Ieyasu, evidently having made up his mind that for the safety of the empire Christianity must be extirpated, in 1614 issued an edict[209] that the members of all religious orders, whether European or Japanese, should be sent out of the country; that the churches which had been erected in various localities should be pulled down, and that the native adherents of the faith should be compelled to renounce it. In part execution of this edict all the members of the Society of Jesus, native and foreign, [pg 247] were ordered to be sent to Nagasaki. Native Christians were sent to Tsugaru, the northern extremity of the Main island. Takeyama, who had already been banished by Taikō Sama to the province of Kaga, was ordered to leave the country. He was sent in a Chinese ship to Manila, where he soon after died. In order to repress any disturbance that might arise from the execution of this edict, ten thousand troops were sent to Kyūshū, where the converts were much the most numerous, and where the daimyōs in many cases either openly protected or indirectly favored the new faith.
In accordance with this edict, as many as three hundred persons are said to have been shipped from Japan October 25, 1614. All the resident Jesuits were included in this number, excepting eighteen fathers and nine brothers, who concealed themselves and thus escaped the search. Following this deportation of converts the most persistent efforts continued to be made to force the native Christians to renounce their faith. The accounts given, both by the foreign and by the Japanese writers, of the persecutions which now broke upon the heads of the Christians are beyond description horrible. A special service was established by the government which was called the Christian Enquiry,[210] the object of which was to search out Christians in every quarter and drive them to a renunciation of their faith. Both the foreign priests who had remained in the country in spite of the edict and the native converts [pg 248] were hunted down and punished with the most appalling tortures. Rewards were offered for information involving Christians of every position and rank, even of parents against their children and of children against their parents. At what time this practice began it is difficult to say, but that rewards were used at an early period is evident from the re-issue of an edict in 1655, in which it is stated[211] that formerly a reward of 200 pieces of silver was paid for denouncing a father (bateren) and 100 for denouncing a brother (iruman); but from this time the rewards should be: for denouncing a father, 300 pieces; a brother, 200 pieces; and a catechist, 50 pieces. In 1711 this tariff was raised, for denouncing a father to 500 pieces, a brother to 300 pieces, and a catechist to 100 pieces; also for denouncing a person who, having recanted, returned to the faith, 300 pieces. These edicts against Christianity were displayed on the edict-boards as late as the year 1868.
The persecution began in its worst form about 1616. This was the year in which Ieyasu died, but his son and successor carried out the terrible programme with heartless thoroughness. It has never been surpassed for cruelty and brutality on the part of the persecutors, or for courage and constancy on the part of those who suffered. The letters of the Jesuit fathers are full of descriptions of the shocking trials to which the Christians were subjected. The tortures inflicted are almost beyond belief. Mr. [pg 249] Gubbins, in the paper[212] to which reference has already been made, says: “We read of Christians being executed in a barbarous manner in sight of each other, of their being hurled from the tops of precipices, of their being buried alive, of their being torn asunder by oxen, of their being tied up in rice-bags, which were heaped up together, and of the pile thus formed being set on fire. Others were tortured before death by the insertion of sharp spikes under the nails of their hands and feet, while some poor wretches by a refinement of horrid cruelty were shut up in cages and there left to starve with food before their eyes. Let it not be supposed that we have drawn on the Jesuit accounts solely for this information. An examination of the Japanese records will show that the case is not overstated.”[213]
The region around Nagasaki was most fully impregnated with the new doctrine, and it was here that the persecution was by far the most severe. This was now an imperial city, governed directly by officers from the government of Yedo. The governor [pg 250] is called Kanwaytsdo by Warenius, relying on Caron and Guysbert, but I have been unable to identify him by his true Japanese name. Beginning from 1616 there was a continuous succession of persecutions. In 1622 one hundred and thirty men, women, and children were put to death, among whom were two Spanish priests, and Spinola an Italian. The next year one hundred more were put to death. The heroism of these martyrs awakened the greatest enthusiasm among the Christians. In the darkness of the night following the execution many of them crept to the place where their friends had been burnt and tenderly plucked some charred fragments of their bodies, which they carried away and cherished as precious relics. To prevent the recurrence of such practices the officers directed that the bodies of those burnt should be completely consumed and the ashes thrown into the sea. Guysbert in his account mentions that among those executed at Hirado was a man who had been in the employ of the Dutch factory and his wife. They had two little boys whom the factor offered to take and have brought up by the Dutch. But the parents declined, saying that they preferred to have the boys die with them. A plan was devised by which the heads of households were required to certify that none of their families were Christians, and that no priests or converts were harbored by them.
All this terrible exercise of power and the constantly recurring scenes of suffering were more than the governor could endure, and so we find him at last complaining that he could not sleep and that his [pg 251] health was impaired. At his earnest petition he was relieved and a new governor appointed in 1626. He signalized his entrance upon his duties by condemning thirteen Christians to be burnt, viz.: Bishop Franciscus Parquerus, a Portuguese, seventy years old; Balthazar de Tores, a Dominican, fifty-seven years old, together with five Portuguese and five Japanese laymen. When it came to the crisis the five Portuguese renounced their faith and escaped death. On the twelfth of July nine more were executed, five by burning and four by beheading. On the twenty-ninth of July a priest was caught and executed who had concealed himself in a camp of lepers, and who had hoped in that way to escape detection.
The governor exerted himself to bring about recantations on the part of those who had professed themselves Christians. He promised special favors to such as would renounce their faith, and in many cases went far beyond promises to secure the result. He set a day when all the apostates dressed in their best clothes should present themselves at his office. Fifteen hundred appeared on this occasion, and were treated with the greatest kindness and consideration. But the officers began to see that putting Christians to death would not prevent others from embracing the same doctrine. There grew up such an enthusiasm among the faithful that they sought rather than avoided the crown of martyrdom. As Guysbert points out, the knowledge of the Christian religion possessed by these converts must have been exceedingly small; they knew the Lord's prayer [pg 252] and the Ave Maria, and a few other prayers of the Church, but they had not the Scriptures to read, and many of them could not have read them even if they had been translated into their own language. And yet these humble and ignorant people withstood death, and tortures far worse than death, with a heroism worthy of all praise.
On the eighth of February, 1627, twelve persons were captured in a hiding-place about a mile from Nagasaki; they were first branded with a hot iron on the forehead, and then on each cheek; then because they would not recant they were burnt to death. Subsequently forty more were captured, among whom were a father and mother with their three young children. The children were frightened at the dreadful preparations, and would have recanted, but their parents refused to permit them to take advantage of the offers of clemency. After the branding and beating, those who were not yet driven to recant were sent off to the boiling springs of Onsen in Arima. Here they were tortured by having the boiling water of the springs poured upon them, and by being compelled to breathe the suffocating sulphurous air which these springs emitted.
On the fourteenth of the following May, nine martyrs suffered all the torments which could be contrived and finally were drowned. August seventeenth five Christians were burnt and eighteen otherwise put to death, of whom one was a Franciscan monk and the rest were natives. October twenty-sixth three Japanese magnates who had joined Hideyori against Ieyasu were discovered to [pg 253] be Christians, and were shipped off to Macao. In the following year, 1628, it is said that three hundred and forty-eight persons were tortured for their faith, including torture by the boiling springs, beating with clubs, and burning. It had been reduced to such a science that when they saw a subject becoming weak and likely to die, they suspended their torments until he revived. Whenever a priest was captured in any household the whole family by whom he had been concealed were put to death.
Another new governor was sent to Nagasaki on the 27th of July, 1629. He came with the high purpose of rooting out every vestige of Christianity. He set about his work in the most systematic manner. Nagasaki, it must be understood, is laid out in streets which can be closed up by gates. Each street had its head man, and every five houses in each street were under the special charge of a separate overseer. These overseers were responsible as to what occurred and who were concealed in each of the houses under his charge. The gates were all closed at night and opened again in the morning.
The governor went through these streets house by house, and examined every person in every house. If the occupants were not Christians, or if they renounced their Christianity, they were allowed to go undisturbed; but if any one persisted in the new doctrine he was sent off to be tortured by hot water at the boiling springs. This torture was now improved by requiring the victim to have his back slit open and the boiling water poured directly on the raw flesh. He used the most monstrous [pg 254] means to force the people to renounce their faith. He compelled naked women to go through the streets on their hands and knees, and many recanted rather than suffer such an ordeal. Other cases are recorded too horrible to be related, and which only the ingenuity of hell could have devised. That any should have persisted after such inhuman persecutions seems to be almost beyond belief. Guysbert says that in 1626 Nagasaki had forty thousand Christians, and in 1629 not one was left who acknowledged himself a believer. The governor was proud that he had virtually exterminated Christianity.