Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation

The second half of the sixteenth century is the most interesting period in Japanese history—for three reasons. First, because it witnessed the apparition of those mighty captains, Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Iyeyasu,—types of men that a race seems to evolve for supreme emergencies only,—types requiring for their production not merely the highest aptitudes of numberless generations, but likewise an extraordinary combination of circumstances. Secondly, this period is all-important because it saw the first complete integration of the ancient social system,—the definitive union of all the clan-lordships under a central military government. And lastly, the period is of special interest because the incident of the first attempt to christianize Japan—the story of the rise and fall of the Jesuit power—properly belongs to it.

The sociological significance of this episode is instructive. Excepting, perhaps, the division of the imperial house against itself in the twelfth century, the greatest danger that ever threatened Japanese national integrity was the introduction of Christianity [304] by the Portuguese Jesuits. The nation saved itself only by ruthless measures, at the cost of incalculable suffering and of myriads of lives.

It was during the period of great disorder preceding Nobunaga's effort to centralize authority, that this unfamiliar disturbing factor was introduced by Xavier and his followers. Xavier landed at Kagoshima in 1549; and by 1581 the Jesuits had upwards of two hundred churches in the country. This fact alone sufficiently indicates the rapidity with which the new religion spread; and it seemed destined to extend over the entire empire. In 1585 a Japanese religious embassy was received at Rome; and by that date no less than eleven daimyo,—or "kings," as the Jesuits not inaptly termed them—had become converted. Among these were several very powerful lords. The new creed had made rapid way among the common people also: it was becoming "popular," in the strict meaning of the word.

When Nobunaga rose to power, he favoured the Jesuits in many ways—not because of any sympathy with their creed, for he never dreamed of becoming a Christian, but because he thought that their influence would be of service to him in his campaign against Buddhism. Like the Jesuits themselves, Nobunaga had no scruple about means in his pursuit of ends. More ruthless than William the Conqueror, he did not hesitate to put to death [305] his own brother and his own father-in-law, when they dared to oppose his will. The aid and protection which he extended to the foreign priests, for merely political reasons, enabled them to develop their power to a degree which soon gave him cause for repentance. Mr. Gubbins, in his "Review of the Introduction of Christianity into China and Japan," quotes from a Japanese work, called Ibuki Mogusa, an interesting extract on the subject:—

"Nobunaga now began to regret his previous policy in permitting the introduction of Christianity. He accordingly assembled his retainers, and said to them:—'The conduct of these missionaries in persuading people to join them by giving money, does not please me. How would it be, think you, if we were to demolish Nambanji [The "Temple of the Southern Savages"—so the Portuguese church was called]?' To this Mayeda Tokuzenin replied. 'It is now too late to demolish the Temple of the Namban. To endeavour to arrest the power of this religion now is like trying to arrest the current of the ocean. Nobles, both great and small, have become adherents of it. If you would exterminate this religion now, there is fear that disturbance should be created among your own retainers. I am therefore of opinion that you should abandon your intention of destroying Nambanji.' Nobunaga in consequence regretted exceedingly his previous action in regard to the Christian religion, and set about thinking how he could root it out."

The assassination of Nobunaga in 1586 may have prolonged the period of toleration. His successor [306] Hideyoshi, who judged the influence of the foreign priests dangerous, was for the moment occupied with the great problem of centralizing the military power, so as to give peace to the country. But the furious intolerance of the Jesuits in the southern provinces had already made them many enemies, eager to avenge the cruelties of the new creed. We read in the histories of the missions about converted daimyo burning thousands of Buddhist temples, destroying countless works of art, and slaughtering Buddhist priests;—and we find the Jesuit writers praising these crusades as evidence of holy zeal. At first the foreign faith had been only persuasive; afterwards, gathering power under Nobunaga's encouragement, it became coercive and ferocious. A reaction against it set in about a year after Nobunaga's death. In 1587 Hideyoshi destroyed the mission churches in Kyoto, Osaka, and Sakai, and drove the Jesuits from the capital; and in the following year he ordered them to assemble at the port of Hirado, and prepare to leave the country. They felt themselves strong enough to disobey: instead of leaving Japan, they scattered through the country, placing themselves under the protection of various Christian daimyo. Hideyoshi probably thought it impolitic to push matters further: the priests kept quiet, and ceased to preach publicly; and their self-effacement served them well until 1591. In that year the advent of [307] certain Spanish Franciscans changed the state of affairs.

These Franciscans arrived in the train of an embassy from the Philippines, and obtained leave to stay in the country on condition that they were not to preach Christianity. They broke their pledge, abandoned all prudence, and aroused the wrath of Hideyoshi. He resolved to make an example; and in 1597 he had six Franciscans, three Jesuits, and several other Christians taken to Nagasaki and there crucified. The attitude of the great Taiko toward the foreign creed had the effect of quickening the reaction against it,—a reaction which had already begun to show itself in various provinces. But Hideyoshi's death in 1598 enabled the Jesuits to hope for better fortune. His successor, the cold and cautious Iyeyasu, allowed them to hope, and even to reestablish themselves in Kyoto, Osaka, and elsewhere. He was preparing for the great contest which was to be decided by the battle of Sekigahara;—he knew that the Christian element was divided,—some of its leaders being on his own side, and some on the side of his enemies;—and the time would have been ill chosen for any repressive policy. But in 1606, after having solidly established his power, Iyeyasu for the first time showed himself decidedly opposed to Christianity by issuing an edict forbidding further mission work, and proclaiming that those who had adopted the foreign religion must abandon it. Nevertheless the propaganda [308] went on—conducted no longer by Jesuits only, but also by Dominicans and Franciscans. The number of Christians then in the empire is said, with gross exaggeration, to have been nearly two millions.

But Iyeyasu neither took, nor caused to be taken, any severe measures of repression until 1614,—from which date the great persecution may be said to have begun. Previously there had been local persecutions only, conducted by independent daimyo,—not by the central government. The local persecutions in Kyushu, for example, would seem to have been natural consequences of the intolerance of the Jesuits in the days of their power, when converted daimyo burned Buddhist temples and massacred Buddhist priests; and these persecutions were most pitiless in those very districts such as Bungo, Omura, and Higo —where the native religion had been most fiercely persecuted at Jesuit instigation. But from 1614—at which date there remained only eight, out of the total sixty-four provinces of Japan, into which Christianity had not been introduced—the suppression of the foreign creed became a government matter; and the persecution was conducted systematically and uninterruptedly until every outward trace of Christianity had disappeared.

The fate of the missions, therefore, was really settled by Iyeyasu and his immediate successors; [309] and it is the part taken by Iyeyasu that especially demands attention. Of the three great captains, all had, sooner or later, become suspicious of the foreign propaganda; but only Iyeyasu could find both the time and the ability to deal with the social problem which it had aroused. Even Hideyoshi had been afraid to complicate existing political troubles by any rigorous measures of an extensive character. Iyeyasu long hesitated. The reasons for his hesitation were doubtless complex, and chiefly diplomatic. He was the last of men to act hastily, or suffer himself to be influenced by prejudice of any sort; and to suppose him timid would be contrary to all that we know of his character. He must have recognized, of course, that to extirpate a religion which could claim, even in exaggeration, more than a million of adherents, was no light undertaking, and would involve an immense amount of suffering. To cause needless misery was not in his nature: he had always proved himself humane, and a friend of the common people. But he was first of all a statesman and patriot; and the main question for him must have been the probable relation of the foreign creed to political and social conditions in Japan. This question required long and patient investigation; and he appears to have given it all possible attention.

At last he decided that Roman Christianity constituted a grave political danger and that its extirpation would be an unavoidable necessity. [310] The fact that the severe measures which he and his successors enforced against Christianity—measures steadily maintained for upwards of two hundred years—failed to completely eradicate the creed, proves how deeply the roots had struck. Superficially, all trace of Christianity vanished to Japanese eyes; but in 1865 there were discovered near Nagasaki some communities which had secretly preserved among themselves traditions of the Roman forms of worship, and still made use of Portuguese and Latin words relating to religious matters.

To rightly estimate the decision of Iyeyasu—one of the shrewdest, and also one of the most humane statesmen that ever lived,—it is necessary to consider, from a Japanese point of view, the nature of the evidence upon which he was impelled to act. Of Jesuit intrigues in Japan he must have had ample knowledge—several of them having been directed against himself;—but he would have been more likely to consider the ultimate object and probable result of such intrigues, than the mere fact of their occurrence. Religious intrigues were common among the Buddhists, and would scarcely attract the notice of the military government except when they interfered with state policy or public order. But religious intrigues having for their object the overthrow of government, and a sectarian domination of the country, would be gravely considered. [311] Nobunaga had taught Buddhism a severe lesson about the danger of such intriguing. Iyeyasu decided that the Jesuit intrigues had a political object of the most ambitious kind; but he was more patient than Nobunaga. By 1603 he, had every district of Japan under his yoke; but he did not issue his final edict until eleven years later. It plainly declared that the foreign priests were plotting to get control of the government, and to obtain possession of the country:—

"The Kirishitan band have come to Japan, not only sending their merchant-vessels to exchange commodities, but also longing to disseminate an evil law, to overthrow right doctrine, so that they may change the government of the country, and obtain possession of the land. This is the germ of great disaster, and must be crushed…..

"Japan is the country of the gods and of the Buddha: it honours the gods, and reveres the Buddha…. The faction of the Bateren* disbelieve in the Way of the Gods, and blaspheme the true Law, —violate right-doing, and injure the good…. They truly are the enemies of the gods and of the Buddha…. If this be not speedily prohibited, the safety of the state will, assuredly hereafter be imperilled; and if those who are charged with ordering its affairs do not put a stop to the evil, they will expose themselves to Heaven's rebuke.

"These [missionaries] must be instantly swept out, so that not an inch of soil remains to them in Japan on which [312] to plant their feet; and if they refuse to obey this command, they shall suffer the penalty…. Let Heaven and the Four Seas hear this. Obey!"*

It will be observed that there are two distinct charges made against the Bateren in this document,—that of political conspiracy under the guise of religion, with a view to getting possession of the government; and that of intolerance, towards both the Shinto and the Buddhist forms of native worship. The intolerance is sufficiently proved by the writings of the Jesuits themselves. The charge of conspiracy was less easy to prove; but who could reasonably have doubted that, were opportunity offered, the Roman Catholic orders would attempt to control the general government precisely as they had been able to control local government already in the lordships of converted daimyo. Besides, we may be sure that by the time at which the edict was issued, Iyeyasu must have heard of many matters likely to give him a most evil opinion of Roman Catholicism:—the story of the Spanish conquests in America, and the extermination of the West Indian races; the story of the persecutions in the Netherlands, and of the work of the Inquisition elsewhere; the story of the attempt of Philip II to conquer England, and of the loss of the two great [313] Armadas. The edict was issued in 1614, and Iyeyasu had found opportunity to inform himself about some of these matters as early as 1600. In that year the English pilot Will Adams had arrived at Japan in charge of a Dutch ship, Adams had started on this eventful voyage in the year 1598,—that is to say, just ten years after the defeat of the first Spanish Armada, and one year after the ruin of the second.

He had seen the spacious times of great Elizabeth—who was yet alive;—he had very probably seen Howard and Seymour and Drake and Hawkins and Frobisher and Sir Richard Grenville, the hero of 1591. For this Will Adams was a Kentish man, who had "serued for Master and Pilott in her Majesties ships …" The Dutch vessel was seized immediately upon her arrival at Kyushu; and Adams and his shipmates were taken into custody by the daimyo of Bungo, who reported the fact to Iyeyasu. The advent of these Protestant sailors was considered an important event by the Portuguese Jesuits, who had their own reasons for dreading the results of an interview between such heretics and the ruler of Japan. But Iyeyasu also happened to think the event an important one; and he ordered that Adams should be sent to him at Osaka. The malevolent anxiety of the Jesuits about the matter had not escaped Iyeyasu's penetrating observation. They endeavoured again and again to have the sailors killed, according to the [314] written statement of Adams himself, who was certainly no liar; and they had been able—in Bungo to frighten two scoundrels of the ship's company into giving false testimony.* "The Iesuites and the Portingalls," wrote Adams, "gaue many euidences against me and the rest to the Emperour [Iyeyasu], that we were theeues and robbers of all nations,—and [that] were we suffered to liue,—it should be against the profit of his Highnes, and the land."

But Iyeyasu was perhaps all the more favourably inclined towards Adams by the eagerness of the Jesuits to have him killed—"crossed [crucified]," as Adams called it,—"the custome of iustice in Japan, as hanging is in our land." He gave them answer, says Adams, "that we had as yet not doen to him nor to none of his lande any harme or dammage: therefore against Reason and Iustice to put vs to death." … And there came to pass precisely what the Jesuits had most feared,—what they had vainly endeavoured by intimidation, by slander, by all possible intrigue to prevent,—an interview between Iyeyasu and the heretic Adams. [315] "Soe that as soon as I came before him," wrote Adams, "he demanded of me of what countrey we were: so I answered him in all points; for there was nothing that he demanded not, both concerning warre and peace between countrey and countrey: so that the particulars here to wryte would be too tedious. And for that time I was commanded to prison, being well vsed, with one of our mariners that cam with me to serue me." From another letter of Adams it would seem that this interview lasted far into the night, and that Iyeyasu's questions referred especially to politics and religion. "He asked," says Adams, "whether our countrey had warres? I answered him yea, with the Spaniards and Portugals—beeing in peace with all other nations. Further he asked me in what I did beleeue? I said, in God, that made heauen and earth. He asked me diverse other questions of things of religion, and many other things: As, what way we came to the country?

Having a chart of the whole world, I shewed him through the Straight of Magellan. At which he wondred, and thought me to lie. Thus, from one thing to another, I abode with him till midnight." … The two men liked each other at sight, it appears. Of Iyeyasu, Adams significantly observes: "He viewed me well, and seemed to be wonderful favourable." Two days later Iyeyasu again sent for Adams, and cross-questioned him just about those matters which the [316] Jesuits wanted to remain in the dark. "He demaunded also as conserning the warres between the Spaniard or Portingall and our countrey, and the reasons: the which I gaue him to vnderstand of all things, which he was glad to heare, as it seemed to me. In the end I was commaunded to prisson agein, but my lodging was bettered." Adams did not see Iyeyasu again for nearly six weeks: then he was sent for, and cross-questioned a third time. The result was liberty and favour. Thereafter, at intervals, Iyeyasu used to send for him; and presently we hear of him teaching the great statesman "some points of jeometry, and understanding of the art of mathematickes, with other things." … Iyeyasu gave him many presents, as well as a good living, and commissioned him to build some ships for deep-sea sailing.

Eventually, the poor pilot was created a samurai, and given an estate. "Being employed in the Emperour's seruice," he wrote, "he hath given me a liuing, like vnto a lordship in England, with eightie or ninetie husbandmen that be as my slaues or seruents: the which, or the like president [precedent], was neuer here before geven to any stranger." … Witness to the influence of Adams with Iyeyasu is furnished by the correspondence of Captain Cock, of the English factory, who thus wrote home about him in 1614: "The truth is the Emperour esteemeth hym much, and he may goe in and speake with hym at all times, when [317] kynges and princes are kept ovt."** It was through this influence that the English were allowed to establish their factory at Hirado. There is no stranger seventeenth-century romance than that of this plain English pilot,—with only his simple honesty and common-sense to help him,—rising to such extraordinary favour with the greatest and shrewdest of all Japanese rulers. Adams was never allowed, however, to return to England,—perhaps because his services were deemed too precious to lose. He says himself in his letters that Iyeyasu never refused him anything that he asked for,*** except the privilege of revisiting England: when he asked that, once too often, the "ould Emperour" remained silent.

[*"Daily more and more the Portugalls incensed the justices and the people against vs. And two of our men, as traytors, gaue themselves in seruice to the king [daimyo], beeing all in all with the Portugals, hauing by them their liues warranted. The one was called Gilbert de Conning, whose mother dwelleth at Middleborough, who gaue himself out to be marchant of all the goods in the shippe. The other was called Iobn Abelson Van Owater. These traitours sought all manner of wayes to get the goods into their hands, and made known vnto them all things that had passed in our voyage. Nine dayes after our arriuall, the great king of the land [Iyeyasu] sent for me to come vnto him. "—Letter of Will Adams to his wife.]

**"It has plessed God to bring things to pass, so as in ye eyes of ye world [must seem] strange; for the Spaynnard and Portingall hath bin my bitter enemies to death; and now theay must seek to me, an unworthy wretch; for the Spaynard as well as the Portingall must haue all their negosshes [negotiations] go thorough my hand.—" Letter of Adams dated January 12, 1613.

***Even favours for the people who had sought to bring about his death. "I pleased him so," wrote Adams, "that what I said he would not contrarie. At which my former enemies did wonder; and at this time must entreat me to do them a friendship, which to both Spaniards and Portingals have I doen: recompencing them good for euill. So, to passe my time to get my liuing, it hath cost mee great labour and trouble at the first, but God hath blessed my labour."]

The correspondence of Adams proves that Iyeyasu disdained no means of obtaining direct information about foreign affairs in regard to religion and politics. As for affairs in Japan, he had at his disposal the most perfect system of espionage ever [318] established; and he knew all that was going on. Yet he waited, as we have seen, fourteen years before he issued his edict. Hideyoshi's edict was, indeed, renewed by him in 1606; but that referred particularly to the public preaching of Christianity; and while the missionaries outwardly conformed to the law, he continued to suffer them within his own dominions. Persecutions were being carried on elsewhere; but the secret propaganda was also being carried on, and the missionaries could still hope. Yet there was menace in the air, like the heaviness preceding storms. Captain Saris, writing from Japan in 1613, records a pathetic incident which is very suggestive. "I gaue leaue," he says, "to divers women of the better sort to come into my Cabbin, where the picture of Venus, with her sonne Cupid, did hang somewhat wantonly set out in a large frame.

They, thinking it to bee Our Ladie and her sonne, fell downe and worshipped it, with shewes of great deuotion, telling me in a whispering manner (that some of their own companions, which were not so, might not heare), that they were Christianos: whereby we perceived them to be Christians, conuerted by the Portugall Iesuits." … When Iyeyasu first took strong measures, they were directed, not against the Jesuits, but against a more imprudent order,—as we know from Adams's correspondence. "In the yeer 1612," he says, "is put downe all the sects of the Franciscannes. The Jesouets hau [319] what priuiledge … theare beinge in Nangasaki, in which place only may be so manny as will of all sectes: in other places not so many permitted…." Roman Catholicism was given two more years' grace after the Franciscan episode.

Why Iyeyasu should have termed it a "false and corrupt religion," both in his Legacy and elsewhere, remains to be considered. From the Far-Eastern point of view he could scarcely have judged it otherwise, after an impartial investigation. It was essentially opposed to all the beliefs and traditions upon which Japanese society had been founded. The Japanese State was an aggregate of religious communities, with a God-King at its head;—the customs of all these communities had the force of religious laws, and ethics were identified with obedience to custom; filial piety was the basis of social order, and loyalty itself was derived from filial piety. But this Western creed, which taught that a husband should leave his parents and cleave to his wife, held filial piety to be at best an inferior virtue. It proclaimed that duty to parents, lords, and rulers remained duty only when obedience involved no action opposed to Roman teaching, and that the supreme duty of obedience was not to the Heavenly Sovereign at Kyoto, but to the Pope at Rome. Had not the Gods and the Buddhas been called devils by these missionaries from Portugal and Spain? Assuredly such doctrines were subversive, [320] no matter how astutely they might be interpreted by their apologists. Besides, the worth of a creed as a social force might be judged from its fruits. This creed in Europe had been a ceaseless cause of disorders, wars, persecutions, atrocious cruelties. This creed, in Japan, had fomented great disturbances, had instigated political intrigues, had wrought almost immeasurable mischief.

In the event of future political trouble, it would justify the disobedience of children to parents, of wives to husbands, of subjects to lords, of lords to shogun. The paramount duty of government was now to compel social order, and to maintain those conditions of peace and security without which the nation could never recover from the exhaustion of a thousand years of strife. But so long as this foreign religion was suffered to attack and to sap the foundations of order, there never could be peace…. Convictions like these must have been well established in the mind of Iyeyasu when he issued his famous edict. The only wonder is that he should have waited so long.

Very possibly Iyeyasu, who never did anything by halves, was waiting until Christianity should find itself without one Japanese leader of ability. In 1611 he had information of a Christian conspiracy in the island of Sado (a convict mining-district) whose governor, Okubo, had been induced to adopt Christianity, and was to be made ruler of the country if [321] the plot proved successful. But still Iyeyasu waited. By 1614 Christianity had scarcely even an Okubo to lead the forlorn hope. The daimyo converted in the sixteenth century were dead or dispossessed or in banishment; the great Christian generals had been executed; the few remaining converts of importance had been placed under surveillance, and were practically helpless.

The foreign priests and native catechists were not cruelly treated immediately after the proclamation of 1614. Some three hundred of them were put into ships and sent out of the country,—together with various Japanese suspected of religious political intrigues, such as Takayama, former daimyo of Akashi, who was called "Justo Ucondono" by the Jesuit writers, and who had been dispossessed and degraded by Hideyoshi for the same reasons. Iyeyasu set no example of unnecessary severity. But harsher measures followed upon an event which took place in 1615,—the very year after the issuing of the edict. Hideyori, the son of Hideyoshi, had been supplanted—fortunately for Japan—by Iyeyasu, to whose tutelage the young man had been confided. Iyeyasu took all care of him, but had no intention of suffering him to direct the government of the country,—a task scarcely within the capacity of a lad of twenty-three. In spite of various political intrigues in which Hideyori was known to have taken part, Iyeyasu had left him in possession [322] of large revenues, and of the strongest fortress in Japan,—that mighty castle of Osaka, which Hideyoshi's genius had rendered almost impregnable. Hideyori, unlike his father, favoured the Jesuits: and he made the castle a refuge for adherents of the "false and corrupt sect." Informed by government spies of a dangerous intrigue there preparing, Iyeyasu resolved to strike; and he struck hard. In spite of a desperate defence, the great fortress was stormed and burnt—Hideyori perishing in the conflagration.

"Hee mad warres with the Emperour … allso by the Jessvits and Ffriers, which mad belleeue he should be fauord with mirrackles and wounders; but in fyne it proued the contrari. For the ould Emperour against him pressentlly maketh his forces reddy by sea and land, and compasseth his castell that he was in; although with loss of multitudes on both sides, yet in the end rasseth the castell walles, setteth it on fyre, and burneth hym in it. Thus ended the warres. Now the Emperour heering of thees Jessvets and friers being in the castell with his ennemis, and still from tym to tym agaynst hym, coumandeth all romische sorte of men to depart ovt of his countri—thear churches pulld dooun, and burned. This folowed in the ould Emperour's [323] daies. Now this yeear, 1616, the old Emperour he died. His son raigneth in his place, and hee is more hot agaynste the romish relligion then his ffather wass: for he hath forbidden thorough all his domynions, on paine of deth, none of his subjects to be romish christiane; which romish seckt to prevent eueri wayes that he maye, he hath forbidden that no stranger merchant shall abid in any of the great citties." …

The son here referred to was Hidetada, who, in 1617, issued an ordinance sentencing to death every Roman priest or friar discovered in Japan,—an ordinance provoked by the fact that many priests expelled from the country had secretly returned, and that others had remained to carry on their propaganda under various disguises. Meanwhile, in every city, town, village, and hamlet throughout the empire, measures had been taken for the extirpation of Roman Christianity. Every community was made responsible for the existence in it of any person belonging to the foreign creed; and special magistrates, or inquisitors, were appointed, called Kirishitan-bugyo, to seek out and punish members of the prohibited religion.* Christians [324] who freely recanted were not punished, but only kept under surveillance: those who refused to recant, even after torture, were degraded to the condition of slaves, or else put to death. In some parts of the country, extraordinary cruelty was practised, and every form of torture used to compel recantation. But it is tolerably certain that the more atrocious episodes of the persecution were due to the individual ferocity of local governors or magistrates—as in the case of Takenaka Uneme-no-Kami, who was compelled by the government to perform harakiri for abusing his powers at Nagasaki, and making persecution a means of extorting money. Be that as it may, the persecution at last either provoked, or helped to bring about a Christian rebellion in the daimiate of Arima,—historically remembered as the Shimabara Revolt.

In 1636 a host of peasants, driven to desperation by the tyranny of their lords—the daimyo of Arima and the daimyo of Karatsu (convert-districts)—rose in arms, burnt all the Japanese temples in their vicinity, and proclaimed religious war. Their banner bore a cross; their leaders were converted samurai. They were soon [325] joined by Christian refugees from every part of the country, until their numbers swelled to thirty or forty thousand. On the coast of the Shimabara peninsula they seized an abandoned castle, at a place called Hara, and there fortified themselves. The local authorities could not cope with the uprising; and the rebels more than held their own until government forces, aggregating over 160,000 men, were despatched against them. After a brave defence of one hundred and two days, the castle was stormed in 1638, and its defenders, together with their women and children, put to the sword. Officially the occurrence was treated as a peasant revolt; and the persons considered responsible for it were severely punished;—the lord of Shimabara (Arima) was further sentenced to perform harakiri. Japanese historians state that the rising was first planned and led by Christians, who designed to seize Nagasaki, subdue Kyushu, invite foreign military help, and compel a change of government;—the Jesuit writers would have us believe there was no plot. One thing certain is that a revolutionary appeal was made to the Christian element, and was largely responded to with alarming consequences.

A strong castle on the Kyushu coast, held by thirty or forty thousand Christians, constituted a serious danger,—a point of vantage from which a Spanish invasion of the country might have been attempted with some [326] chance of success. The government seems to have recognized this danger, and to have despatched in consequence an overwhelming force to Shimabara. If foreign help could have been sent to the rebels, the result might have been a prolonged civil war. As for the wholesale slaughter, it represented no more than the enforcement of Japanese law: the punishment of the peasant revolting against his lord, under any circumstances whatever, being death. So far as concerns the policy of such massacre, it may be remembered that, with less provocation, Nobunaga exterminated the Tendai Buddhists at Hiyei-san. We have every reason to pity the brave men who perished at Shimabara, and to sympathize with their revolt against the atrocious cruelty of their rulers. But it is necessary, as a simple matter of justice, to consider the whole event from the Japanese political point of view.

[*It should be borne in mind that none of these edicts were directed against Protestant Christianity: the Dutch were not considered Christians in the sense of the ordinances, nor were the English. The following extract from a typical village, Kumicho, or code of communal regulations, shows the responsibility imposed upon all communities regarding the presence in their midst of Roman Catholic converts or believers:—

"Every year, between the first and the third month, we will renew our Shumon-cho If we know of any person who belongs to a prohibited sect, we will immediately inform the Daikwan…. Servants and labourers shall give to their masters a certificate declaring that they are not Christians. In regard to persons who have been Christians, but have recanted,—if such persons come to or leave the village, we promise to report it."—See Professor Wigmore's Notes on Land-Tenure and Local Institutions in Old Japan.]

The Dutch have been denounced for helping to crush the rebellion with ships and cannon: they fired, by their own acknowledgment, 426 shot into the castle. However, the extant correspondence of the Dutch factory at Hirado proves beyond question that they were forced, under menace, to thus act. In any event, it would be difficult to discover a good reason for the merely religious denunciations of their conduct,—although that conduct would be open to criticism from the humane [327] point of view. Dutchmen could not reasonably have refused to assist the Japanese authorities in suppressing a revolt, merely because a large proportion of the rebels happened to profess the religion which had been burning alive as heretics the men and women of the Netherlands. Very possibly, not a few persons of kin to those very Dutch had suffered in the days of Alva. What would have happened to all the English and Dutch in Japan, if the Portuguese and Spanish clergy could have got full control of government, ought to be obvious.

With the massacre of Shimabara ends the real history of the Portuguese and Spanish missions. After that event, Christianity was slowly, steadily, implacably stamped out of visible existence. It had been tolerated, or half-tolerated, for only sixty-five years: the entire history of its propagation and destruction occupies a period of scarcely ninety years. People of nearly every rank, from prince to pauper, suffered for it; thousands endured tortures for its sake—tortures so frightful that even three of those Jesuits who sent multitudes to useless martyrdom were forced to deny their faith under the infliction;* and tender women, sentenced to, the stake, carried [328] their little ones with them into the fire, rather than utter the words that would have saved both mother and child. Yet this religion, for which thousands vainly died, had brought to Japan nothing but evil disorders, persecutions, revolts, political troubles, and war. Even those virtues of the people which had been evolved at unutterable cost for the protection and conservation of society,—their self-denial, their faith, their loyalty, their constancy and courage,—were by this black creed distorted, diverted, and transformed into forces directed to the destruction of that society. Could that destruction have been accomplished, and a new Roman Catholic empire have been founded upon the ruins, the forces of that empire would have been used for the further extension of priestly tyranny, the spread of the Inquisition, the perpetual Jesuit warfare against freedom of conscience and human progress.

Well may we pity the victims of this pitiless faith, and justly admire their useless courage: yet who can regret that their cause was lost? … Viewed from another standpoint than that of religious bias, and simply judged by its results, the Jesuit effort to Christianize Japan must be regarded as a crime against humanity, a labour of devastation, a calamity comparable only,—by reason of the misery and destruction which it wrought,—to an earthquake, a tidal-wave, a volcanic eruption.