The classic image of the death-defying samurai swordsman, to whom the world of the sacred was an ever-present reality. A Christian samurai was no different from any other in his attitude to fighting.
As mentioned throughout this book, not only do Japan’s various religious traditions intermingle, but the Japanese have always seemed content to take part in different religious rites. At the time of the samurai, foreign and indigenous elements were blended institutionally and ritually in a coherent whole that was largely cooperative. The anger of Nichiren was directed at those whom he reckoned had sullied the purity of the faith that otherwise they all so firmly maintained.
In the mid-16th century, however, a new religion arrived – Christianity. The European import of Christianity was to show an intolerance that went far beyond the wrath of Nichiren. When confrontation occurred between Christianity and the religions that were already established in Japan, the Christian attitude was one of no compromise. Rather than formulating their own version of the honji suijaku theory – which might have suggested that Christ, wishing to save all deluded sentient beings, had manifested himself as the kami – the native gods of Japan were simply denounced as devils. Their shrines were destroyed and their statues burned by fervent converts. When the reaction against Christianity began, an equivalent intolerance was pursued against this exclusivist and intrusive foreign creed, with tragic consequences for its adherents.
Just as Buddhism had been carried to Japan on the waves of the elegant culture of Tang China, so was Christianity conveyed to Japan on the choppier seas of 16th-century European learning and technology. The arrival of Christianity in Japan in 1549 had been preceded only six years earlier by the unexpected landfall of the first Europeans. On 23 September 1543 a group of excited Japanese peasants on the island of Tanegashima discovered, anchored in a cove, a Chinese junk driven there by storms. On board the ship were two Portuguese merchants.1 As Japan’s first European visitors the men were interesting enough, but what particularly excited the owner of the island were the matchlock muskets that they possessed. These weapons were the first firearms to be seen in Japan.2 The local daimyõ Tanegashima Tokitaka (1528–79) had to have them, and, according to the traditional account of the subsequent negotiations, money changed hands. European trade with Japan had begun.
Soon the traders were joined by priests, the link between merchant and missionary proving invaluable in the propagation of the gospel. Over the following half century, Portuguese and Spanish traders and missionaries dominated relationships between Europe and Japan. Spain and Portugal became a joint monarchy in 1580, a political factor that enhanced their monopoly of Japanese trade until 1600, when the arrival of the English and Dutch began a long association between Protestant Europe and Japan that eventually eclipsed the Spanish and Portuguese efforts.3 After 1639, when Catholic nations were expelled as a result of the Sakoku (Closed Country) policy, Dutch trading activities continued, but were confined to the artificial island of Dejima in Nagasaki harbour. As English interests had ended in 1623, this became the sole gateway for contact until the opening-up of Japan in the 19th century.
The Christian mission to Japan has a definite starting point of the Feast of the Assumption, 15 August 1549, when St Francis Xavier stepped ashore at Kagoshima.4 Thus began a period of missionary activity lasting about 90 years, which is conventionally and conveniently labelled the ‘Christian Century’, although for the majority of Japanese, Christianity remained a marginal influence during this time. Nevertheless, Xavier’s well-known comments from 5 November 1549 that the Japanese were ‘the best who have yet been discovered’ were echoed by his successor Valignano, who believed that Japan was the most important missionary ground in the East.5
The Jesuit pioneer was to find, as the merchants had already realized, that he had arrived in Japan at a time of political turmoil. Both religious and commercial enterprises needed safe harbours – literally and metaphorically – where their endeavours might flourish. The skill lay in finding a leader who not only had influence and sympathy but enough political acumen to ensure that his head remained securely on his shoulders. Initially, a handful of Japan’s warring daimyõ appeared to fall into this very exclusive category. All were located in Ky
sh, Japan’s southernmost main island where Xavier had landed, and their hospitality to the missionaries went some way towards alleviating the dreadful start that Christian evangelization suffered. To put it mildly, something of the Christian message became lost in translation. Xavier’s first guide to Japan, a reformed pirate called Yajirō, seemed to have understood the religious beliefs of his native land as poorly as the Christianity that he had absorbed in an eight-month-long crash course. As a result Xavier found himself preaching to Japanese whom he had been wrongly informed worshipped one God, about a Christian deity whom he unintentionally equated with Mah
vairocana Buddha through his use of the Japanese title of Dainichi.6
If Yajirō’s clumsy stab at comparative religion had any positive outcome then it was that the confusion (and in one instance the ‘jeers and laughter’)7 that the message caused bought time for the Jesuits to establish themselves. That, combined with the desires of sympathetic daimyõ to attract Portuguese ships to their own harbours, gave Christianity a secure if somewhat baffling start in Japan. Determined to take his message to the top, Xavier proceeded to Kyōto, but he was unable to gain an audience either with the Shogun or the emperor. He came to two conclusions: first, that some of the daimyõ were more important than Japan’s supposed rulers, and second that if he wanted to influence anyone then he had to ‘lift his act’. So in 1551 Xavier made his second visit to Ouchi Yoshitaka (1507–51), a daimyõ whom he had identified as a key figure. His first visit to Ouchi’s capital of Yamaguchi, when Xavier had behaved almost as a supplicant, had been a failure. The second attempt, when he turned up dressed as an ambassador and bearing gifts and credentials, had a very positive effect. The Jesuits were allotted a vacant Buddhist monastery and allowed both to preach and to convert. It was the beginning of a policy of relying on the daimyõ that was to be the hallmark of Christian success. But which daimyõ could be relied upon? Alas, not Yoshitaka, because he was overthrown in 1551 and ‘avenged’ by the decidedly unsympathetic Mōri Motonari at the battle of Miyajima in 1555. As a result, in 1557 the Jesuit church in Yamaguchi became a Buddhist temple once again.
The mission fared better with Otomo Sōrin (1530–87) in Bungo province. Sōrin was helpful from the time he first met Xavier in 1551, even accepting baptism in 1578. This made him the most celebrated of the Kirishitan daimyõ, although he was not the first to earn the prefix. In 1559 Father Gaspar Vilela, helped enormously by a letter of introduction from Sōrin, gained Shogunal permission to preach in the area of Kyōto. Here he came up against the suspicions of Matsunaga Hisahide (1510–77), a fervent adherent of the Nichiren sect, whose initial sympathies with the Christian preachers were reversed when complaints were received from Buddhist priests in the capital that the missionaries were undermining Japanese tradition. Hisahide generously instituted an enquiry into the disruptive religion under three prominent scholars. The process had a very unexpected outcome, because by the end of the sitting all three had converted to Christianity – and without a single juicy Portuguese ship in sight!
Otomo Sōrin, the daimyõ of Bungo province. Sōrin was helpful from the time he first met St Francis Xavier in 1551, and even accepted baptism himself in 1578.
Matsunaga Hisahide, who cannot have been pleased at the outcome, is an interesting character in the history of the samurai and the sacred whose life reflects several of the themes explored in this book. As a statesman he was a ‘kingmaker’ of Shoguns. As a samurai warrior he made an important contribution to Japanese military architecture with the erection of Tamon castle. Father Almeida visited it in April 1565,8 and it is partly from his description that the conclusion has been drawn that Tamon possessed Japan’s first tower keep, although no trace of it now remains.9 As a member of the Nichiren sect of Buddhism, Hisahide displayed that organization’s characteristic intolerance of other sects, to the extent that he is usually blamed for one of the major acts of religious vandalism in Japanese history: the destruction by fire, for the second time, of Emperor Shōmu’s glorious Tōdaiji in Nara. The temple, including the rebuilt hall housing the re-cast Great Buddha, went up in smoke in 1567.10 Luis Frois, however, tells a different story:
A large part of the army which besieged the fortress of Tamonyama was encamped in this temple of the Daibut [sic] and throughout the precincts of this monastery. Among them was also a brave soldier – one who is well known to our people – who in his zeal for the religion and the worship appropriate solely to the Creator of the Universe, without being persuaded to do so by any man, while on guard duty at night secretly set fire to the place. And so everything that was there burned down, with nothing left standing except a gate which was situated far away at the entrance.11
Taira Shigehira had burned Nara in 1181 as an act of war. An anonymous Christian samurai seems to have repeated the act in 1567 as an act of faith. But Matsunaga Hisahide, exonerated by Frois’ revelation, had enough blood on his hands from his deposing of the Shogun Ashikaga Yoshiteru. Eventually forced to commit suicide in 1577, he nevertheless made a dramatic contribution to the mythology of the samurai and the sacred. Hisahide had always sought spiritual solace in the quasi-religious ritual of the tea ceremony with its strong links to Zen Buddhism (see pp. 140–145). Before committing the act of seppuku – the painful version of suicide that involved cutting open one’s abdomen – Hisahide took his most precious tea kettle and smashed it into a thousand pieces so that no other connoisseur would ever own it. To complete the theatre of death, his son dived head first from the parapet of Shikizan castle with his sword halfway down his throat.12
Matsunaga Hisahide was a master of the tea ceremony, and when he was forced to commit suicide after his castle fell he began by smashing his favourite priceless tea kettle so that it would not fall into the hands of his enemies.
Back in Kysh, the Christian faith was being spread by men who were willing to perform acts of cultural mayhem every bit as ruthless as the burning of Nara. To the Jesuits, however, leaders like Otomo Sōrin looked increasingly like an answer to prayer. In 1578, in return for help with his marital problems, Sōrin accepted baptism, proclaiming that his subjects ‘would all have to become Christians and live with each other in brotherly love and concord’.13 To help the brotherly love on its way Sōrin instituted a policy of persecution of Buddhist and Shintō priests and the destruction of their property. He was currently expanding his territories into Hyga province, where such havoc was pursued even more intensely than in Bungo. Though an eye-witness account of these activities does not exist, they probably differed little from the actions of Antonio Koteda of Ikitsuki who ‘had no greater pleasure in the world than to see them pull down idols out of the temples and houses, and burn them and throw them in to the sea’.14 Luis Frois wrote the following account of another prominent Christian convert, Omura Sumitada (baptized as Bartolemeo):
As Dom Bartholomeo had gone off to the wars, it so happened that he passed on the way an idol, Marishiten by name, which is their god of battles. When they pass it, they bow and pay reverence to it, and the pagans who are on horseback dismount as a sign of their respect. Now the idol had above it a cockerel. As the tono [lord] came there with his squadron he had his men stop and ordered them to take the idol and burn it together with the whole temple; and he took the cockerel and gave it a blow with the sword, saying to it, ‘Oh, how many times have you betrayed me!’ And after everything had been burnt down, he had a very beautiful cross erected on the same spot, and after he and his men had paid very deep reverence to it, they continued on their way to the wars.15
Sōrin’s approach to the coexistence of his native gods beside the Christian import was similarly straightforward, and it is instructive to compare this attitude with that of non-Christian samurai generals to whom temple-burning was also not entirely unknown. A certain Hosokawa Akiuji burned several temples and shrines to the ground during one battle, then was so stricken with remorse that he shaved his head and became a monk.16 Sōrin’s temple-burning was deliberate and remorseless, ending in disaster. To the south of the newly acquired Otomo land of Hyga lay the territories of the mighty Shimazu family. St Francis Xavier had first landed in the Shimazu home province of Satsuma, but finding his hosts lukewarm he had moved on. In 1578, as part of their ‘manifest destiny’ to conquer the whole of Kyshu, the Shimazu samurai invaded Hyga. To those of the Otomo army who were not well versed in Japanese heraldry, the approach of a huge army carrying banners that bore a symbol of a cross (usually displayed within a circle and probably derived from the design of a horse’s bit) might have been encouraging. But there was no Christian connection in their appearance, and no sympathy in their intentions. Just before they clashed in battle the war gods granted their leader Shimazu Yoshihisa a dream, as a result of which he composed a poem: ‘The enemy’s defeated host/Is as the maple leaves of autumn,/Floating on the water/Of the Takuta stream.’17 Yoshihisa’s dream proved to be a good omen for the Shimazu. Nearby were two large ponds, where many of the Christian Otomo samurai who fell in the subsequent battle of Mimigawa died; the flags floating in the water looked like maple leaves. Even Otomo Sōrin’s prized pair of bronze cannon, a present from the Portuguese that represented the state of the art in military technology, fell as prizes to the victors. The Shimazu’s victory meant the end of the Otomo as a force in Kysh. Fabian Fucan, the author of a polemic against Christianity, was later to use Mimigawa as an example of what happened to a daimyõ when he forsakes the worship of the gods and Buddhas for a foreign religion:
When the persecution of Christians began some brave believers held secret prayer meetings in their homes. This is a waxworks display in Oe depicting some secret Christians worshipping in a store room.
Look! Look at Otomo Sōrin of Bungo. In the days when Sōrin was still devoted to the Buddhas and kami he brandished his power over all of Kysh and the glory of his name spread throughout the four seas. But after he entered the ranks of Deus the fortunes of war suddenly turned against him. With his eldest son Yoshimune he fell over Hyga to fight the Shimazu, suffered a crushing defeat at Mimigawa, and had to flee home deserted by all and in desperate straits. After that his house gradually fell to ruin, so prosperous, so flourishing for many generations, the family is practically extinct today. And are any offspring left, or not? Such is the sad state of the house at present.18
Pragmatic to the end, the Jesuits drowned their sorrows over Sōrin’s demise two years later when they received the gift of an important piece of Japanese real estate: the harbour of Nagasaki. It was presented to the Order in 1580 by Omura Bartolemeo Sumitada, who had made his entire province Christian. His gift infuriated the neighbouring daimyõ, Matsuura Takanobu (the father of Shigenobu, with whom this book began), not because of any apparent capitulation to the Christians, but because Takanobu had wanted them to make his port of Hirado into their base. Fortified by the Jesuits, Nagasaki was to remain a centre of European influence on Japan long after the Christian missionaries had gone. The sole Dutch trading post after the expulsion was to be set up on Dejima.
Any fears of a possible expulsion were far from the minds of the missionaries in 1580. This was, after all, the year when Oda Nobunaga, who regarded religion as a means of social control, had finally overcome the ‘Devil’s Christianity’ practised by the monto of Jōdo Shinsh. The rise of Oda Nobunaga, whose power was to eclipse that of all his contemporaries, proved a blessing to the Jesuits. In as much as he was interested in any religious ideas – or even ideals – at all, he was sympathetic to Christianity. The economic and military power of the Ikkō-ikki and their sympathizers, many of whom supported them simply because they opposed Nobunaga, gave him a listening ear for these strange foreigners who had access to modern military technology and preached a message that was furiously anti-Buddhist. The fact that their gospel was one of opposition to Japanese religion per se, while Nobunaga was opposed merely to the use of it against him, was overlooked by the Jesuits in their delight at the freedom they enjoyed.
The harbour of Nagasaki was donated to the Jesuits by Omura Sumitada and became an important centre of Christianity and European contact. It was fortified but had to be handed over to Toyotomi Hideyoshi after his invasion of Kysh in 1587.
Nobunaga’s careless encouragement was an arrangement that suited both sides, but what did it really mean to be a Christian samurai? Christ’s teaching about turning the other cheek is conspicuous by its absence from a society where the notion of the vendetta was a solemn duty,19 while any suggestion that ‘Thou shalt not kill’ was ignored as thoroughly in Japan as it was in contemporary Europe. The Jesuits, after all, had come to Japan from a continent torn by religious warfare, where the Church’s advice never seemed to be one of surrender. In 1511 Europe had even witnessed the unique sight of an armoured pope when, confident that he was fighting a just war for the sake of his faith, Pope Julius II fought his anti-French campaign. The leaders of Europe were advised as early as 1502 by a certain Robert de Balsac that when a prince went to war, his first consideration should be that his cause was just; the second consideration was whether or not he had enough artillery.20
One pay-off for having Christian samurai in your armies was suggested by the Jesuits, who argued strongly that Christian converts would show greater loyalty to their daimyõ because betrayal was contrary to the Christian faith. This was quite a claim to make by men who recognized a higher authority than any that could be possessed by a temporal prince. Betrayal may have been contrary to Christian teaching, but with whom did a Christian samurai’s ultimate loyalty lie? Put another way, what were the limits of loyalty? The persecutions that Christians were to suffer under Hideyoshi and Ieyasu arose partly from the answer that these two statesmen provided to that question. They concluded that the demands of Christianity could, under certain circumstances, require a believer to revolt against his rightful ruler, an action that could not be tolerated.
Back in 1577, the Jesuits’ claims appeared to be confirmed by comments made to Nobunaga by his follower Araki Murashige. Though Murashige could not explain the teachings of the missionaries whom he allowed in his domain, he did know that all his Christian vassals were remarkably obedient to him. Yet it was this same Araki Murashige whose actions were to put that statement to the ultimate test. In 1578 he deserted Nobunaga and joined the coalition forces against him, taking his loyal Christian retainers with him. Among them was Takayama Ukon (1553–1615), who had received the baptismal name of Justo. Ukon pursued throughout his domains the now familiar pattern of forced conversions and destruction of non-Christian artefacts and buildings. He was destined to combine to a greater degree than any of his contemporaries the discordant roles of bloodthirsty samurai commander and saintly Christian warrior. Throughout his long career Ukon remained the darling of the Jesuits. To a large extent their approval was justified, as he was one of the few senior members of the samurai class who remained staunch in the faith when times got rough. Most responded to persecution with apostasy. Ukon suffered exile to Manila, where he died in 1615.
In 1578 Ukon and his father held the castle of Takatsuki, which lay midway between Araki Murashige’s headquarters and that of Nobunaga. Determined to have Takatsuki, Nobunaga callously manipulated Ukon’s loyalty to his daimyõ, to his faith and to the two family members he had been required to hand over to Araki Murashige as a guarantee of good behaviour. Using Father Organtino as his messenger and diplomat, Nobunaga threatened Ukon that if he did not hand over the castle to him then the Jesuit priests and their followers would all be crucified. If he joined Nobunaga, they would receive a free hand for proselytizing. In that case the hostages would of course die. Nobunaga’s ultimatum exposes better than any other the cynical reasoning that lay behind his support for the missions. To complicate matters further, Ukon’s father steadfastly refused to place their castle into Nobunaga’s hands, an act that conflicted with Confucian ideals of filial piety.
Unzen, on the Shimabara peninsula, became the open-air torture chamber of the Nagasaki area. Nowadays Unzen is a popular hot-spring resort. This is one of the few large pools of boiling water to retain its appearance from the 17th century.
Takayama Ukon decided that his loyalty lay at a higher level than to the turncoat Araki Murashige. It actually lay at two higher levels: that of Nobunaga and then God, in that order. By that decision Ukon betrayed the hostages and his own father. Takayama the elder went to Araki to explain how he had been thwarted by the machinations of his own son. Fortunately, that was enough to save the hostages, and they survived the affair unharmed. Nobunaga got his castle, the Christian mission survived and Ukon could salve his Christian conscience with the assurance that betraying a traitor provided a rare example of two wrongs making a right.21
Takayama Ukon was one of the most renowned Kirishitan daimyõ. He served Nobunaga and Hideyoshi while still maintaining his faith, and was eventually exiled to Manila, where he died in 1615.
Clearly, extra loyalty was not necessarily part of the package of being a Kirishitan; however, there was a likelier pay-off in that samurai who embraced Christianity would probably demonstrate extra fighting spirit when set against enemies who still espoused the faith that they had been taught to denounce. That was to come true within a few years for the same Takayama Ukon. In 1582 Oda Nobunaga was overthrown and forced to commit suicide. Ukon fought loyally in the battle of Yamazaki that destroyed the usurper, but then fell foul of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Nobunaga’s successor, when on religious grounds he refused to offer incense on the Buddhist altar at Nobunaga’s funeral. He redeemed himself by his participation in the battle of Shizugatake in 1583, and by enthusiastically taking part in Hideyoshi’s destruction of the last of the Jōdo Shinsh supporters at Negorodera in 1585, a battle in which his anti-Buddhist convictions would have given him an easy conscience.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi began his reign in a manner that gave great encouragement to the missionaries. On one occasion he informed them that he might even consider becoming a Christian himself if the Church was willing to drop its ban on polygamy, but he was hardly earnest in his spiritual quest. Elison notes wryly that the interview took place on the appropriate date of April the First.22 The reunification of Japan that Hideyoshi achieved was a far more serious matter than changing one religion for another. Lasting nine years between 1582 and 1591, the process included one operation in particular that was to have an important bearing on the future direction of Christianity in Japan: his conquest of Kysh in 1587. At the time when Hideyoshi intervened, the Shimazu of Satsuma had all but completed their conquest of the island. A request for help from Otomo Sōrin provided the pretext for Hideyoshi to mount the largest military operation seen in Japan up to that time. Among the Kirishitan daimyõ who marched in Hideyoshi’s armies was Takayama Ukon, whom the Jesuit accounts describe as setting off to war with a rosary round his neck. Some samurai bore the device of the cross on their flags; others had it lacquered on to the breastplates of their armour.23 The Shimazu were overcome. While they and certain other daimyõ were generously allowed to retain their territories, they found themselves with new neighbours whose reward for loyalty to Hideyoshi was increased land holdings in return for preventing a Shimazu resurgence.
At the conclusion of the Kysh campaign, one tiny corner of the island remained that belonged neither to a daimyõ nor even to Hideyoshi: the Jesuit enclave of Nagasaki. From here, Father Gaspar Coelho travelled to meet Hideyoshi in the Jesuits’ private warship, which was reputed to be the fastest vessel in Japanese waters. The meeting was courteous, giving no indication of the shock that was to come only a few days later when Hideyoshi issued an edict condemning Christianity and giving the Jesuits 20 days to leave Japan. The document began with a statement that was to become depressingly familiar over the next few decades: ‘Japan is the land of the gods.’ Indeed it was, and the Christians had destroyed the shrines of the kami and the temples of the Buddhas, so they must be punished. The Jesuits were stunned, but Hideyoshi was determined to exercise control over the whole of Japan, just as he had done in Kysh.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the successor to Oda Nobunaga, who was so suspicious of the Christian missionaries that he instituted the first persecutions seen in Japan.
The notice to quit Japan did not include merchants. This was made quite clear, as were several other points set out in a separate document issued the day before the edict, which provided important information about why the process of conquest had to contain measures to suppress Christianity. The Christian daimyõ had instituted compulsory conversion for their subjects, a practice that could not be allowed to continue. By contrast, Buddhism had proved accommodative to the kami of Japan, just as it had absorbed the gods of India. The troublesome Jōdo Shinsh may have been a mass movement, but even it lay within a long tradition. Once shorn of its military strength it was capable of being controlled and turned into a positive force. Hideyoshi’s restoration of the Honganji in Kyōto, an event that happened at about the same time that Christianity was feeling the force of a diametrically opposing attitude, went some way to restoring the medieval balance of power in all its mutually supportive glory. Christianity would accept no such compromise. Grave consequences awaited any expanding religion that went in for such practices as the wholesale destruction of shrines and temples. The Ikkō-ikki had needed war to bring them to their senses, so Hideyoshi drew a fateful parallel between his predecessor’s need to destroy the Honganji and his present concerns with the Christian menace.
This direct comparison between the Ikkō-ikki and the Christians was eventually to prove to be the mission’s death warrant.24 The overthrow of the Togashi daimyõ in Kaga and his replacement by a ‘peasant government’ of the Ikkō-ikki was compared to the antics of Christian daimyõ such as Takayama Ukon. Could there have been a Christian coup in Japan? The concentration of many like-minded individuals in northern Kysh around the ‘Jesuit colony’ of Nagasaki indicated the possibility of an ‘independent Christian Kysh’ had the Shimazu not been around, but a more likely scenario was of the Christian daimyõ supporting a foreign invasion. The size of Portuguese ships and the armaments they carried was well known to the Japanese. European military intervention in Japan may have been a remote possibility, but it is worth remembering that when Khubilai Khan invaded Japan in 1281, the kami had sent a tempest to destroy the invaders. In 1587 Hideyoshi had decided to launch a pre-emptive strike of his own against anyone who might aid such an invasion, and had blown his first blast as a warning.
Even if Christianity’s ‘militant wing’ could be neutralized, why was the faith itself so unwelcome to Hideyoshi, when centuries before the introduction of Buddhism to the ‘land of the gods’ had proved so beneficial to the ruling elite? Buddhism’s success is partly explained by the fact that it came to Japan gift-wrapped in the culture of Tang China. It provided a metaphysical underpinning for the assumption of power by the Yamato court, and the establishment of the system of government that came with it provided the stability that the rulers of Japan welcomed. Christianity offered nothing like this to Hideyoshi. The first guns had been welcome, but Japan now had its own ordnance production facilities. Rather than promising wealth and culture, Christianity presented the dreadful spectre of a re-run of Nobunaga’s ten-yearlong war against the Honganji.
When suspect Christians were interrogated, one test used was to require them to trample on an image of Christ to show their contempt for the faith. This surviving example of a fumi-e from Ikitsuki is a bronze plaque set in a wooden board. It has been worn away by many feet.
When the edict was issued there was some token persecution. As an example to the other Christian daimyõ, Takayama Ukon was dispossessed and Nagasaki was confiscated. Some churches were destroyed and the missionary priests, fearing the consequences, kept their heads down. As far as the year 1587 was concerned, however, that was the extent of anti-Christian activity. Hideyoshi moved on to other concerns, even creating a renewed optimism among the shocked Jesuits when he began a bizarre fashion for wearing things European. The sight of Hideyoshi and his henchmen taking the air with rosaries and crucifixes round their necks produced a mixture of elation and confusion.
That Hideyoshi was probably wrong in his fears that Christians were a Fifth Column, and that the Jesuits were right in their claims that Christianity meant more loyalty to the temporal power rather than less, seemed to be illustrated in 1589 and again in 1590. Among the redistribution of fiefs in Kysh following the 1587 success, half of Higo province had gone to the staunch Christian Konishi Yukinaga. Twice he faced rebellion from within his new territory, and twice he put it down with great severity, even though three out of the five leaders of the ikki on the Amakusa islands were Christian. One wonders if the noble Takayama Ukon would have behaved any differently if his position had been threatened from within his own ranks. The likelihood that men like Konishi or Takayama could unite against Hideyoshi in the name of Christ seemed very remote indeed.
During the ten years that followed the 1587 edict the problems of the Christian daimyõ faded beside the great enterprise of reuniting Japan under the sword of Hideyoshi. In 1588 he enacted his famous ‘Sword Hunt’, by which all weapons were to be confiscated from the peasantry and placed in the hands of loyal daimyõ and their increasingly professional armies. By this act, the means of making war were forcibly removed from anyone of whom Hideyoshi did not approve, as the Sword Hunt was much more than a search of farmers’ premises. Minor daimyõ whose loyalty was suspect, religious institutions who had the capacity for armed rebellion and recalcitrant village headmen were all purged in an operation that parallels Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries. The victims were told that the swords, spears and guns would not be wasted, but would be melted down to make nails for the enormous image of the Buddha that Hideyoshi was erecting in Kyōto. The nation would therefore benefit from the operation in two ways. It would be spiritually blessed and would be freed from the curses of war and rebellion that had caused such disruption and suffering in the past.
Very few of the weapons ended up as nails. Most would have been stockpiled or reissued to Hideyoshi’s armies when they overcame the remaining opponents to Hideyoshi’s rule. By 1591 the reunification process was complete. Hideyoshi issued a further edict by which a strict separation was made between the military and agricultural functions. The Separation Edict defined the distinction between samurai and farmer that was to continue throughout the Tokugawa Period. No longer could a peasant – as Hideyoshi himself had once been – enlist as a foot soldier and rise to be a general. From now on a peasant who was forced (or even volunteered) to do his duty would not carry a sword or gun, but a cripplingly heavy pack on his back. To the leader of a modern army such as Hideyoshi such a restriction on military manpower was a matter of no concern. He had troops in easy sufficiency, and, because of the increased sophistication associated with modern weapons, an untrained and undrilled peasant handed an arquebus or a long-shafted spear would be a liability rather than an asset.
This rigid separation between soldiers and labourers was to become a noticeable feature of Hideyoshi’s final military venture: the Korean campaign. His grand plan to conquer China, for which the subjugation of Korea was a geographical necessity if nothing else, was the natural progress of his achievement of complete power in Japan.25 One other feature of Hideyoshi’s Korean operation, which began with a seaborne invasion in 1592, was the presence in his army of a large number of Christian daimyõ. This was largely because many had their fiefs in Kysh, and logistics meant that the nearer a daimyõ was to the invasion headquarters of Hizen-Nagoya castle, the greater would be his obligation to supply men for the army. The First Division of the invading army included the Kirishitan contingents of Konishi Yukinaga, Sō Yoshitomo, Omura Yoshiaki and Arima Harunobu. So many crosses were flown from their banners that the whole enterprise, as Elison notes, gave the undertaking ‘the air of a bizarre crusade’.26
The Christian samurai behaved with the loyalty that the Jesuits had once described to Nobunaga. Konishi Yukinaga led the initial assaults on the Korean coastal defences in and around Busan, becoming the first general to enter Seoul after a whirlwind advance. An interesting religious perspective on the operation is provided by the fact that in command of the Second Division was Katō Kiyomasa, an adherent of the Nichiren sect who rode into battle with ‘Namu Myõhõ Renge-kyõ!’ emblazoned on his battle flag instead of a Christian cross. He and Konishi Yukinaga did not enjoy a good relationship.
Konishi Yukinaga, the Christian daimyõ who led Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea. From his statue in Uto.
The Korean war also provides the only example in samurai history of the provision of a Christian chaplaincy to a Japanese army. This occurred during the occupation of Korea between the departure of the Japanese forces in 1593 and their return for a second invasion in 1597. The Spanish Jesuit Father Gregorio de Cespedes went to Korea in the winter of 1594/95 in the capacity of visiting chaplain to the Christians among the Japanese troops.27 At the end of 1594 he visited Konishi Yukinaga’s wajõ (Japanese-style fortress) at Ungcheon, where, ‘The Father and his companion had much to do, as all these Christians had neither heard mass nor sermon nor confessed themselves since they had left Japan for Korea.’28 In his second letter home Father Gregorio notes that Ungcheon, in common with the other castles that provided the means of control, was built ‘on a very high and craggy slope. When I have to go down for some confessions at night, it gives me much work, and when I go back I ride a horse and rest many times on the way.’29 The Korean winter was an enormous trial to him:
The cold in Korea is very severe and without comparison with that of Japan. All day long my limbs are half benumbed, and in the morning I can hardly move my hands to say Mass, but I keep myself in good health; thanks to God and the fruit that our lord is giving.30
Among the Kirishitan daimyõ Kuroda Nagamasa is due for special praise. His men listened to two sermons a day, and Nagamasa himself practised his faith devoutly:
in order to meditate on them at his leisure, he withdrew each day at certain hours, which were set aside for this purpose, to read his books of devotion… Being such a great lord and such a leading soldier and commander, and busy in affairs of war, never did he abstain from fasting all the days ordered by the Church, without counting others which he added on account of his devoutness, all of which he accompanied with the secret disciplines which he practised.31
As Father Gregorio was the first European visitor to Korea it is sad that the only Koreans he ever came into contact with were those unfortunates captured by the Japanese and destined to be sent to Japan into slavery. The account of his mission notes an act of charity on the part of at least one member of the occupying forces:
There was a knight, a native of Bungo, who, being in the war in Korea, and taking pity on the many creatures who were dying destitute of their parents, took it upon himself to baptise them because, since he could no longer make their bodies whole, they should not lose their souls. Thus all those whom he saw in probable danger of death he immediately baptised. For this purpose he had a servant of his always carry a bottle of water hanging from his belt and by these means he sent to heaven more than 200 souls.32
The martyrdom by crucifixion of the Twenty-Six Saints of Japan in February 1597, from an oil painting in the Sotome Museum.
Father Gregorio concludes his brief correspondence with some personal yet perceptive observations of the Korean scene:
All these Christians are very poor, and suffer from hunger, cold, illness and other inconveniences very different from conditions in other places. Although Hideyoshi sends food, so little reaches here that it is impossible to sustain all with them, and moreover the help that comes from Japan is insufficient and comes late. It is now two months since ships have come, and many crafts were lost.33
The survivors of this military disaster were sent back to invade Korea for a second time in 1597, but not before that year had witnessed an ominous development in the history of Christianity in Japan. In 1593, while many Christian samurai were fighting and dying in Korea, the Jesuits, who had enjoyed a monopoly of evangelization since Xavier’s day, were joined by a group of Franciscan friars sent from the Philippines. The Franciscans behaved with the characteristic populist ardour of their Order. Their behaviour contrasted with the attitude of the Jesuits, who had focused their efforts largely on the upper reaches of Japanese society. An additional element of friction lay in the Spanish sponsorship of the Franciscans and the Portuguese patronage of the Society of Jesus. But these internal differences need not have caused problems to the Japanese mission had it not been for a most unfortunate shipwreck. As events were to prove, much more than a ship went aground on the rocks of Japan.
The monument in Nagasaki to the Twenty-Six Saints of Japan, martyred under Hideyoshi.
In October 1596 the San Felipe was wrecked off the coast of Shikoku. Hideyoshi ordered that the cargo should be confiscated, and the ship’s pilot, hoping to forestall the action, became very belligerent. He threatened Hideyoshi’s officials, warning them of the power of his Spanish masters and the wealth and resources of the Spanish Empire. His loose tongue also spoke of the way that previous Spanish conquests had begun – by ‘softening up’ the target country using priests. The story got back to Hideyoshi, who began to suspect that the Spanish Franciscans were spies sent to prepare the way for the foreign invasion he had always feared. Knowing much about invading a foreign country, Hideyoshi was unwilling to listen to Franciscan protests that the Jesuits were trying to frame them.
Hideyoshi took action, and the 16th-century kami kaze finally blew with all its force to scatter a non-existent invasion fleet. No ships were smashed to matchwood in his blast. Instead the typhoon hit the Christian mission, and Japan witnessed its first acts of martyrdom by the crucifixion on 5 February 1597 of St Paul Miki and companions: the Twenty-Six Saints of Japan. Their company, which consisted of six Franciscan missionaries, three Jesuits and 17 Japanese laymen, died on a hill overlooking Nagasaki harbour. From this moment, the history of Christianity in Japan took a different turn. From being proud and confident the Christian enterprise slowly went into reverse. There were no more martyrdoms under Hideyoshi, who had not long to live. His disastrous second invasion of Korea was launched within months of the Nagasaki martyrdoms. As Hideyoshi descended into megalomania the samurai were gradually driven out of the Korean peninsula by the joint efforts of Korea and Ming China. Hideyoshi died while his troops were fighting their last rearguard actions, and the defeated samurai – Christian and Buddhist alike – came sadly home.