the whole body—numbering, according to some authorities, 20,000 fighting men with 17,000 women and children; according to others, little more than one-half of these figures—took possession of the dilapidated castle of Hara, which stood on a plateau with three sides descending perpendicularly to the sea, a hundred feet beneath, and with a swamp on its fourth front. There the insurgents, who fought under flags with red crosses and whose battle cries were “Jesus,” “Maria” and “St Iago,” successfully maintained themselves against the repeated assaults of strong forces until the 12th of April, when, their ammunition and their provisions alike exhausted, they were overwhelmed and put to the sword, with the exception of 105 prisoners. During the siege the Dutch were enabled to furnish a vivid proof of enmity to the Christianity of the Spaniards and the Portuguese. For the guns in possession of the besiegers being too light to accomplish anything, Koeckebacker, the factor at Hirado, was invited to send ships carrying heavier metal. He replied with the “de Ryp” of 20 guns, which threw 426 shot into the castle in 15 days. Probably the great bulk of the remaining Japanese Christians perished at the massacre of Hara. Thenceforth there were few martyrs.[1]
It has been clearly shown that Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Iyeyasu were all in favour of foreign intercourse and trade, and that the Tokugawa chief, even more than his predecessor Hideyoshi, made strenuous efforts to differentiate Foreign Trade in the 17th Century. between Christianity and commerce, so that the latter might not be involved in the former’s fate. In fact the three objects which Iyeyasu desired most earnestly to compass were the development of foreign commerce, the acquisition of a mercantile marine and the exploitation of Japan’s mines. He offered the Spaniards, Portuguese, English and Dutch a site for a settlement in Yedo, and had they accepted the offer the country might never have been closed. In his time Japan was virtually a free-trade country. Importers had not to pay any duties. It was expected, however, that they should make presents to the feudatory into whose port they carried their goods, and these presents were often very valuable. Naturally the Tokugawa chief desired to attract such a source of wealth to his own domains. He sent more than one envoy to Manila to urge the opening of commerce direct with the regions about Yedo, and to ask the Spaniards for competent naval architects. Perhaps the truest exposition of his attitude is given in a law enacted in 1602:—
“If any foreign vessel by stress of weather is obliged to touch at any principality or to put into any harbour of Japan, we order that, whoever these foreigners may be, absolutely nothing whatever that belongs to them or that they may have brought in their ship, shall be taken from them. Likewise we rigorously prohibit the use of any violence in the purchase or the sale of any of the commodities brought by their ship, and if it is not convenient for the merchants of the ship to remain in the port they have entered, they may pass to any other port that may suit them, and therein buy and sell in full freedom. Likewise we order in a general manner that foreigners may freely reside in any part of Japan they choose, but we rigorously forbid them to promulgate their faith.”
It was in that mood that he granted (1605) a licence to the Dutch to trade in Japan, his expectation doubtless being that the ships which they promised to send every year would make their dépôt at Uraga or in some other place near Yedo. But things were ordered differently. The first Hollanders that set foot in Japan were the survivors of the wrecked “Liefde.” Thrown into prison for a time, they were approached by emissaries from the feudatory of Hirado, who engaged some of them to teach the art of casting guns and the science of gunnery to his vassals, and when two of them were allowed to leave Japan, he furnished them with the means of doing so, at the same time making promises which invested Hirado with attractions as a port of trade, though it was then and always remained an insignificant fishing village. The Dutch possessed precisely the qualifications suited to the situation then existing in Japan: they had commercial potentialities without any religious associations. Fully appreciating that fact, the shrewd feudatory of Hirado laid himself out to entice the Dutchmen to his fief, and he succeeded. Shortly afterwards, an incident occurred which clearly betrayed the strength of the Tokugawa chief’s desire to
- ↑ See A History of Christianity in Japan (1910), by Otis Cary.
