The Lost Churches of Nagasaki

By 1614 Nagasaki had about fifteen churches and chapels, most of them built by the Jesuits.¹²Almost all were new buildings, unlike most churches elsewhere in Japan, which were private houses or former temples.²Around 1606 the town had, besides the college church and three chapels, five parish churches served by Japanese priests, and a church each for the Augustinians, Dominicans and Franciscans.²⁰No floor plans or drawings of any of them have been found, and the only pictures are on folding screens.²¹Between 1614 and 1620 all of them were pulled down.²²¹⁷²³

The great Jesuit church stood on the Morisaki point beside the Jesuit house, and over four decades it was enlarged four or five times into the largest church of premodern Japan.³On Hideyoshi's order Terazawa Hirotaka dismantled it in 1592 and sent the timber to Nagoya, but the next year the ruler allowed it to be rebuilt.²⁴²⁵A new church, begun on March 25, 1601, was dedicated to the Assumption of Our Lady on October 21, the feast of the Eleven Thousand Virgins.²⁶²⁷From 1603 its bell tower held a clock by Fr Giovanni Nicolao that showed the time and date in both Western and Chinese reckoning.²⁸In November 1614 it was the first church to fall, hacked with saws and axes, pulled down with ropes and burnt.²²

Todos os Santos (All Saints), at Sakurababa just outside the city, had stood since 1568.⁴It was the only one of the main churches that was not a new building.²It survived 1614 and was destroyed in the second wave.¹⁶¹⁷

The church of the Misericórdia brotherhood, dedicated to Santa Isabel, stood in Hakata-machi from 1583.⁴⁵It was the only church left standing in 1614.²⁹²³When it too was destroyed, with seven houses used as hospitals, the brotherhood's members took 400 homeless poor and sick into their own homes.¹⁷

Santa Maria, dedicated to Our Lady, was finished in 1612, and by 1614 a parish called Santa Maria del Monte had its own diocesan pastor.⁶⁷Soldiers began pulling the church down on November 5, 1614.²²

São João Baptista, in Chikugo-machi, was finished in 1612 and was linked with the São Lázaro hospital.⁶⁸⁵In late October 1614 soldiers from Ōmura were lodged in it, and they then pulled it down.⁸¹⁹In 1620 the Nichiren temple Honrenji opened on its site.³⁰

Santiago began in 1603 as a hospital church and became a Jesuit parish in 1606 under Fr Rui Gomes.⁹The small church stood in Sakaya-machi and was razed in a single day on November 15, 1614.¹¹³¹Its bell survives at the Hachimangū of Takeda City in Ōita.³²

San Antonio was built in 1607 by the daikan Murayama Tōan, with a small cemetery beside it, and given as a parish to his son Fr Francisco Murayama.⁹It came down in the second week of November 1614.¹¹²²

San Pedro, in Ima-machi, was founded between 1609 and 1611 by a rich man, probably Murayama Tōan, who endowed a stipend for its Japanese priest, Fr Lorenzo de la Cruz.¹⁰Bishop Cerqueira counted it among the finest churches in Japan.¹⁰Soldiers began pulling it down on November 12, 1614.¹¹

The Dominican church of Santo Domingo stood in Katsuyama-machi and was pulled down in November 1614.¹¹Like the sites of the other friars' churches, its land was handed to a few Christians, to be given back if the missionaries returned.³³

The Franciscans first had a small wooden chapel, Our Lady of the Angels, built in 1595 in the old town cemetery of Cruz-machi, where Nagasaki City Hall stands today.¹²Their friary followed in 1608, on land bought for them by the Spanish merchant José de Aduna after Murayama Tōan won leave from Ieyasu.³⁴The stone church of San Francisco, rebuilt in Cruz-machi, was decorated in the Spanish style and had a small free hospital beside it.¹³⁵On November 17, 1614, the new church, still unfinished, collapsed on the soldiers pulling it down and killed a number of them.¹¹²²³¹

San Agustín was founded in 1611 by the Augustinian Fr Hernando Ayala, and its friary opened in 1612.¹³Bishop Cerqueira gave it a parish that ran east from the friary to the river.¹³It fell in November 1614.²²³¹

San Lorenzo was built by Korean Christians in 1610.¹⁴It stood on the outskirts of the city and survived until the second wave.¹⁷¹⁶

San Miguel stood near Rokasu-machi, outside the inner town.¹⁵It too survived 1614 and was destroyed in the second wave.¹⁶¹⁷

Santa Clara stood in Urakami, outside the city, and was destroyed with the last churches.¹⁶¹⁷In 1865 the Christians there still remembered it and came at night to pray among its few remaining stones.³⁶

In early November 1614 the governor ordered the street heads of Nagasaki to pull down the churches, but they answered that the townspeople were too tired and poor.¹⁸¹⁹Soldiers from Saga, Hirado, Arima, Ōmura and other domains did the work, guarded by 500 musketeers from Kokura, and nine churches with bell towers and clocks fell in fourteen days.¹⁹³¹Afterwards Christians went to the empty sites to pray and weep, showing most reverence where the Blessed Sacrament had been kept.³⁷A second wave, begun by the governor Hasegawa Gonroku, destroyed everything that was left.¹⁷²³The church sites and graveyards became streets, the bones of the dead were dug up, and Buddhist temples rose on some of the sites.³⁸³⁰²³In 1864 old men could still show the French priest Petitjean where two of the old churches had stood.³⁹