Arima, Shimabara and Amakusa

Christianity reached Arima before the priests did: by 1554 about 1,500 people had been baptized there through Japanese lay catechists, though no priest had yet entered the kingdom.¹At Shimabara, Br Luís de Almeida later found a church already formed by the preaching of the Japanese Jesuit Damien.⁸After Yokoseura was destroyed in 1564, Fr Cosme de Torres moved to Kuchinotsu, where Fr Gaspar Vilela had founded a church the year before.⁹

The decisive conversion came in April 1576, when Arima Yoshisada, lord of Arima, received baptism and twenty thousand of his people followed within six months.¹⁰He took the name Andrés and turned the chief temple of his capital into a church.¹¹¹²He died soon afterwards, and his pagan heir expelled the priests and razed churches.¹³Within about two years, however, the heir, later known as Arima Harunobu, became a Christian himself.¹⁴¹⁵In three months there in 1580, Fr Alessandro Valignano baptized 4,000 people, and with reconciled apostates the number rose to nearly 20,000.¹⁶Facing the warlord Ryūzōji Takanobu, the Christians formed an army with crosses on their banners, and in 1584 the domain and the Shimazu won back Shimabara castle from him.¹⁷¹⁸

Across the water, the Amakusa islands were divided among five petty lords under Ōtomo of Bungo.¹⁹In 1568 one of them, the lord of Hondo, asked for missionaries, and after a revolt stirred up by the monks was put down he was baptized about 1570 as Michel.¹⁹²⁰His learned wife held out for years, but once baptized as Grace she pressed him to give his subjects the choice of conversion or exile.²¹Thirty churches were built in his lands, and when he died in April 1582 it was said that not one unbeliever remained among his vassals.²²²³

His son, Dom João, sheltered priests after Hideyoshi ordered the missionaries out, and had the Jesuit novitiate moved to his island.²⁴Amakusa became the centre of Japanese Christianity, with its leading schools.²⁵When the island lords defied Hideyoshi, Konishi Yukinaga spared the young lord's life in December 1589.²⁶The Jesuit college moved to the islands in 1591, and because Amakusa belonged to the admiral its churches escaped the demolitions of 1597.²⁷²⁸

After 1600 the islands passed to Terazawa Hirotaka, who after his disgrace in 1604 destroyed all but two of their churches.²⁹³⁰On the peninsula, nearly the whole population was still Christian in 1612.³¹

That year the new lord, Arima Naozumi, who had abandoned the faith of his childhood, came home to uproot it and had seventy-seven churches destroyed.³²³On October 7, 1613, eight Christians of noble families were burned alive while crowds of unarmed Christians, crowned with garlands and holding rosaries, kept vigil.³³³⁴In July 1614 the apostate was moved to Hyūga, and the domain was run on the orders of Hasegawa Sahyōe, governor of Nagasaki.³⁵That November the governor and Yamaguchi Naotomo terrorized its Christians for ten days with ten thousand soldiers.³⁶A few years later the domain passed to Matsukura Shigemasa, who after orders came from Edo in 1625 became one of the two most ruthless persecutors in Japan.³¹³⁷He used the near-boiling hot springs at the foot of Unzen to torture Christians.³⁸

On Amakusa the persecution struck hard only from 1629, when Terazawa sent the renegade Miyake Tōbei as commandant; 213 women and children were imprisoned, and the old catechist Julius, aged 82, was drowned.³¹³⁹

Many samurai of Konishi's old domain had withdrawn to the islands and the peninsula and taught their farmer sons the use of arms.⁴⁰When Naozumi left for Hyūga few retainers followed him, and many former samurai were left to farm.⁴¹The rising came in 1637, driven by crushing land taxes.⁴²On Amakusa the rebels under Amakusa Shirō routed the Tomioka garrison and killed its deputy, Miyake Tōbei, at Hondo.⁶Twice they attacked the castle and failed, and their young leader then crossed with the Shimabara rebels to Kuchinotsu.⁶⁴³Tens of thousands made their last stand at Hara castle, an old fortress of the Arima lords then in ruins, and were massacred when it fell.⁴²⁴⁴⁴⁵Terazawa Katataka, son of the old lord, lost part of his lands, later went insane and took his own life.⁴¹⁴⁶The shogunate afterward kept the region under tight watch.⁴⁷

Yet the faith survived in hiding: in 1805 some 5,200 hidden Christians were arrested on Amakusa and spared severe punishment because there were so many.⁷In 1881 Fr Bonne counted about 200,000 people on the islands, mostly descendants of old Christians, and some 340 neophytes, and in 1884 his successor, Fr Ferrié, built a church at Ōe.⁴⁸⁴⁹

Under its Christian lords, Arima was a stronghold of the faith, and its schools trained not only catechists but also the painters and carvers who made church pictures and images.²After 1587 about seventy priests and brothers and seventy-three seminarians moved there.⁵⁰On Amakusa, the protection of the admiral Konishi Yukinaga kept the churches standing.²⁸In 1601 the Bishop sang the first pontifical Mass in the new church of Arima after consecrating that of Nagasaki.⁵¹

• The life of Arima Harunobu (Dom João Protásio), Christian lord of Arima.
• The Jesuit seminary at Arima and the boys trained there.
• The Christian admiral who protected Amakusa and died at Rokujō.

After 1612 the apostate lord Arima Naozumi destroyed the churches of the domain, and the first martyrs of the persecution died at Arie.³⁴Under Matsukura Shigemasa the hot springs at the foot of Mount Unzen were used to torture Christians.³⁸Even in 1614 the authorities in Arima chose to enslave Christian women rather than make martyrs of them.⁵²

• The hot springs of Unzen Jigoku, where Christians were tortured for the faith.

In 1637 the rising in Shimabara spread to Amakusa and the two joined forces, but the Amakusa rebels failed to take Tomioka castle.⁵⁶When Naozumi left, many of his former samurai stayed on the land as farmers.⁴¹The last stand was made at Hara castle.⁴²

• The uprising of 1637 to 1638, its causes, its siege and its end.
• The young leader of the uprising and the faith that gathered around him.
• The ruins of Hara castle, where the uprising ended.

Christian memory outlived the uprising on Amakusa, where some 5,200 hidden Christians were arrested in 1805.⁷When missionaries returned, the pagan headman of Sakitsu offered land and money for a church in his village.⁴⁹A visiting priest in 1881 found that the people of the islands were mostly descended from the old Christians.⁴⁸

• Sakitsu village on Amakusa and its Christian story.
• A route through the Christian sites of Shimabara and Amakusa.