An apostate lord comes home
In June 1612 the apostate lord Arima Naozumi returned to Arima, a land where two Christian kings had left not one idolater, determined to destroy the faith.He had been a Christian as a child, but he gave up the faith, divorced his Christian wife and married into the family of Ieyasu.Though he was 27, he was placed under the guidance of Hasegawa Sahyōe, governor of Nagasaki.On June 11, 1612 he entered Arima, kicked down crosses, had seventy-seven churches destroyed and published an edict banishing the law of Christ.Five hundred leading Christians swore to die rather than abandon the faith.
Christians were called before three judges, twenty or thirty a day.The noble soldier Damian Matsuyama told the judges he would serve his prince to the death, and then asked, "That I should hold my God of less account than my prince?" (translated).Wives whose husbands made a show of apostasy met them with tears and reproaches until the men went back to the judges and took it back.
Into the hills
On June 20, 1612, at dusk, eighteen exiles left with their wives and children.Damian Matsuyama, his wife Lucia and their five children built a hut of branches on a flat rock in a desert valley and lived on wild herbs and fruit.John Rissai, whose wife Isabella was a stepdaughter of Ōtomo Sōrin, went into exile with four children and only one garment each.
Christians from Amakusa, Shiki and other places came looking for the scattered exiles with alms, and Jesuits in disguise visited them.The Fathers then gathered them into one valley with a hut for each family, where they fasted three days a week and shared their alms and meals.
The first blood, summer 1612
Among the first to die were two brothers of Arie, a wholly Christian town a little over a league south of Arima.Michael Ito, the elder, had been the soul of the town's twelve congregations, and he and his brother Matthias Koichi gathered the signatures of those ready to die for the faith.More than 1,500 names came in, and the fishing village of Sucava begged to be included and added 250 more.Not daring to kill so many, the lord sentenced the two brothers to be killed by treachery.Fr Fonseca came back in disguise to say Mass in the elder brother's house on the feast of St Anne.
When an idolater friend urged Matthias to hide, he replied, "If I were elsewhere, I would come running through fire to put myself here" (translated).Michael was beheaded in the cemetery by an executioner, a lapsed Christian, who asked for his prayers and then placed the head on his own as a sign of reverence.His brother was cut down by soldiers in his garden while picking herbs for them.
A month later the veteran soldier Leo Kita Kizaemon, a samurai of Chijiwa, was killed on August 22, 1612.He had fought in Korea, but now he laid aside his sword, wore his rosary openly and buried the dead with the rites of the Church.Struck down by an escort in a narrow lane, he threw his sword away as he had resolved, tried to make the sign of the cross and fell dead.John Tokuun, a senior kinsman of the lord, helped to bury him, and that night Christians took his body by boat to the Jesuits at Nagasaki.
The sword at dinner, January 1613
In January 1613 the lord turned on Thomas Onda, a celebrated soldier who had already been banished twice for the faith.The trigger was an incident at sea: forty young Christian rowers who carried Hasegawa Sahyōe to Shimonoseki refused to throw their rosaries into the water.They told the governor, "we are Christians, and we want not only to be so but to seem so" (translated).Asked by the lord at least to feign idolatry, Thomas answered that a good soldier does not abandon his captain's standard.
Back at Arima a governor invited him to dine and asked him to judge a new sword.He praised its edge, handed it back with the point towards himself, and was struck dead with it.His younger brother Matthias Shokuro, aged 28, was called to another governor on a pretext and beheaded as he knelt.Their mother Martha, aged 61, was told that she and Thomas's two young sons, Justus and James, would die before sunset.The boys' mother, Justa, wept at being left out of the sentence and sent her sons to death with her blessing.Dressed all in white, the grandmother was carried with the boys to the place of execution, where they bared their own necks and were beheaded calling on Jesus and Mary.Martha prayed for about an hour and was then beheaded herself, on January 28, 1613.
Two princes and a bonze, spring 1613
The lord's young half-brothers, Francis and Matthew, were the next to die.They were sons of Arima Harunobu by his wife Justa, and the elder had refused an order to take off his reliquary.Sahyōe feared that the boys would one day avenge their father, and he pressed the lord until he agreed to their deaths.From March 18 to April 27 they were shut up in secret with one page, Ignatius, while it was given out that they had gone to their mother in Kyoto.On their last night the elder boy prayed, "By the passion and death of Jesus Christ, be mindful of ... me this night, O Mary!".An hour after they fell asleep a soldier stabbed the younger in the heart and cut the throat of the elder.
On May 1, 1613 the lord came back to Arima with the famous bonze Banzui and sixteen disciples, brought from Sunpu at the governor's prompting.The court ladies refused the Amida rosaries he offered, and one of them, Massenzia, threw one in his face.
Eight condemned, October 1613
Late in September 1613 Sahyōe wrote to the lord that Ieyasu meant to take Arima from him.On the governor's advice, the lord chose eight of the most eminent Christians and summoned them by night.He wept and argued that St Peter had denied Christ three times and was still forgiven, so they need only seem to be idolaters.Five gave way, but three refused, saying they owed more to God than to an earthly lord.The three were Adrian Takahashi Mondo, Leo Hayashida Sukeemon and Leo Takedomi Kan'emon, officers of the domain.Sentenced on October 5 to be burned alive with their families, they were held under guard in a private house.
With them were condemned Adrian's wife Joanna, Leo Hayashida's wife Martha, Leo Takedomi's son Paul, aged 27, and two children, the young Magdalena and her younger brother James.Four of the five who had yielded soon repented, gave their goods to the treasury, cut their hair and went into lifelong exile.
News of the sentence drew tens of thousands of Christians from across the peninsula, many in new clothes made for their own martyrdom.Threatened with musket fire, the crowd only packed closer, "so that no musket shot would go astray" (translated).
The fire before the castle
The eight were burned alive on October 7, 1613, on open ground below the castle.That morning two Jesuits slipped into their house in disguise to hear their confessions and give them communion.The procession went six abreast with torches, crosses and images of the Passion, each martyr between two heads of the congregations, while two Fathers intoned the Litany of the Saints.At a river crossing the boy James refused to be carried on a gentleman's shoulders, saying, "Jesus Christ went to die for me with the cross on his shoulders" (translated).
The pyre was a square of eight posts under a roof of reeds and straw.Leo Takedomi climbed onto his woodpile and preached to the crowd before he was bound.Gaspar, chief of the congregation heads, raised an image of Christ bound to the column, and the Christians knelt and sang the Creed.When the ropes that held James burned through, he walked through the flames to his mother and died at her side.Magdalena, who had vowed her virginity to God, gathered burning coals and set them on her head like a crown before she died.
Several apostates repented aloud as they watched, and Christians rushed into the fire to carry out the bodies, some bearing burn scars for the rest of their lives.The remains were taken to Nagasaki and buried in the Jesuit cemetery after a sung Te Deum.Bishop Cerqueira held a formal inquiry and declared that all eight had been killed in hatred of the faith.They were the first Christians in Japan to be burned for the faith.
Three weeks later Thomas Kawakami, keeper of the church at Oriki near Arima, was cut to pieces on October 29, 1613.Ieyasu, it was said, could not forget that crowd, and he forbade making martyrs while the missionaries remained.Within a year the lord asked to exchange his domain, and he left Arima in August 1614, never to return.In 2008 Adrian Takahashi Mondo was among these martyrs beatified by the Church.
The lord leaves Arima, 1614
In 1614 one of the lord's councillors proposed to attack the honour of the Christians rather than their lives by shaming their wives and daughters, and the council approved the plan.He argued, "Thus was the Christianity of Buzen conquered, so shall Arima's be" (translated).Young nobles prepared to defend their wives and sisters with the sword, while the older men sent the twelve heads of their twelve companies to ask the lord to use the lawful punishments instead: confiscation, exile, or death by sword, cross or fire.
The lord gave up the plan.Instead he proclaimed that all who lived on his revenues would lose their goods and be exiled unless they gave up the faith, and fifty nobles at once renounced everything and were condemned.A Jesuit secretly brought from Nagasaki heard about eight hundred confessions.The members of the twelve confraternities renewed their oath never to deny the faith, doubled their fasts and penances, and revived the Forty Hours before images of the Crucifix.
On June 5, 1614 Adam Arakawa, a kambo from Arima, was beheaded at Fukuro in Amakusa.That month Hasegawa Sahyōe entered Arima and summoned the twelve heads of the congregations, with five leading men of Kuchinotsu.So many Christians followed them to offer themselves that the courtyard filled.The governor told them that the lord was losing a kingdom his family had held for twenty-six generations and must go to beg his living in Hyuga, all because of them.The eldest of the twelve answered that being Christian neither gave Arima to the lord nor took it away, that they obeyed him better than idolaters would, and that he was not master of their souls.
The lord was moved to Hyuga, and he lost all his goods on the way.He left in August with Fime, a great-granddaughter of Ieyasu, and abandoned his lawful wife Marta, aged 22 and of noble blood, in a straw hut between two mountains.His new companion sent people to torment the young wife into taking another husband, but she spent much of each day and night reading holy books and meditating on the Passion, and told the Fathers that her only wish was to die for the faith.Arima was now ruled directly for the shogun, and Sahyōe, who had joined its government to that of Nagasaki, was left in charge.
The governor returns, November 1614
In November 1614 Sahyōe came back to finish the work, with the shogun's commissioner Yamaguchi Suruga-no-kami and troops from Satsuma, Hizen, Hirado and Buzen, about ten thousand men by most accounts.He left on November 16 and reached the port of Kuchinotsu on November 18.He did not dare to begin with Nagasaki for fear of a rising, and the war breaking out at Osaka pressed him to be quick.
At Shimabara the governor proclaimed that the Christians wanted death so as to be honoured as martyrs, and that he would therefore keep them alive under cruel tortures.Women would be enslaved and the most beautiful sent to the brothels of Kyoto, while apostates would be freed from taxes and Chinese ships brought to trade in their ports.The troops split into bands: the men of the lord of Hirado took Chijiwa and Obama, those of the lord of Satsuma took Mie, Shimabara and Arie, and the commissioner Gonzaemon went into Arima itself.In each place a palisaded court was set up in a public square, and the best-known Christians were summoned before it.
The soldiers from Satsuma, warriors who were not used to shedding blood outside battle, sent word ahead telling the Christians to hide in the hills and woods with their families.Finding the villages empty, they reported that there were no Christians left in their sector.
Two hundred at the old college, November 1614
At Arima the Christians had longed for martyrdom for three years, since the lord first turned on them, and they spent the night before they came forward as a feast, like Christmas.On November 20, 1614 about two hundred heads of families presented themselves together on the site of the old Jesuit college, singing prayers and psalms, while others hid in the woods.A palisade held about twenty executioners with iron hooks and clubs, and more than a thousand armed soldiers stood around it.The chancellor of Gonzaemon wrote down their names.
Some lost heart and pretended to give up the faith, and soldiers who were their friends dragged others out with their mouths stopped, on the commissioner's order to limit the bloodshed.The most notable were gagged, declared apostates in public and sent home, though they later made the truth known.About seventy remained.They were hooked by the ears or the topknot, thrown down and clubbed until blood ran from their heads, eyes and ears.Fifty-five were stripped, bound by the hands and throat and trodden in the face with filthy straw sandals, the worst insult in Japan, then shut up under guard in three houses.
Among the prisoners was Peter Kyuan, aged 48, a former bonze from Umemoto in Kii who had been baptized at the court of Konishi Yukinaga in Higo and had lived for sixteen years as a layman with the Fathers, as a companion of Fr Marco Ferraro.He and his wife had moved from Nagasaki to Arima after she dreamed of a majestic lady with children like angels who showed her the road there.On March 27, 1614, praying before the cemetery cross at Arima, he had seen star-like lights around and above it and understood that there would be many martyrs.Through the night he kept the prisoners in his house awake in prayer, and he was credited with the constancy of many who died with him.
At daybreak on November 21 the soldiers threatened to roast the prisoners' children alive and to parade their wives naked.More than thirty then had their bare legs crushed between two heavy beams, squeezed by three men while a fourth stood on top.Some gave way, not for fear of broken shins but out of love for their children, whom the officials falsely claimed to be holding.Peter Kyuan was crushed so hard that the beams met, yet he stood, walked three steps and declared his name to the commissioner.Michael Akafoshi, a noble youth of 19 from Higo who had been taken in war and sold to a Christian merchant of Arima, had been turned away out of pity for his age, but he forced his way back in and mocked the executioners that the beams did not even touch his legs.
Only sixteen or seventeen held firm.Though it had been announced that no martyrs would be made, they were beheaded at Arima on November 21 or 22, 1614, with Sahyōe recalled to the siege of Osaka.Michael Nishi Shichiroemon of Yatsushiro in Higo, aged 64, one of the leaders of the Arima Christians, was among them.Another leader, Thomas Okumura Domi of Shimabara, aged 67, died with his son Dominic Adachi Yakichi, aged 22, and his cousin Dominic Okumura Shosuke, aged 30.
Others had come from far away: John Nakamura Sosuke from Amakusa, Andrew Yokozu Jinshiro from Funai in Bungo and Michael Kogamimaru Chuemon from Kyoto.Martin Takaya Magoemon had moved to Nagasaki shortly before the persecution but came back to share Arima's trials and refused to have his tight bonds loosened, and Cosme Takaya Shoryoe, an exile at Nagasaki, hurried to Arima hoping for martyrdom.At the moment Peter Kyuan died, his two-year-old son at home cried, "Mother, mother: my father has gone to heaven" (translated).
Then, to bring the number to twenty, three more who had been wrongly counted as apostates were beheaded: the village headman Thomas Matsushima Kakunai, aged 36, and the brothers Peter Goto Shichirozaemon, aged 52, and Louis Goto Jiemon, aged 42.The brothers, village headmen near Arima, had been dragged out as if they had surrendered, but they protested everywhere that they were Christians until a pagan captain brought them back.Gonzaemon accepted no more than the twenty he wanted, though many others offered themselves.One of the martyrs, Adrian, among the first Christians of Arima, had carried away the body of the young Magdalena after the burning of 1613.The heads were set up under armed guard, and soldiers tested their swords on the bodies, hacked them to pieces and threw them on a heap.
Kuchinotsu, Arie and Obama, November 1614
Sahyōe had gone first to Kuchinotsu, where he warned the headmen that they would lose fingers, toes and hamstrings, be branded on the forehead and lose their goods, and that their wives would be enslaved and their daughters paraded naked.They answered that they would defend themselves only by patience.From November 22 about twenty-two Christians were killed there.In some places martyrs whose hamstrings and toes had been cut were forced to climb specially built steps and were beaten each time they fell, until they died.
The dead of Kuchinotsu included Thomas Kayano Mataemon, headman of the village of Gaye, aged 52, and Paul Mottari Reoyei of Arima, aged 69, who had kept a church of the Virgin for eight years and, after it was destroyed, taught children reading, writing and Christian doctrine.John Naraya of Dewa, aged 51, had become a Christian during twenty years in the Philippines.He declared, "the more of them you kill, the more they will multiply" (translated).His fingers and toes were cut off at the root, and he died when he was hamstrung.Others were Thomas Nangano Niyemon of Amakusa, Thomas Hirai Yasuro, a convert of the Jesuits at Nagasaki who taught young people, and Dominic Nangano Yoichi.
Thomas Araki Riemon, a man of rank who came forward unasked bringing ropes to be bound with, was tortured more than any other at Kuchinotsu until his eyes started from his head.To the commissioner's appeal to the age of the old sects, he answered that their gods had a known beginning while the Christian God had none.When the order came to behead him, he begged to die where the others had died, but he was sent home alive.
Another of the dead was George Akafoshi Tarobyoe, aged 64, a tall noble of Higo who wore a plaster over an eye lost in war.Kato Kiyomasa had spared him for the sake of his services, and for two years he had paid the Jesuits' expenses after the English captured their ship.Exiled from Higo, and then forced out of the service of a second lord by the order that lords keep no Christian officers, he went to Nagasaki.On November 23, 1614 Naikidono, a senior officer of the shogun's commissioner, executed him himself as an honour, joined the head to the body and forbade any testing of swords on the corpse.
At Arie the church steward Adrian Kido Hanemon, about 61, led the Christians whenever the Fathers were away, and Michael, the first martyr of Arie, used to say that if the town ever had martyrs, it would have Adrian.Arrested on November 21, 1614 after he bowed on the road to the captive Paul Uchibori, he was tried for Sahyōe by Matsushiro, had fingers of both hands sawn off and his nose cut off, and was paraded naked to Sucava, a short way from Arie, with no water to drink.Though he could not read, he preached so well on the Passion that the soldiers covered him with their own clothes for the night.When his son was urged to make him recant, the young man answered that the Son of God had suffered so much for us.A day or two later the steward knelt and was beheaded at one stroke, and his son and others buried the pieces of his body.
The last victims of the 1614 persecution were four gentlemen of Obama, John Hirao Hayemon, his brother Salvador Hirao Hachiro, Germain Gorosuke and Michael Toemon, who had outwardly given way under the lord and later retracted.They gave up all their goods and were exiled to the woods, with death for anyone who sheltered them, and two of them hid with their families in a cave on Chitzunoshima, an islet opposite Obama.Betrayed by an apostate to Gonnosuke, a captain of the lord of Hirado, two were taken in the cave and the other two gave themselves up to save their hosts.On November 28 Sahyōe sentenced them.
They were tied on a wooden frame, their noses were cut off, their foreheads were branded with a cross, every finger and toe was cut off and their knee tendons were sawn through.First Salvador recited the Confiteor, the Our Father and the Hail Mary in Japanese.John died within a day, and his brother soon after.The other two lay twenty-two days in the December rain and cold before they were carried to Obama, and no record survives of when they died.
In all, about forty-five Christians were killed in Arima and Kuchinotsu that November.The guards held back many others who cried out that they had not denied the faith.It was said that if every Christian who refused to give up the faith had been beheaded, Arima, Kuchinotsu and all Takaku would have been left a desert, since all of them, even women and children, wanted to die.Women coming back from the mountains wept to find their husbands and fathers alive only because they had denied the faith.The troops were then called away to the winter siege of Osaka, and Nagasaki was spared the same treatment.
Later martyrs, 1626 to 1630
In 1626 the sons of Thomas Araki, Mancio Firozayemon and Matthias Chizaemon, were martyred at Arima with their wives.Their father, the man sent home from the tortures at Kuchinotsu, had signed the Barberini document.In August 1630 the Jesuit Miguel Kimura was crucified in Takaku with Lawrence Tayemon, John Rihioye, Peter Kuhioye and Joachim Tazo.Diego Suzuki, his wife Mary and their eight servants were also martyrs of Takaku.
Between September 17 and 20, 1630 several Christians died under torture at Arie.Among them were Bartholomew Kinosuke, father of Thomas Yahagi, Michael Shingoro, son of Paul Nagata, Louis Kuranojo, the village headmen Mancio Chuzayemon and Matthias Kichiyemon, Michael Yosaku, Paul, Lucia and John Magosuke.Several came from Fukae and had their necks sawn slowly over several days with a bamboo saw.In the same year Thomas Yahagi Kichibioye, a signer of the Barberini document, died as a martyr of Arie with his wife Joanna and his daughter Magdalena.Others died at Shimabara and Gonga on May 31, 1630, in the persecution told on the Shimabara martyrs page.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- The date of the Ito brothers' deaths. July 26, 1612 in Profillet and Bartoli, July 25 in Delplace and Pagès; Solier calls them Michel and his son Matthieu, not brothers.
- Profillet dates the expulsion of Michael Okumura and the other confessors June 20, 1613; Bartoli and Pagès give June 20, 1612.
- Solier says the Onda family, killed in January 1613, were the first to die in this persecution, earlier victims having been banished or killed in secret.
- The Onda boys were 11 and 9 in Bartoli and Profillet, in their twelfth and tenth years in Charlevoix.
- Delplace and Anesaki's index list Thomas Onda's wife among those killed, while Bartoli and Charlevoix say she was spared and grieved at it.
- The princes were about 8 and 6 (Bartoli, Charlevoix) or 8 and 5 (Delplace); Delplace says they were beheaded, the others that they were stabbed in their sleep.
- The date of the burning. October 7, 1613 in most sources; Marnas gives October 5, the Spinola book October 6, and Fujita, in poorly read text, August 16.
- Whose children James and Magdalena were. Bartoli, Pagès and Marnas make them children of Leo Hayashida, but Profillet's main account and Charlevoix make them children of Adrian Takahashi.
- Their ages. James is given as 10, 11, under 12 or 12, and Magdalena as 18 to 20.
- The size of the crowd. 15,000 to 20,000 (Profillet), 20,000 from the country plus as many townspeople (Charlevoix, Oike), 25,000 to 30,000 (Cerqueira), 30,000 (Bartoli), but over two thousand in Solier.
- Japanese sources give Leo Takedomi Kan'emon's name as Taketsugu, Takenami or Takezawa Kanzaemon; Delplace calls him Jean.
- Thomas Kawakami's death. October 29, 1613 in Bartoli and Solier, about November 1613 in Profillet.
- The size of the November 1614 force. about 10,000 men in Profillet, Charlevoix, Caddell and Murdoch, but 2,000 soldiers in Bartoli.
- Profillet places Sahyōe and Suruga-dono at Arima, while Bartoli says they stayed on shipboard and only Gonzaemon went into Arima.
- Profillet calls the judge Gonzaemon a son of Suruga-dono; Bartoli and Hesselink name him Mamiya Gonzaemon.
- How many had their legs crushed. 34 in Profillet, 32 in Bartoli.
- The first beheadings at Arima. sixteen late on November 21 in Bartoli; seventeen on November 22 in Profillet and Anesaki's martyrology, which gives the Japanese date as Keichō 19, 10th month, 21st day; nineteen on November 22 in Delplace's martyrology.
- The last three at Arima. November 23 in Profillet and Anesaki, November 22 in Delplace; Bartoli calls the elder Goto brother Gervasio, not Peter.
- Bartoli says Louis Matsushima let slip a word taken as surrender, then retracted and was beheaded as the seventeenth; this passage is flagged as a possible source error. His name is given as Jinemon (Profillet), Jenyemon or Zenemon (Anesaki).
- Pagès's dated list places the twenty martyrs of November 22 to 23 at Miye rather than at Arima.
- Peter Kyuan. Bartoli and Anesaki's martyrology say he was converted in the household of Konishi, while Anesaki's index says he was converted by Tsoucami-dono; Bartoli dates his death November 21, Anesaki's martyrology November 22.
- Andrew Yokozu Jinshiro came from Funai in Bungo in Profillet and Anesaki's martyrology, but from Higo in Anesaki's index; the surname is also read Yakonsu or Yaconzou.
- Profillet calls Dominic Adachi Yakichi the son of Thomas Okumura Domi, while Anesaki's index names Adrian Juemon (or Gonyemon) as his adopted son.
- Adrian Kido Hanemon was 61 in Profillet and 62 in Bartoli, who calls him Ghida Fazaiemon; Profillet and Anesaki date his beheading Sunday evening, November 23, while Bartoli puts it the day after his arrest on November 21.
- Profillet heads his notice of George Akafoshi at Kuchinotsu, but its story places his death at Nagasaki.
- The four of Obama had outwardly given way three years earlier in Bartoli, but just before the lord left for Hyuga in Profillet.
- John Hirao died at sunset on the day of his torture in Bartoli, but was found dead on the morning of November 29 in Profillet; his brother Salvador died two days later in Bartoli, on December 1 in Profillet. Pagès dates the two deaths "29 and 31 November", an impossible date.
- The 1630 crucifixions. Anesaki's martyrology gives August 27 (or perhaps August 5) at Arie (or perhaps Hokkoku), while his index places these martyrs at Takaku; Miguel Kimura is called a Father in one entry and a Brother in another.
- Profillet lists two men named John Magosuke in 1630, one who died at Gonga in May and one at Arie in September.
- Leonard Sakuzaemon died at Shimabara on May 31, 1630 in Profillet, but Anesaki lists him as a martyr of Arie.