A new castle town in Buzen
Kokura (小倉) was the castle town of Hosokawa Tadaoki (細川忠興), who was given Buzen (豊前) and part of Bungo (豊後) in 1600.The missionaries called him Etchū-dono, which they wrote in many forms such as Yetsoundono and Gietciundono.In 1604 the town was the capital of Buzen and the seat of its court, though it had been founded only about two years before.It already had 7,000 hearths, high strong walls and deep moats, and four hundred adults were baptized there that year.Kokura lay on the usual road from Kyushu (九州) to the capital, which made it a good place for preaching.
On Easter Day 1604 Henry Fayto, a close friend of the lord, feasted all the Christian knights and merchants in the Jesuit house, while his wife Agathe entertained their wives, as in the love feasts of the early Church.Two years earlier a bishop had written that the lord, though a pagan, greatly favoured the Jesuits.
Céspedes and a flourishing church
The lord valued the advice of Fr Céspedes (セスペデス), and the Christians enjoyed his tolerance chiefly for the priest's sake.In 1607 Hosokawa welcomed Fr Pasio and gave him four hundred sacks of rice.The visitor came close to baptizing him, and for a time the lord turned against idols and Buddhist priests and promoted the faith.The lord's old mother saw more than seven hundred Christians take a public discipline on a Friday in Lent, told her ladies to become Christians, and sent the chief of them and two pages to be baptized.Six Jesuits worked in Kokura, in one of the most flourishing churches of Japan.
The faith reached into family life: in one household a boy of thirteen or fourteen refused to inherit his father's ill-gotten wealth, and the father, a rich usurer who had neglected confession, made restitution and was reconciled.
Fr Céspedes died suddenly of apoplexy in 1611 on his way home to Kokura, aged nearly sixty and after thirty-four years in Japan.The lord then declared that he wanted neither Christians nor churches, and he would not even allow the priest to be buried in his lands, so the body was taken to Nagasaki (長崎).
Expulsion and the trial of 1614
After the priest's death the lord expelled the missionaries and pressed the faithful to give up their faith.Finding them too many and too firm, he had it proclaimed in the town that they deserved death but were spared out of regard for the late Fr Céspedes.The fathers stayed on for a while, hearing general confessions day and night, and baptized about sixty pagans.When executions were expected, the women sewed garments in which to be crucified decently, and crowds in festive dress offered themselves to die, but the lord pardoned them the next day.A boy of only four even showed how he would bow his head to the executioner's sword.
In 1614 Hosokawa wrote from Edo (江戸) ordering strict enforcement of the shogun's edict, and the chapel outside the walls in the Jesuit cemetery was burned.After seven days of threats failed, he sentenced the Christians' mothers, wives and daughters to be stripped, paraded and given to a brothel, and many men then signed the roll of apostasy in tears.The Christian lepers in their hospital just outside the town stood firm even when men came to burn the hospital with them inside.They knelt to wait for the flames, and the lord, admiring them, let them live as they wished.
On November 1, 1614, the domain sent a force with a hundred musketeers by boat to Nagasaki, under orders not to shame the Hosokawa name.Romain Jiemon, a man of Bungo living in Kokura, spent eight months in prison, walked to execution with a halter round his neck, and was beheaded in March 1615.Christians buried him and later moved his body to Nagasaki.In all, 2,047 Christians were arrested in the Kokura domain (小倉藩) in the years of persecution.
The martyrs of 1618
The year 1618 brought the heaviest killing in Buzen, with about three dozen martyrs between late February and early August.Twenty-five of them were beheaded at Kokura, and others died at Nakatsu (中津) in the same domain.The victims included fathers and sons, husbands and wives, old men and children of fifteen, eleven and six.
In late February Justus Nakamura was beheaded with his son Julian, aged fifteen, and Simon Ono Gorozaemon with his son Paul, aged twelve.A boy named Mark, only six, was also beheaded at Kokura.Martha, wife of Leo Rizai, died for the faith the same week.Anna, wife of John Shimada Jihyoe, ran to offer the executioner her own life and that of her baby son Thomas, saying she was going to prison, death and paradise.After she was beheaded, the child's throat was cut.
In late July about a dozen more were beheaded at Kokura, among them Leo Jiroemon, John and Paul Sanju, Paul Toyemon and Luke Kuhyoe.Their deaths were the work of a lord who had once favoured the faith and was now its most terrible persecutor in Buzen.
The crucifixion of 1620
The best-known Kokura martyrs are five Christians crucified head down in 1620, led by Blessed Simon Kiyota Bokusai.He was a noble of Bungo, about sixty, who had been a soldier from his youth and had left the world to serve God when the King of Bungo lost his kingdom.The Jesuits made him a kanbō (看坊), a lay teacher of the faith, and he was said to have the power to cast out demons.He belonged to the Rosary confraternity and was host and catechist to both the Jesuits and the Dominicans.
Hosokawa had often warned the old catechist to close his school and stop professing the faith.Simon was arrested with his wife Magdalena and the guests of their house, Blessed Thomas Gengoro, with his wife Maria and their young son James.When soldiers beat the boy, he said: "Here is my neck, here is my breast, strike boldly, tear, make me die" (translated).Magdalena wrote and signed a note in her own hand declaring that she was resolved to die for the Catholic faith.
The five were condemned to be crucified head down, like St Peter.The old man at once wrote a humble letter to the Jesuit Provincial, Fr de Couros, saying he had often asked God for this grace.The governor wanted Simon to die apart in the old cemetery, but he asked to die with the others.
On August 16, 1620, two hours after sunrise, the five walked in their best clothes to the common execution ground behind a placard on a spear, which gave their crime as refusing to abandon the law of Jesus Christ.They thanked God, and even the lord who had condemned them.Simon and Magdalena lived on their crosses until the night of the next day, and Maria somewhat longer.Thomas and his son were still alive after three full days, so the executioners speared them through the side.The crosses were then pulled up, the bodies burned on them, and the ashes scattered to the wind and the sea.
The last martyrs
Killings went on for years after 1620, and in 1621 sixteen Christians were beheaded at Kokura, Ōmura (大村) and Isahaya (諫早), though no details of them survived.Thomas Kiemon, a man of noble birth living in exile in the town, was denounced by his pagan wife's parents and beheaded on December 1, 1624, on the lord's order.The missionary Navarro once slipped into the town disguised as a porter, with a straw hat and a great load on his neck, to help the few Christians inside.About September 29, 1633, three Japanese Jesuits were burned alive at Kokura: Brother Thomas Riocan of Amakusa (天草), Louis Kafuku of Arima (有馬), companion of Fr Bento Fernandes, and Brother Denis Yamamoto of Hiroshima (広島), who had been taken with Fr João da Costa.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- The date of the five crucifixions. August 16, 1620 in Profillet, Boero, Delplace and Spinola; September 14, 1620 in Solier, who also has Simon confined on September 13; one entry in Profillet gives August 19, which the fact reader flagged as an error.
- The boy's name. James (Jacobo, Jacques) in most sources, but Solier also calls him Joseph.
- Boero's 1869 Spanish edition leaves the accuser "Gietciundono" unidentified; the other accounts identify him as Hosokawa Tadaoki.
- The number of Buzen martyrs in 1618. thirty-six in Charlevoix, thirty-seven in Bartoli.
- The February 1618 dates. Delplace gives February 23 for Justus Nakamura's group, Profillet February 25, with others on February 28.
- Anna's son Thomas was eighteen months old in Bartoli and two years old in Profillet.
- The children's ages. Bartoli speaks of children of fifteen, eleven and six, while Profillet makes Paul, son of Simon Ono Gorozaemon, twelve.
- The date of Mark's death is unclear in the scanned text of Profillet.
- Romain Jiemon was beheaded on March 18 or March 21, 1615; Anesaki reads his name as probably Katano Yasoemon.
- Profillet describes Thomas Watanabe and Joachim Shinde being hung from a pine and beheaded in 1614 in a quarter of Kokura he calls "Foucouôca"; this page leaves the story out until the place is confirmed.
- Name readings. Anesaki reads "Cheza" as probably Seizaemon and "Couchifachi" tentatively as Tsuchihashi.
- The size of the 1614 force sent to Nagasaki is an estimate of perhaps 300 to 500 men.