A northern Christian community
The Christians of Akita lived in the far north of Japan, in the province of Dewa (出羽).The province included the districts of Akita (秋田) and Senboku (仙北).Most of it was ruled by Satake Yoshinobu (佐竹義宣) from Kubota (久保田), the chief town of the Akita district.At first the daimyo was not hostile to the faith.Older accounts call the town Kubota and the district, or kingdom, Akita.
Jesuits had founded a Congregation of the faithful at Kubota.Its prefect was John Kawai Chiemon, who often gave lodging to the missionaries.Another host of the priests was Joachim Terazawa Tobyoe.A catechist named John Rokuemon had worked for some years with Father De Angelis and other Jesuits in Ōshū (奥州) and Dewa.Many of the Christians had come from elsewhere: the lists of martyrs show surnames taken from other provinces, such as Kaga, Echigo and Izu.
Around 1622: Driven into the snow
The first trouble came around 1622, when, it is said, a false rumour linked the Christians with the Daigan (大眼宗) sect.According to Pagès, this sect was a cult of miners in eastern Japan who honoured the sun and moon and had often rebelled.It is said that sixty of its followers had just been crucified or beheaded for trying to seize the Kubota fortress, and that two Christians were among them.The same reports add that the lord's secondary wife had been sent away for refusing to venerate Amida.
The governor of Senboku picked out three or four families, about thirty people.His men stripped them and drove them into the countryside in the depth of winter.Mothers covered their small children with grass and earth against the falling snow.Pagan neighbours brought wood, rice and clothes by night, but the governor's men put out the fires and stripped the exiles again, ten or twelve times.Soldiers threatened them with drawn swords, and the exiles knelt to receive the blows.The governor had no power to kill them, so the soldiers struck only with the flat of the blade.
Among the exiles was an old woman named Anna, with three sons, three daughters-in-law and grandchildren.When Christians in a village some leagues away invited the group in, she wished to stay where she was and wait for death.Her sons carried her on their shoulders about eighteen miles through the snow.The lord had been away while all this happened.On hearing of it, Satake wrote to rebuke his governor and captain, and on his return he consoled the Christians.The church then had peace from 1622 to the end of 1623.
Early 1624: Arrests and the first deaths
The peace ended early in 1624, after Satake Yoshinobu had seen the shogun's fury against Christians in Edo (江戸).He ordered his chief governor, Umezu Han'emon (梅津半右衛門), to search out Christians across Senboku and Akita, down to the villages.Many chose exile and left their property behind.
On February 9, 1624, two men, John and Louis, were beheaded for the faith at Kubota.Five days later a young woman named Monica Oiwa was killed there.She had served the second, repudiated wife of the lord.Refusing to marry a pagan, she cut her hair as a sign that she had given up the world.Her brother made her work in the kitchen for a year.In the end her pagan brothers accused her, and a cousin beheaded her on a mat in the snow.It is said that her body was later found incorrupt.Another wonder story tells that her coffin, buried deep by pagans, turned up after a flood in a Buddhist temple, and that the Christians finally recovered it.
Many Christians of the domain, nobles among them, were imprisoned at Kubota.Among the prisoners were John Kawai Chiemon and his sons Peter and Thomas.The younger son was only about thirteen.He pretended to be fifteen, the age at which a person could be listed and imprisoned, so that he could die a martyr.
The prisoners lived like novices in a religious house.Noble women were held in their own homes, while others were kept in a common prison and later in private houses guarded by townspeople.Monica, the wife of Vincent Hagiwara Kizaemon, was chained to a pillar for four days without food.Her sons, aged ten and three, cried around her for food and for their father.When the guards threatened to kill the children before her eyes, she cried out: "Strike, and sacrifice me" (translated).She did not give way, and she was then made to work for four months in the kitchen.
A nobleman named John Katta Uneme prepared his young son in a hard school.He had the boy, barely seven, hold a live coal in his hand until told to drop it.The child held it without moving, and his father wept for joy.Some prisoners died in prison of hardship.Two men of Terazawa, Joachim and John, died of want in prison about July 13, 1624.
July 1624: Thirty-two at the stakes
In July 1624, thirty-two Christians were burned alive at slow fires outside Kubota.The stakes stood in open country two or three leagues from the town.Most of those chosen were nobles of the lord's own court, with their wives and children.Among them were three fathers with their sons, and nine gentlemen, each with his wife beside him.Umezu Masakage (梅津政景), younger brother of the castle judge, recorded the burning in his diary.He wrote: "I had 32 Christians burned, 20 of them men and 12 women."
The martyrs put on their finest clothes and asked to be bound, as an honour.Thomas Kawai, the boy of about thirteen, led the procession.He held a small printed book of the Litany of the Saints, given to him by his father, and called on the saints aloud while the others answered.A woman named Tecla, wife of Luke Komazu Tarobyoe, scourged herself all the way to her stake.The whole group sang a Latin prayer for the Lord's mercy.
On the way to the stake, a long prayer in John Kawai's own hand fell from his clothing.In it the prefect commended to the Virgin Mary his sons, his wife, his servants and the brothers of the Congregation.He ended by commending to her all the Christians of Japan and the Society of Jesus.
Sabina, the wife of Alexis Omi Miyemon, asked that her fire be kept slow, so that her reward would be greater.The wood was set so far from the stakes that some martyrs' hair did not burn.They died choked by the heat rather than consumed by the flames.The bodies were guarded for three days and nights before the Christians could bury them with honour.It was reported that the guards saw a light in the sky at night, and that more than three hundred people gathered at the place.The constancy of the martyrs converted many pagans.
July 26, 1624: Fifty beheaded at Kubota
On July 26, 1624, about fifty more Christians were beheaded at Kubota.About half had been held in the town, and the rest were brought from prisons at the mines, three days' journey away.The lists call this second group the prisoners of Innai (院内), a mining place.Four nobles who had been set free chose to rejoin the condemned.The prisoners from the mines were led by Louis Otsu Saburoemon, prefect of a congregation.
Among the dead from Kubota were Simon Itani (or Oya) Yozaemon and his wife Catherine.Diego Mochizuki Chuzaemon and his wife Magdalena died the same day.Paul Akazawa Bun'emon was beheaded together with his sons Andrew and Matthew.From the mines came Joachim Araki Izumi, who died with his son Joseph.
August and September 1624: Terazawa and Senboku
The killings went on through August and September, in the castle town and in Senboku.On August 4, 1624, fourteen Christians from Terazawa (寺沢) were beheaded at Kubota.Anne, the mother of Matthew Gengoro, was beheaded that day.Others included Joachim Terazawa Tobyoe, the host of the missionaries, and Joachim Hayashi Taroemon.Among the dead was a boy of ten.The same group included a Korean, Sixtus Kazaemon, and his wife Catherine.
In Senboku itself, beheadings began in mid-August.Around the same time three more Christians were beheaded in Dewa, among them Andrew Hachizo.A woman named Elisabeth died of want in the Kubota prison on August 21, 1624.
In Senboku the catechist John Rokuemon led a group of fifteen prisoners.Heat, stench and hunger killed two of them, eight days apart.The fourteen survivors were beheaded together on September 4, 1624, and four more about twenty days later.Farmers of Usui were also beheaded, among them Simon Hiemon and Michael Umanoyo.Another Christian, Sixtus Rokuzo, died of cold in the mountains of Dewa that year.
The count and the memory
Accounts put the dead of 1624 in the Satake domain at more than a hundred.Thirty-two were burned alive, and more than seventy were beheaded.According to a Jesuit report, the lord himself saw marvels in the air and said the Christians were right to die for their law, though he forbade anyone to speak of it.The same year about three hundred adults in Dewa were baptized.A later list records fifty people killed at Akita in 1630.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- The day of the burning. most sources give July 18, 1624 (Jennes, Profillet, Pagès and the martyrology in Delplace); Bartoli gives the 15th and notes that others write the 18th; Muto's history and the diary of Umezu Masakage give June 3 of Kan'ei 1.
- Numbers imprisoned. Pagès and Profillet give 42 prisoners, 21 of them nobles; Bartoli says over a hundred; Porro reported that about 150 were said to be in prison.
- July 26. Jennes, Bartoli and Pagès give fifty beheaded; the martyrology in Delplace lists 25 from Kubota and 23 from Yanai.
- August 4. Jennes and Pagès give fourteen from Terazawa; the martyrology in Delplace counts eighteen, adding four farmers of Usui.
- Senboku dates. Bartoli says four poor farmers were the first beheaded, on August 16; Pagès puts thirteen from Uto at Yokota on August 16 and four farmers of Usui on September 18, the date Profillet also gives.
- The mid-August deaths in Dewa. Profillet dates them August 18; the martyrology in Delplace gives three more on August 15.
- The catechist John. Peña (from a Jesuit letter) has Juan Omachi, a longtime Jesuit catechist, beheaded on September 4, 1624; Profillet has John Omai Rokuzaemon, a former Jesuit catechist, beheaded at Kubota on August 4; Bartoli's John Rokuemon led the Senboku prisoners.
- Total dead. Bartoli gives 106 and notes that others count 109; Pagès and Murdoch give 109; Jennes gives three main executions: 32 burned, 50 beheaded and 14 more beheaded.
- Monica Oiwa. Peña and Profillet give her age as 27, Bartoli as 25.
- Thomas Kawai. Profillet says he was under thirteen, Bartoli that he was thirteen.
- Name forms vary. Vincent Hagiwara Kizaemon is also given as Fujiwara or Ghinzaiemon; John Katta Uneme as Kato Uneme, and Anesaki thinks probably Katsuta Uneme; the prisoners from the mines are placed at Yanai, Innai or Iunai.
- The Daigan rumour. Pagès calls it false, while Bartoli blames the bonzes for spreading it and says two bad Christians had been accomplices of the sect in a crime.
- Simon Kikuchi Jinbyoe's burning is printed as July 10 in Profillet, against July 18 elsewhere.
- Sixtus Rokuzo was first listed by Profillet among the pious dead and moved to the martyrs in his errata.
- The 1630 killings at Akita are dated "summer (?)" in Anesaki's list.