Hirado: port, persecution and exile

Hirado (平戸) is an island port in the north-western part of Kyūshū (九州).¹Matsura Takanobu (松浦隆信), of the family that ruled the island, inherited the domain as a boy in 1541.¹⁵¹⁶¹⁷His poor fief of four small islands pushed him into trade and privateering with the mainland.¹⁶The Chinese corsair chief Wang Chih, based on the island since about 1542, piloted in the first Portuguese ship in 1550, and a Japanese chronicle records: "Hirado was at that time called the Miyako of the West."¹⁸Portuguese ships came almost every year from 1550, and in 1553 the port became their preferred call.¹⁹²⁰⁶They stayed about three months each year, so the priest at Hakata (博多) would come to live there while the ships were in.²¹Takanobu favoured the missionaries while the trade lasted, but turned to persecution once the Portuguese ships went elsewhere.¹⁶²²

Francis Xavier (ザビエル) first came to the port from Kagoshima (鹿児島) in the summer of 1550, to minister to the Portuguese of Francisco Pereira de Miranda's ship.²¹³When he returned with his companions that autumn, the Portuguese ships greeted the missionaries with an artillery salute and escorted them to the lord, who gave them leave to preach.²³²⁴²⁵About a hundred people became Christians within a few days, thanks to Br Juan Fernández's preaching and a translated book.²³²⁶Xavier stayed only briefly before setting out for Kyoto (京都), leaving Fr Cosme de Torres (トーレス) in charge of the new Christians.²³²⁷In the four months that followed, the priest baptised about forty more, among them his host Taniguchi Thomé with his wife, children and servants.⁴²⁸The converts kept an image of Mary and a scourge that Xavier had left them for healing, and many people came to them hoping for help.²⁹

The Christian community of the port grew quickly in the 1550s, from about 200 in 1553 to some 500 by 1555.⁴⁵In 1553 the first nobles of the domain were baptised, among them Koteda Yasutsune Antonio (籠手田安経) and his brother.³⁰³¹The brothers later led mass baptisms on the island, and their family stayed at the head of its Christians until 1599.³²³³⁹Early in 1557 Fr Cosme de Torres sent Fr Baltasar Gago, Br Juan Fernández and Paul, a former Buddhist monk, to the port, and up to 300 people were baptised in one day.³⁴³⁵That September, with two Portuguese ships in harbour, the missionaries led a solemn procession with cross, music and a guard of arquebuses to a cross on a hill in the field the lord had granted as a Christian cemetery.³⁶Two churches were built in the town, and children learning doctrine sat boys on one side and girls on the other.³⁷³⁸Tension with the Buddhist clergy grew: after losing public debates, bonzes had a cross cut down at night, and some Christians in reply burned a Buddhist house and threw temple images into the sea.^39404142About 1558 the lord asked Fr Gaspar Vilela (ヴィレラ) to leave.⁴²¹⁵In these years a Christian maidservant was killed by her pagan master for praying at a cross outside the town.³⁵⁴³⁴⁴She had told him she had not become a Christian to fear death, and he beheaded her as she knelt.⁴³Local legend names her O-Sen, and she is remembered as the first martyr of Japan.⁴⁴⁴⁵

The mission's fortunes rose and fell with the Portuguese trade.⁶⁷In 1560 Fr Torres asked for a viceroy's order banning Portuguese trade at the port, because Christians there were being forced to renounce their faith.⁴⁶In August 1561 a quarrel over the price of silk ended in a fight before the Shichirō shrine in which fourteen Portuguese, including the captain-major Fernão de Sousa, were killed.⁴⁷⁴⁸The clash became known as the Miyanomae Incident, and the Portuguese and the Jesuits looked for another port, first at Yokoseura (横瀬浦).⁴⁸⁶⁴⁹In 1564 the ship Santa Cruz anchored outside the harbour and would not enter until the lord readmitted the priests, and a church was rebuilt.⁵⁰⁵¹In August 1566 a new church of Our Lady of the Assumption was dedicated amid huge crowds.⁵²That year, however, men of the island seized the Christians' ship returning from India with church furnishings, and the lord's son disfigured a painting of the Virgin.⁵³⁵⁴By 1583 the islands of the domain had about 5,000 Christians, though the lord had once expelled the Jesuits, closed the church and cut down the crosses.⁵⁵³³After the edict of Hideyoshi (豊臣秀吉) in 1587 the daimyo destroyed several churches, yet the Jesuits gathered at the port and agreed unanimously to stay with their converts.⁵⁶⁵⁷Not daring to expel the missionaries outright, the lord of the domain had Jesuits poisoned: Fr Francisco Carrión died in 1590, and Fr Theodore Mantels died at Malacca three years later.⁵⁸⁵⁹⁶⁰Takanobu's son Matsura Shigenobu (松浦鎮信) was the only non-Christian daimyo to fight in Korea under the banner of Konishi Yukinaga (小西行長).⁶¹¹⁷

When the old lord Takanobu died in 1599, his son and heir ordered every Christian in the domain to abandon the faith for his father's funeral.⁸⁹His daughter-in-law Doña Mancia, a daughter of Ōmura Sumitada (大村純忠), refused and offered to leave her husband, who then gave way.⁹¹⁷The Christians answered that they would obey their lord in all else, but would die rather than give up a faith held from father to son.⁶²At a night signal more than 600 people of all ages, led by Koteda Jerónimo and the other Christian lords, embarked secretly for Nagasaki (長崎), most with only the clothes they wore.⁶³⁹⁶⁴The angry lord had their houses burned and cannon fired, saying: "So much for the new law that I have driven from my lands" (translated).⁶⁵The exiles were lodged at the site of the old Jesuit college and fed by the Jesuits, and their number grew to about 800.⁶⁶⁶⁵⁶⁷Konishi Yukinaga later sheltered them, and some settled in Higo (肥後).⁶⁸⁶⁹Fearing the loss of so many subjects, Shigenobu stopped the persecution and promised the exiles they need not recant if they came back, but the Koteda and their followers refused.⁷⁰⁷¹⁷²

By 1612 the Dutch, and from 1613 the English, had trading stations at the port, and in 1616 English ships were restricted to it.¹⁰¹¹¹²The persecution of Christians meanwhile grew fiercer.⁷³⁷⁴Br Augustine Ota, a Japanese Jesuit, was beheaded at Hirado on August 10, 1622.⁵⁹His host, Gabriel Ichinose, was beheaded at Ikitsuki (生月) in 1622, preaching on the way that the Christian religion would rise again in its time and spread through all Japan.⁷⁵On March 3, 1624 his whole family, including his grandmother Maria, over ninety and one of the first Christians of the island, was beheaded at Kōchi-domari, the domain's execution ground.⁷⁶⁷⁷⁷³In that year alone the lord had 38 Christians killed in two and a half months, sparing not even servants, babies or apostates.⁷³⁷⁸Among them were Michael Yamada Hiemon, his wife Ursula and their three children; after watching her husband and two children die, Ursula offered her own life and that of her last child, Madeleine, aged two.⁷⁹⁸⁰It was said that in 1624 this domain alone shed more blood for the faith than all the other kingdoms from Kyoto to the Gotō islands together.⁷⁴The killings went on into the 1630s: John Macouza was drowned at Hirado on February 12, 1632.⁸¹⁸²

Christian families survived in the villages around the port into the nineteenth century.¹³¹⁴In 1867 a Christian known as Michael of the Discipline went to the island and its neighbours, where about a thousand Christian families were said to live, and brought some of them to the missionaries.¹³¹⁴When persecution returned, Christians from the Gotō (五島) islands under the domain were shipped to the town in November 1869, and early in 1870 its hundred-odd Christian prisoners were plunged into icy water until they apostatised.⁸³⁸⁴By about 1883 there were five or six thousand Catholics in and around the town, and that year they built a large church at its centre, on the spot where the Cross and holy images had once been trodden underfoot.⁸⁵⁸⁶The local authorities sided with Christians who refused to pay for temple festivals, and ordered Buddhists to return property taken from them ten years before.⁸⁵⁸⁶In the twentieth century a large church stood at Hōki (宝亀) on the island, among many old Kirishitan villages.⁸⁷