The Nagasaki Martyrs: 1618 to 1637

Between 1618 and 1637 Nagasaki, once known as little Rome, saw Christians burned, beheaded and hung in pits for their faith again and again.¹²³Most were not missionaries but ordinary Christians: the hosts who sheltered priests, the sailors who carried them and the neighbours held responsible with them.²⁸²⁹³⁰The sentences came from the city's governors, Hasegawa Gonroku, then Mizuno Kawachi from 1626 and Takenaka Uneme from 1629.³¹¹⁴¹⁹Many died on a hill outside the town that Christians called "the holy place of the Martyrs" (translated).²⁹The earlier Twenty-Six Martyrs of 1597 have a page of their own.

On November 25, 1618, the governor Hasegawa Gonroku had three Christian families burned alive, Nagasaki's first public burning for the faith.⁴⁵Four years earlier the men had rowed out to a ship taking a priest, a son of Murayama Tōan, into exile, and had brought him back.³²⁵Husbands, wives and children died together, the youngest a baby.³³³⁴A ten-year-old boy named Leo did not flinch, though the slow fire was set two arm-lengths away.³²³⁵The Kawata of Kawaya-machi refused to take any part, saying that being a Christian was no crime.³⁶

In November 1619 sixteen Christians died in Nagasaki within nine days, five by fire and eleven by the sword.²⁶On November 18 five prisoners were burned: the Japanese Jesuit brother Leonardo Kimura, the Portuguese Domingos Jorge, Andrés Murayama Tokuan, Juan Yoshida Shoun and the Korean-born Cosme Takeya, four of them for sheltering missionaries.³⁷³⁸The brother was condemned not on an old false charge of murder but as a Jesuit and a preacher.³⁹⁴⁰When his ropes burned through he put live coals on his head, while boys of the Marian congregations sang psalms from a boat.⁴¹⁴²On November 27 eleven more were beheaded, guilty only of living next to houses where Dominicans and Jesuits had been arrested.⁶⁴³Of twelve offered their lives and goods, only one gave way.⁶Among the eleven was Antonio Kimura, a relative of Leonardo, who knelt to kiss the spot where his kinsman had died.⁴⁴⁴⁵

On May 22, 1620, Matías, a courier of the Jesuits born in Arima, died under torture rather than reveal where the priests were hiding.⁷⁸He had been caught at night with a Jesuit cassock under his clothes.⁴⁶Gonroku had him given the water torture again and again, and molten lead poured down his back.⁴⁶⁸His head was then set on a pole above a notice saying he was a Christian who knew where the Fathers were.⁸On July 24 three more of Murayama Tōan's sons, Manoel, Diego and Miguel, were beheaded.⁴⁷⁴⁸

On February 22, 1621, two townsmen, Jean Chu and Jean Ito, were beheaded only because they lived next to a house where two religious had been seized.⁹¹⁰Their wives asked to die in their place, but the governor would not allow it.¹⁰⁴⁹Their bodies were sunk at sea in sacks, but Christians fished them out by night.⁹Not everyone held firm: a labourer condemned to the fire that year broke free of the flames calling on Amida, and he was later struck off the list of martyrs.⁵⁰⁵¹

On August 19, 1622, the Dominican Luis Flores, the Augustinian Pedro de Zúñiga and the Japanese captain Joaquim Hirayama, whose ship had carried them, were burned before more than 30,000 people.¹¹¹²Twelve of the ship's company were beheaded first.⁵²¹²The Great Genna Martyrdom of September 10, 1622, has its own page. On September 23 the family of Matthias Matayemon died at Yagami near Nagasaki.⁵³⁵⁴On October 2 the boat-master Luis Yakichi, who had tried to free Flores from prison, was burned after six weeks of torture, and his wife Lucía and their sons, aged eight and four, were beheaded before his eyes.⁵⁵⁵⁶⁵⁷

After a year and a half without executions for the faith in Nagasaki, the burnings began again in 1626 under the new governor, Mizuno Kawachi.¹³¹⁴On June 20 nine Jesuits were burned: the provincial Francisco Pacheco, Giovanni Battista Zola, Baltasar de Torres and six Japanese and Korean brothers.⁵⁸⁵⁹Thirteen stakes had been set up, but four Portuguese prisoners saved their lives by giving up the faith.⁶⁰⁶¹Nagasaki came to call the day the Solemn Mass.⁶²On July 12 the families who had sheltered the three priests died on the same spot, the men by fire and the women by the sword.⁶³⁶⁴⁶⁵A small boy was beheaded after his mother, while his father, Juan Naisen, called to him from the stake: "Be comforted, Luis, in a little while we shall all three be in Paradise" (translated).⁶⁶⁶⁷Suetsugu Heizō had the firewood soaked in the sea to slow the fire, but the old farmer Tanaka, his ropes burned away, walked through the flames to kiss his companions' hands.⁶⁸⁶⁹

In August 1627 three Franciscans and about a dozen lay Christians who had sheltered them died in Nagasaki, some by fire and some by the sword.¹⁵¹⁶The friars were Francisco de Santa María, the Mexican-born brother Bartolomé Laurel and the Japanese catechist Antonio de San Francisco, who gave himself up as their companion.⁷⁰⁷¹That year more than 430 Christians were stripped of their goods and driven into the woods and hills outside the city, forbidden even a hut.⁷²Some, several of them old, died there of hunger and exposure.⁷³⁷⁴⁷⁵

On September 8, 1628, the feast of the Nativity of Our Lady, the Dominican Domingo Castellet, the Franciscan Antonio de San Buenaventura and their Japanese companions were burned in Nagasaki.¹⁷¹⁸Among them were three Japanese brothers, the boat-owners and sailors who had carried missionaries, and Lucía, the eighty-year-old hostess of the Dominican priest.⁷⁶¹⁷⁷⁷Juan Tomachi of Ōmura watched his four sons, aged sixteen, thirteen, ten and seven, beheaded before him.⁷⁸⁷⁹When every household had been told to give firewood for the burning, the Jesuit brother Miguel Nakashima refused even a stick.⁸⁰⁸¹

In 1629 the new governor, Takenaka Uneme, set out to break the Christians of Nagasaki by torture rather than make martyrs of them.¹⁹²⁰He told the first group he chose that he would torture them without letting them die, and heal them to torture them again.²⁰Many fled to the hills, where soldiers hunted them.²⁰A young man named Simeone, not yet nineteen, alone held firm among his companions and died of his wounds in late August.⁸²⁸³His body was burned on the stone where he used to pray, as he had foretold.⁸³⁸⁴In December three more were put to death, among them Thomas Sakubyoe and his wife Catherine, who had given up the faith and then repented.⁸⁵⁸⁶

On October 28, 1630, ten Christians were beheaded at Hokonohara near Nagasaki, most of them young Japanese helpers of the Augustinian friars.²¹²²²³Because they kept preaching on the road, the guards passed ropes through their mouths like bridles.⁸⁷⁸⁸The next day three were burned, among them Diego Nakashima, host of the Jesuit Antonio Ishida.²¹⁸⁹His mother and his small children, the youngest a year old, were beheaded within days.⁹⁰⁹¹

On September 3, 1632, six priests and religious were burned together in Nagasaki after long imprisonment and torture.²⁴²⁵²⁶Among them were the Augustinians Bartolomé Gutiérrez, born in Mexico City, and Vicente Carvalho, and the Japanese Jesuit Antonio Ishida.⁹²⁹³They were tied to their stakes by a single finger, so that anyone who wished to give up the faith could free himself.⁹⁴On December 11 two Augustinian Recollects, Melchor de San Agustín and Martín de San Nicolás, were burned on the Mount of Martyrs before more than 20,000 people.⁹⁵A few days later two Franciscans newly arrived from Manila were burned in their turn.⁹⁶⁹⁷

From 1633 the authorities used a slower death, the pit, in which prisoners hung head down in a hole for days.²⁷³The Japanese Jesuit brother Nicolas Fukunaga Keian was among the first, hanging from a Thursday afternoon to a Sunday morning in July 1633.³In four months that year the governors captured sixteen priests, besides brothers, catechists and hosts.⁹⁸So many of the men who used to record the martyrs' deaths were now among the dead that few details survive.⁹⁹In 1634 the young tertiary Magdalena of Nagasaki died in the pit with ten other Christians.¹⁰⁰In November the pit took the Sicilian Dominican Jordán de San Esteban, and St Marina of Ōmura was burned.^101102103In 1636 a Portuguese layman, Jerónimo Luis, was burned for carrying a letter from Macao.¹⁰⁴¹⁰⁵In September 1637 seventeen Japanese Augustinian tertiaries died in the pit, followed by the deaths of four Dominicans from Manila.¹⁰⁶¹⁰⁷On October 17, 1637, the Jesuit Marcello Mastrilli, still alive after four days in the pit, was beheaded.¹⁰⁸