The shogun's city
Edo (江戸) was the city of the shogun's court, and in 1613 the shogun put a good number of Christians to death there.Already in 1612 Christians at the Edo court were sought out, and fourteen nobles were listed, stripped of their goods and sent into exile with their families.The Franciscan Fr Luis Sotelo kept a mission in the city, and its confraternities were led by lay Christians.Between 1613 and 1632 the city saw its Christians beheaded, cut down to test swords, starved in prison, frozen in water and burned.The Great Martyrdom of Edo, on December 4, 1623, has its own page and is not retold here.
1613: The confraternity heads
In August 1613 the first Japanese Christians died for their faith in Edo, after the Franciscan Fr Luis Sotelo opened a small church in the lepers' settlement of Asakusa (浅草).The church was only sixteen palms wide and thirty-two long, built with the alms and labour of the faithful.On the very first day the friar said Mass there, an idolater accused him to the governors of Edo, who reported it to the shogun Hidetada (秀忠).The shogun ordered a search, and those found, including many lepers from the hospital, were imprisoned.Some Christians wrote out the names of all the others they knew, and many gave up the faith under pressure, while the steadfast were kept under guard in houses, the friar among them.
On August 16, 1613 eight heads of the confraternities were set on horseback and taken to the execution ground at Torikoe (鳥越), between Edo and Asakusa, where they were beheaded side by side.They were led by Joachim Hachikan, the friar's host, and Anthony, a carpenter who had worked on the church.A placard on a pike said they died for disobeying the shogun, having taken the law of the Padres and become heads of its companies.Their heads were displayed for seven days under guard, and their bodies were handed over to be cut to pieces by men testing their swords.Another of the prisoners, Apollinaris, who had once given up the faith and repented, refused freedom and died after four days in the foul public prison.
The next day fourteen more Christians were brought to Edo by a pagan lord who hoped to win the shogun's favour, and they too were beheaded at Torikoe.Their leader, Mark Kizaemon, was a poor man who fasted so as to feed the poor with his own bread.All along the road from the prison they preached to a growing crowd, then knelt in a circle round the placard and died.
Two prisoners, John Minboku and Gregory, were kept in chains in their late host's house for four weeks.When the judges demanded a final answer, he wrote, in his own name and Gregory's, a confession of faith offering a thousand lives in a thousand deaths.On the way to prison he met a Buddhist procession and preached against its idol, and in revenge the two were beaten and thrown into the lowest pit of the prison.In September John, Paul, the two Gregorys and a man newly baptized in prison were beheaded at Torikoe.Their sentence read simply, "These are killed for having become Christians and refusing to renounce" (translated).Fr Sotelo himself was released when Date Masamune (伊達政宗) interceded for him.
1615: The host of a friar
In 1615 the Franciscan Fr Diego de San Francisco was living in Edo in the house of Simon Saibyoe, a steward of the lord Katō Samanosuke (加藤).Denounced to that lord, the friar was taken on Holy Tuesday, April 4, 1615, with Louis, a Japanese leper who was his usual companion, and with his host.His catechist Thomas, who was away at the time, begged to join his master in prison and was allowed to.Simon, a native of Iyo (伊予) and a regular host of religious, said his only fault was to have caused the Father's capture by imprudence, and he was beheaded.In June a Christian named Jerome was held with five lepers in a prison only a few square metres in size.A Christian carpenter named Vincent brought food to the friar in prison, was denounced by the guards and jailed with him, and there went blind.
1617: The friar's companions
In March 1617 two of Fr Diego's fellow prisoners were put to death in Edo.The catechist Thomas, an excellent preacher, was cut in two on March 8 to test a sword.Two days later the blind carpenter Vincent was beheaded and his body cut up, though his relics were recovered.Laurence, son of the shogun's physician, was also martyred that year.He was himself a physician and catechist.
1627: The lepers in prison
About February 1627 several Christian lepers died of hunger and misery in the Edo prison.Their names were Mary, Magdalene, Regina, Thomas and Vincent.
1630: The frozen sea
On January 24, 1630 ten Christians, five men and five women, were tied to stakes in the water at Edo, up to the neck, and froze to death by nightfall.Four of the women were wives of the men, and the fifth was the mother of one of them.Among them were Ventura Sadenji, John Genemon and his wife Sabina, Francis Saemon and his wife Clara, and John Saemon and his wife Magdalene.A placard on the shore said they died there because they were Christians who would not give up the faith.Some of their companions gave way.
An eleventh Christian, Nakagawa Seiza, a gentleman of the shogun's chamber, was set in a pit up to his shoulders, and his neck was sawn at intervals over three days.He smiled at the Christians who pitied him.His wife Lucia was among those who died in the freezing water.
1632: The Michikawa family
In January 1632 the persecution in Edo struck whole families.John Michikawa died with his wife Maria, his mother Anna and other relatives.His nephew Sampei, aged 17, was burned at a slow fire on January 13, 1632.Another John, whose surname was probably Koma, was martyred in Edo that year with his wife and son.
The graves of 1613
Two martyrs who died in 1613, John Dojū and Peter Kakusuke, were buried in the city, and in 1621 Fr Martin Shikimi had their graves opened to move the relics.John's coffin held only dry remains, but Peter's body was found whole, with his clothes, after seven years, part of the time in water.No one dared to touch it, and an iron cross was noticed on the lid before the coffin was closed again.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- The number of the 1613 martyrs. Cary gives twenty-two; Bartoli twenty-seven in his heading and twenty-eight in his text; Carvalho and Amati twenty-eight; Murdoch counts eight, fourteen and five.
- The dates of 1613. most give August 16 and 17 and September 7; Anesaki's table gives August 20 and 21; Bartoli dates the last group September 19; and Solier adds eight more beheaded on September 15.
- The number imprisoned in 1613. 1,600 in one place in Amati, 1,800 in another.
- The shogun's sentence of 1613, as Amati reports it, ordered all Christian males from three years old upward to be beheaded if they would not give up the faith, and the friar and his preachers burned; the German edition reads youths of three years.
- The execution ground is spelled Toncai, Tonchai and Tonka; Anesaki identifies it with Torikoe.
- The fourteen of August 17, 1613. Amati calls them soldiers; the sentence claimed they had once signed apostasies, but the bishop found only three or four had lapsed.
- Simon Saibyoe's death is dated April 10 (Profillet's heading and Delplace), April 22 (Bartoli) and August 10 (Profillet's narrative), all in 1615; Solier tells what may be the same story of a Simon Iambioye and dates it about 1616.
- Whether the martyrs of January 1630 died in a frozen pond, as Profillet says, or in the sea by the Kyoto road, as Bartoli says.
- Nakagawa Seiza's torture. Bartoli speaks of an iron saw, Delplace and Anesaki of a bamboo saw; Hiyane says fifteen were executed that January.
- Anesaki thinks Laurence, the physician's son, is probably the same man as the catechist Laurent Itakura.
- John Minboku's name appears as Mibocu, Minboku, Mimbu and Mimbocou.
- Anesaki reads Vincent Tanaye's name as probably Tanabe, and Ventura's as probably Sadenji.