– XXXV –

In which there is trouble at home with great consequences

Tokugawa Ieyasu was the Shogun of Japan. Known for his astuteness on and off the battlefield, he also cultivated a keen interest in the world outside the Kingdom. He had long tolerated foreign visitors in exchange for the intellectual stimulation their presence provoked.

The Portuguese and the Spanish were the first to catch his attention, and he permitted their proselytizing out of pure curiosity. He was amused at first to see how little progress the Catholics made until one of their leaders, a Jesuit, Alessandro Valignano, who arrived in 1579, realized that in order to make more headway, the order would have to adopt Japanese customs: their manner of dress, their shunning of meat, bathing, not eating with their fingers. Tokugawa Ieyasu marveled at how this small, superficial stratagem bore fruit, converting thousands of his subjects.

He was further intrigued to see, when a moribund, undernourished crew of English merchants washed up on his shores in 1600 aboard a Dutch ship, how vociferously the Jesuits, despite their Christian values, wished to have the half-drowned men put to death.

He granted an audience to the most articulate among the Englishmen, one William Adams, and discovered that, contrary to what the Jesuits had been telling him for years, the European nations were divided into different sects of Christianity that were often at each other’s throats. What impressed him more was the discovery that William Adams, a man of exceptional charm, possessed great knowledge in the arts of navigation, something of practical and tactical use. The man’s globes and charts, his maps and compasses, his astronomical explanations based on geometry, proved more engrossing than the Jesuits harping on about immaculate conceptions.

Subsequent to Adams’s success with the Shogun, the Catholics saw their influence wane. They made themselves even more of a nuisance by escalating their demands, a disastrous ploy that only alienated the Shogun further. While they insisted on their exceptionalism, Adams seemed to understand and appreciate the Japanese way of life. He had no religion to sell. His only interests were trade and science. The Catholic position eroded further still when in 1611 a Spanish Admiral appeared in court, one Sebastián Vizcaíno, who refused to bow down before the Shogun and his son, on the grounds that his own sovereign, Philip the Third, ruled an empire a hundred times grander than Japan’s.

William Adams went on to become a trusted counselor of the Shogun and to the Shogun’s son afterwards and was granted the rank of Samurai. He took a Japanese wife and had children and gave instruction to Japanese shipbuilders as to how to improve their ocean-faring vessels. He tutored Shiro and taught him English. And when the Shogun desired to rid himself of Sebastián Vizcaíno, Adams supervised the construction of the Date Maru that took the dour conquistador back home along with Hasekura Tsunenaga and the Delegation organized at the Shogun’s request by Date Masamune.

On the very day that Hasekura Tsunenaga’s baptism took place in Spain, the Shogun learned of a flagrant betrayal in his own court. A local Lord converted to Catholicism was looking to increase the size of his fiefdom. The method he chose was to appeal in secret to one of the Shogun’s councilors who had also become a Catholic. When the Shogun was appraised of the affair and realized that the religious bond between the two men superseded their traditional loyalties, he lost all patience with the sect. The councilor was hacked to pieces and the defiant Lord driven into exile.

By this time, there were over 300,000 converts in the realm and 116 missionaries serving them. The Shogun was told that many of the missionaries were imploring their faithful to heed the priests more than the Shogun’s representatives. He issued an edict—much as Philip the Third had done in 1609 when he drove the Moors out of Spain—ordering all Catholics to leave the country. Those who remained were compelled to convert to one of the Buddhist sects or suffer execution.

Around the time that Hasekura Tsunenaga and the Delegation prepared to sail from Spain to Rome, the Catholics in Japan who had managed to defy the edict and maintain their faith had gathered within the castle in Osaka under the protection of the Shogun’s main rival. The castle was thought to be impregnable. A tremendous battle ensued that brought Date Masamune back onto the field at the Shogun’s side. When it was over, 100,000 bodies littered the fields, and the castle collapsed in flames.

The Shogun prevailed. His power was now absolute and would stay that way for generations. He and Date Masamune, their armor splattered with blood, celebrated the victory together, and the edict against the Catholics was made definitive and irrevocable.