A need seen from the start
The need for priests born in Japan was recognised in the first years of the mission.In January 1552 Francis Xavier wrote to Ignatius that the Japanese alone, of all the peoples so far discovered, were capable of making Christianity grow by themselves.The answer from Rome was that the mission needed its own clergy and that a bishop must go there to ordain them.In 1558 the First General Congregation of the Jesuits had on its draft agenda whether a bishop should be named so that some Japanese could be raised to holy orders, but it reached no agreement.The King of Portugal then proposed sending Andres de Oviedo and his coadjutor Melchior Carneiro as bishops to the Far East, and King Sebastian wished the faith in Japan to spread "through the ordination of priests and ministers who will devote themselves to the work".The coadjutor, firmly convinced of the need for Japanese priests, asked again and again for a seminary in Japan, but he received neither the men nor the money.
Brothers, dōjuku and a long wait
For decades the Japanese who served the Church did so as catechists, as dōjuku (lay helpers who lived and travelled with the missionaries) and as Jesuit brothers.A recruit could take years to rise from dōjuku to the two-year novitiate and become a brother (irmão), and becoming a priest was almost impossible.Even so, Japanese entries to the Society of Jesus grew quickly: twenty Japanese Jesuits were listed in 1583, and seventy ten years later.Ninety-eight Japanese were admitted to the Society between 1581 and 1610.The Japanese brothers did most of the Society's preaching and produced its Japanese texts and most of its artwork.Few had the languages needed for priestly studies: in 1579 only seven Japanese Jesuits were said to know a second language.Ordination also meant a year's round trip to Macao, where the nearest bishop lived.
Alessandro Valignano planned to begin a Japanese clergy, at first with a few carefully chosen men drawn from the seminary boys and catechists.He reported that most missionaries thought the only way to secure the Church in Japan was to form a native clergy and admit young Japanese into the Society.After three Japanese scholastics returned from three and a half years of study at Macao, he wrote: "Many of the Fathers would never have thought that the Japanese were so capable and could accomplish so much."
Not everyone agreed.Celso Confalonieri, long a master of novices, wrote to Rome that one should wait fifty years before ordaining Japanese.Francesco Pasio feared that Japanese sent to Macao for ordination would lose their vocation and even their faith.As vice-provincial from 1600, the same Jesuit accepted Japanese into the Society but resisted a native priesthood equal to the Europeans.By 1603 some Japanese brothers had served more than ten years without ordination, and the frustration led some to leave the Society.Mateus de Couros, another Portuguese Jesuit, was the leading opponent of a native clergy.
A bishop in Japan and the first ordinations
Only with a bishop in Japan could ordinations begin there.In 1596 Bishop Martins gave the tonsure to six Japanese Jesuits and 25 dōjuku and hoped soon to make ten or eleven Japanese priests in charge of parishes at Nagasaki.Bishop Luís de Cerqueira held the first ordinations of Japanese priests on the Ember days of September 1601, more than fifty years after the faith reached Japan.The two men ordained were Japanese Jesuits, Sebastião Kimura and Luís Niabara.A third candidate, Julião Yamada Kazariya, had died of tuberculosis shortly before.
That same year the bishop chose eight seminary youths, six Japanese and two Portuguese, to study cases of conscience and become the first diocesan clergy.The missionaries resolved to proceed slowly, "holding quite strictly to the decisions of the Council of Trent".They argued that native priests were essential, since Japan had no benefices and European secular priests would not stay or learn the language.Support was a real problem: the papal faculties of 1594 at first required 40 ducats a year for each man ordained, but the words were crossed out and replaced by "a fitting sustentation".Portuguese merchants later funded endowments for the support of the new priests.
In 1604 the bishop ordained his first diocesan priest, Miguel Antonio, one of the two Portuguese students, who became pastor of Santa Maria.Francisco Murayama, son of Murayama Tōan, was ordained the same year as the first Japanese diocesan priest.By 1606 to 1607, three churches of Nagasaki had Japanese parish priests.Cerqueira wrote that the Japanese took the raising of one of their own to the priesthood as a great grace.
Fourteen native priests in 1614
In 1612 the bishop reported five diocesan priests, two clerics in major orders and five in minor orders.By 1613 there were seven diocesan priests, and there were still seven when the persecution broke out in 1614.Cerqueira also ordained Japanese Jesuits, among them Thomas Tsuji and Antonio Ishida between 1610 and 1612, and Mancio Hirabayashi in 1613.In all he ordained fifteen Japanese priests, seven diocesan and eight Jesuits.One of the Jesuits, Mancio Itō, died in 1612, so fourteen Japanese priests were in the country when the general persecution began.At the start of 1614 the Nagasaki pastors included Miguel Antonio at Santa Maria del Monte, Lourenço da Cruz at San Pedro, Francisco Antonio Murayama at San Antonio and Paulo dos Santos at San João Bautista.The seminary's seven priests were few, but they showed that a native clergy could be formed.
After the bishop's death in 1614, the seven Japanese secular priests, the only ones in holy orders, elected Valentim Carvalho vicar general.Later that year most of the clergy were sent into exile.Five secular priests were among those who stayed hidden in Japan.Among the Japanese priests ordained by Cerqueira, Clément and Jean are recorded as choosing to stay in Japan.
Ordained in exile
After 1614 Japanese candidates had to seek ordination abroad.In Macao the exiled Jesuits counted three Japanese priests and two Japanese scholastics who were soon to be ordained.Sixto Tokuun was ordained at Macao and came back to Japan in 1616.Constantino Dourado, once a dōjuku with the envoys, was ordained between 1616 and 1618 and became rector of the Macao seminary.A seminary for Japanese youths that the Jesuit General ordered at Macao ended almost at once, because sailing out of Japan had become too dangerous.
Pedro Kibe was ordained in Rome in 1620, apparently the only one of these men supported by the Jesuits.Most of the others turned to the mendicant orders: Juan Miyazaki was ordained in Manila in 1619 for the Franciscans, others for the Dominicans, and Tomás de San Agustín at Cebu for the Augustinians.Jerónimo de Torres, a former pupil of the Arima seminary, studied and was ordained in Manila, served Japanese exiles there, and returned to Japan in 1628.In Manila, Sotelo had four Japanese priests ordained and professed in the Franciscan Third Order.He argued that Japanese priests could move freely and minister unrecognised, even in prisons, while European faces gave the missionaries away.
Priests of the persecution
Japanese priests went where Europeans could not easily go.In 1620 and 1621 Julian Nakaura worked in Chikugo, while Sixto Tokuun, Diogo Yūki and Martinho Shikimi travelled through Ōmi, Mino, Owari, Ise and other provinces.Sebastião Kimura, the first Japanese priest, was captured on June 29, 1621, and became the first Japanese priest to die a martyr.The Jesuit Thomas Tsuji was martyred at Nagasaki on September 6, 1627.Jerónimo de Torres was burned at Nagasaki on September 3, 1632.In 1633 the Jesuit Paul Saito died in the pit after hanging there seven days, and Sixto Tokuun and the secular priest John Mégasaki died in the pit on October 9.Not all held firm: the secular priest Miguel Gotō Ryōjun apostatised and countersigned apostasy oaths.
In September 1632 the Congregation of Propaganda Fide approved ordaining Japanese priests, because the martyrdoms had left too few workers and Japanese could hide more easily than Europeans.It proposed an archbishop and a bishop for Japan who would live there and ordain suitable Japanese, though it held that Japanese should not yet be made prelates.By 1640 the only priests believed still alive in Japan were two Japanese Jesuits, Mancio Konishi and Martinho Shikimi, and Giovanni Battista Porro.With no bishop to ordain successors, the last veterans of the Japanese priesthood died without anyone to replace them.
Later Catholic writers asked whether a larger Japanese clergy, formed sooner, might have saved the Church in Japan.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- How many Japanese priests there were by 1614. Roggendorf (Cieslik) and Elison count fifteen ordained by Cerqueira and fourteen alive in 1614;Morris also gives fourteen.Hesselink says only eight Japanese brothers were ordained between 1600 and 1614, and Harrington speaks of seven Japanese priests and a handful of Jesuits.Sousa lists 22 Japanese priests ordained from 1601 to 1631.
- The first diocesan ordinations. Roggendorf says the first was the Portuguese Miguel Antonio in 1604;Cooper names Francisco Murayama as the first Japanese diocesan priest, also in 1604;Tronu says the first three Japanese diocesan priests were ordained in 1606;Solier and Pagès describe a Japanese priest ordained in 1605 and made parish priest of Our Lady.Bartoli speaks of four Japanese priests made in two ordinations.
- When the diocesan seminary opened. Tronu gives 1601, noting that 1603 is also given.
- How many Nagasaki parishes had Japanese priests. Profillet says three of five;Pagès says four;Jennes says four of eleven churches in 1611;Caddell says all five parishes.
- The 1614 election of a vicar general. Carvalho wrote that the seven Japanese priests elected him;Bartoli says they chose a Franciscan against him and were rebuked by the Archbishop of Goa.
- Numbers of Japanese Jesuits. Bartoli gives 26 in 1580 rising to about 90;Higashibaba gives twenty in 1583 and seventy ten years later;Hesselink speaks of more than two hundred accepted into the Society;Gonoi, cited by Morris, counts 112 brothers over the whole period.
- Whether Japan was first. Tronu calls Cerqueira's seminary pioneering and says no native priests had been ordained in any Catholic mission before, but Goa had been ordaining Indian secular priests since the mid-sixteenth century.
- Did the slow growth of a native clergy doom the Church? Caddell gives the delay as the human reason for the Church's ruin, and Marnas regrets that only a very small number of native priests were trained.Delplace calls this charge frivolous and says the sole cause was that Japan became closed to all missionaries, Japanese ones included.Charlevoix thought the little service the first secular priests gave justified those who opposed the novelty.
- Bartoli argued that more Japanese priests would only have meant more victims, since they could no more work hidden than Europeans;Sotelo and Propaganda Fide held the opposite view.
- Francisco Cabral's views. he asked to admit Japanese in 1572 to 1573 but later claimed he had always opposed it.
