The seat of the lords of Higo
Kumamoto (熊本) was the chief city of Higo (肥後).It lay a short day's journey from the town of Yatsushiro (八代).When the lord of Higo, Katō Kiyomasa (加藤清正), demanded that Christians give up the faith, more than thirty leading householders, former retainers of Augustin Konishi, left the province with their servants and gave up large stipends.They waited about five months with their wives and children, ready to die rather than apostatize.
A Christian commander, Thomas Naitō (内藤), known as Oumemidono, wrote to the Christians of Kumamoto about Kiyomasa's "very cruel edict" (translated).Some had fallen, he said, but many stood firm and had left their houses and lands to the lord's officers.He called Christians who give up passing goods "wise thieves, who possess the art of stealing heaven" (translated).Alone in the fortress he commanded, he was surrounded by retainers who urged him to apostatize to keep his stipend.
1603
John Minami Gorozaemon was a knight of noble blood, once lord of part of Yamato (大和).After losing his lands to Taicosama, he served Augustin Konishi in an honourable military office.His wife Magdalena came from Takatsuki (高槻) and was a relative of Giusto Ucondono.The couple had no children and adopted her nephew Louis, not yet eight.
In the first persecution John had pretended to give up the faith.Moved by his wife and by Fr Luis Niabara, he went to Arima (有馬) in Lent 1603, scourged himself publicly before the altar and was reconciled.When twenty noble friends came to change his mind, he answered: "if by order of Canzuiedono they tore out all my nails one by one" he would never again show any sign of apostasy (translated).
In 1603 officers carried him by force to a bonze's house to have the sutra placed on his head.He wore his rosary and reliquary, and they tore them from him.He spat twice on the book the bonze held out, and his bearers gagged him so the crowd would not hear him.His captors spread word that he had apostatized.John declared in writing that he had never received the book on his head, and sent letters to the governor, the Jesuits and the bishop.They were read aloud in the churches, to general joy.
Katō Kiyomasa condemned him to be beheaded, and his wife and son to the cross.The samurai was called to Kumamoto on a pretext of urgent business, so that friends would not defend him.Magdalena rejoiced, since by the custom of Japanese justice she too would die for the same cause.Under his finest clothes John wore a thin tunic on which he and his wife had painted three large crosses.He commended his wife and son to three lay leaders of the Christians, Michael, Joachim and John, and set out with two pages, one Christian and one pagan.At sunset he reached Ongava, four small leagues from the city, and spent the night with Sabina, the only Christian in the village.
At Kumamoto the governor Kakuzaemon feasted him and pressed him one last time.John answered that the same arguments had made him fall two years before, but Fr Niabara had made him another man.The chief administrator of the realm reproached him with the lord's favours, with four executioners standing by.The prisoner replied that he would not be faithful to an earthly king by being unfaithful to the King of heaven.He knelt with his hands raised, calling on Jesus and Mary, and three blows of the katana felled him.It was the sixth day of the eleventh moon, which in 1603 fell on December 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception.He was 35 years old.
His pages wrapped the body in a mat and buried it in a cemetery outside the city.Bonzes objected that the field was consecrated to an idol, so it was moved to open country and marked, which let Christians recover it.The body was later carried to the Jesuit church at Arima.
The next day, at Yatsushiro, Simon Takeda Gohyoe was beheaded, and four members of the two families were crucified, among them Magdalena and the boy Louis.His head was sent to Kumamoto and set up beside John's, facing a written sentence.It said that the two had sworn to leave the Christian law, had not kept their word, and were executed with their families as a warning to others.The heads were moved almost daily under guard, so the Fathers could never obtain them.Bishop Luis de Cerqueira sent the Pope a formal account of "the six killed in Fingo" (translated).
1612
Kiyomasa's son, still a child, succeeded him, and the guardians who ruled for him were very harsh.In 1612 the persecution in Higo was violent.At Kumamoto a Christian named Paul told his commander that he could be thrown to beasts, burned alive or sawn in two with a wooden saw, but he would always be a Christian.He was stripped of his goods and shut in his house to starve.Pagan friends smuggled him food for nineteen days, and then he was sent into exile.
That year the governors of Uto (宇土), acting on orders from Kumamoto, also moved against the Christians.Bartholomew Wocano, a gentleman pensioned by the lord, his son Dario, aged 23, and his wife Marta refused to apostatize.Their goods were confiscated, and the family was confined for twenty days and then banished.
1615
Paul Yasodayu, from Harima (播磨), was a skilled carpenter and head of works at the Kumamoto citadel.He led forty craftsmen, and Kiyomasa had spared him for his skill.Fr Giovanni Battista Baeza had brought him to the faith.Under the new lord, Katō Tadahiro (加藤忠広), a worse persecutor than his father, Paul outwardly gave up the faith.He then went to Gonzura, where Fr Marco Ferraro reconciled him after a public confession, and he took back his denial before the judges at Kumamoto.
Brought before the tribunal of the four governors with his adopted son, he stood firm while the son denied the faith.He spent about a year in prison.There he made small gifts of woodwork, which the faithful kept as relics.At the New Year clearing of the jails he was sentenced to renounce or die.Led out of the city, he preached against the idols to the crowd, and many lapsed Christians returned to the faith.
He died at Kumamoto on January 25, 1615, the feast of the Conversion of St Paul, his patron.The fifteen-year-old lord wanted to try his sword, and the carpenter was cut in two by a single stroke while his adopted son, then a renegade, held his legs.He was 52.It was reported that he called on Jesus and Mary three times after the blow.Returning the sword, the executioner said its temper was admirable, but the martyr's courage was more finely tempered.
1632
In February 1632, Peter Iida Shichiroemon died in prison at Kumamoto for the faith.Later that year, on August 8, Bartholomew Nakamura and his son Louis were beheaded in the city.
1634
From December 21, 1634, nine Christians were burned alive at Kumamoto.Four of them, Daizo, Shinzo, Unsai and Dosaku, had been arrested in Bungo (豊後).The other five, Zembioye, Ichinojo, Kiuzayemon, Ichizo and Kuhioye, had been arrested in Higo.
Remembering the martyrs
The account of the deaths of 1603 was sent to all the churches of Japan and read aloud to the faithful, and even children were stirred to follow the example of the boy Louis.Magdalena was remembered as an outstanding martyr.John Minami's body was laid at Arima, where he had made his public penance in the Lent before his death.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- John Minami's birthplace. Bartoli makes him a former lord in Yamato, and Anesaki's list says "native of Yamato";Solier calls him a native of "Xamamote".Bartoli says all six martyrs of 1603 were born in the Gokinai.
- Place and day of death. Bartoli and Solier put John's death at Kumamoto on December 8, 1603;Anesaki's list puts John and Simon together "at Kumamoto and Yatsushiro" on December 8; one passage in Solier says Simon was killed the same day John died, though Solier elsewhere dates Simon's death December 9.
- The four of December 9. Anesaki's list says they were beheaded; every narrative says they were crucified.
- The date on the sentence. the seventh day of the eleventh moon in Bartoli, the seventeenth in Solier.
- Simon Takeda's executioner, a noble friend, is named Ificava Ifioie in Bartoli and Iccicaua Gifioje in Solier, apparently the same man; Caddell calls him Jotivava.
- Paul Yasodayu. Profillet says he was cut in two at 52; a Jesuit quoted by Solier says he was from "Firoxima", aged fifty, and was beheaded.Profillet says a year in prison, Bartoli ten months.The words after the blow are reported, not proven.
- Peter Iida. Anesaki gives February 8, 1632;Profillet's poorly printed text gives February 6.The surname is read "Iynda" by Profillet and "probably Iida" by Anesaki.