Hideyoshi builds a new city
Osaka (大阪) became the great castle city of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豊臣秀吉) from 1583, on the site of a fortified Buddhist monastery that had held out against Oda Nobunaga (織田信長) until 1580.The new ruler, known to the missionaries as Faxiba, resolved to build a castle and city far grander than Azuchi (安土), and he ordered his vassal lords to live and build palaces there.More than thirty thousand men were said to be working at once, and later counts rose to sixty thousand.Stones came from twenty or thirty leagues away, and the port of Sakai (堺) alone sent 200 boats a day.One father wrote: "So that from our house we sometimes saw as many as 1,000 entering under full sail".
The palace by the river had gilded roof tiles that dazzled in the sun, and the treasure was kept in a very tall tower lacquered blue and gold.Almost all the great lords were made to keep a palace and their families in the city, both to adorn the new court and to keep them under watch.
The first church and its works of mercy
The Jesuits gained their church in Osaka through Takayama Ukon (高山右近), the Christian lord the missionaries called Justo or Giulio.Through him the ruler gave the fathers a steep hill above the city, refused until then even to kings, which could be reached only by one narrow path.The church there was built at Ukon's expense, and the first Mass was said at Christmas 1583 before a great crowd of Christians.Lords of the palace began to come to the sermons, and by 1584 sixty-five nobles of the city were converts, among them Gamō (蒲生) and Kodera (小寺), also called Kuroda.
In 1584, while the ruler was away, about fifteen thousand armed monks of Negoro (根来) marched to destroy the unwalled city, and Fr Organtino and the Jesuits there were close to flight, but the ruler's men routed them on the way.
The Jesuits opened a hospital in Osaka for lepers, who were outcasts in Japan, and more than a hundred were converted there.Several times a year the fathers gathered the lepers, sometimes hundreds at once, for a fine banquet served by Christians, with the noblest serving most humbly.
The Franciscans and the arrests of 1596
In 1596 the Franciscans built a house in Osaka that they called Bethlehem.Ribadeneira and Gonzalo García lodged with Juan, a Christian the friar had baptized, and León Karasumaru bought a site alone so the neighbours would not guess its purpose.Their host then gave the yard of his own house, and church and house together "cost four hundred reales, no more" (translated).The wife of the local lord condemned Juan to death and gave a month for the church to be pulled down, but her husband relented after Pedro Bautista and Gonzalo came from Kyoto, and he even sent rice.Four of the later martyrs came from this house.
In December 1596 guards were set on the convent, and Fr Martín de Aguirre (de la Ascensión) and three others were taken prisoner.The Jesuits of Osaka were then lodging with Andrew Ogasawara, a Christian known among the nobility as a teacher of swordsmanship and horsemanship.He told the officer that three Japanese lived in his house but said nothing of the priests, at the risk of his life.On January 4, 1597, the friars and their companions, now prisoners, were brought on horseback to Osaka and paraded through the streets, where pagans called it unjust to punish men who had served their sick.
Under Hideyori and his mother
In the early 1600s Osaka was governed in the name of the boy Toyotomi Hideyori (豊臣秀頼), son of Hideyoshi, by his mother and by Katagiri Katsumoto (片桐且元).At first they published edicts against Christianity at the city gates, yet the community still grew.The young lord's mother, Yodo-dono (淀殿), was a devoted Buddhist who had turned against the Christians after the Jesuits buried a cousin of hers with solemn rites in Kyoto.
About 1605 a noble boy of twelve asked for baptism against his family's wishes, and when his father threatened to kill him he handed over his sword and said: "Here is the weapon and here is the head, cut it: my soul is dearer to me than life" (translated).One martyr of these years was Leo Kaemon, a steward from Hizen (肥前) who had been baptized at Hakata (博多).He refused to fast for an idol's vigil, and on June 7, 1612, his pagan master, urged on by his own mother, killed him with his sword.
From 1607 the Osaka court was so friendly that the persecution of 1612 to 1614 scarcely reached the city.The church stood in Hideyori's private domain, under a licence from his father, and in 1612 it enjoyed complete immunity.In 1613 the young lord and his mother favoured the Jesuit house, and she had a fine chapel added to the church.
The persecution of 1614
When the missionaries had to leave in February 1614, the Jesuit house was full of the faithful day and night, and at Mass the weeping was such that the priest often had to stop.Katagiri, who was humane toward Christians, ordered that only merchants and craftsmen be registered, so nobles and soldiers disguised themselves as merchants in order to be enrolled.
Then Ōkubo Tadachika (大久保忠隣), whom the missionaries called Sangamindono, came from Kyoto.He had the Jesuit church pulled down and its timber burned on a small island in sight of the city, and he proclaimed that unrepentant Christians would be burned alive.The next day more than three hundred Christians, in their best clothes with rosaries and reliquaries at their necks, offered themselves to die.Alarmed, the official chose fifty-eight men and women of high rank, had them put in sacks and carried through the streets, and tied them for a whole day to the posts of the bridge.Among them were Giroiemon Giovanni, nephew of the lord of Awa (阿波), and his wife, a princess nine months pregnant, who insisted on the sack.In the end twenty-four were sent, after a month in prison, into exile at Tsugaru (津軽).
The siege and fall of Osaka Castle
In 1614 and 1615 Osaka Castle became the last stronghold of the Toyotomi house against Tokugawa Ieyasu (徳川家康), and many Christians fought on its side.In autumn 1614 the young lord's call brought about 90,000 men to the castle within a month.A son of Takayama Ukon came with three hundred of his father's former retainers, as did many banished Christian warriors.One of the best generals inside was the Christian Akashi Kamon (明石掃部).Christian companies marched under banners of the Cross, the Saviour or St James.
Priests went with them: Franciscans, Jesuits and Japanese clergy were inside the castle.The Jesuits Baltasar de Torres and Giovanni Battista Porro were in the city, Torres lodging in Akashi's house.The Augustinian Hernando de San José sailed some 400 miles in a fishing boat with a Franciscan companion to shut himself in Hideyori's camp.
The winter siege, from December 24 to mid-February, won the attackers almost no ground.On January 15, 1615, a cannon shot struck Yodo-dono's apartments and killed two of her maids, and she at once asked for peace.When war came again in early June 1615, Hideyori's commander Sanada Yukimura (真田幸村) at first routed Ieyasu's vanguard.When the young lord left the castle it caught fire, set alight, it was said, by bribed servants, and near victory became a rout.City and fortress burned in a little over five hours, and the dead were put at close to 100,000.Hideyori perished in the fall, and a seven-year-old son of his was put to death, ending the House of Toyotomi.
The priests inside barely escaped: Torres was stripped naked and walked six miles among the dead until a Japanese covered him with rags, and Hernando de San José carried a blind man on his shoulders out of a burning hut.Two years later the friar wrote that God had saved him "in the rout of Osaka from death by fire, by water and by a thousand katanas" (translated).
Hidden faith and the return of the Church
Christian life went on quietly in Osaka after 1615, and in 1619 the Christians still ran a hospital, and when police dragged a dying man past it toward the city dump, they took him in and baptized him.In 1624, when pagans were ordered to turn out Christian lodgers, a Christian named Paul kept a house in the city with two Jesuits for all comers.In 1630 seventy Christian outcasts arrested in Osaka were sent to Nagasaki (長崎) and banished to Manila.On January 13, 1632, Paul Yamamoto Hikodayu, who had sheltered the Jesuit fathers, died for the faith with his wife Maria and four children, among them Ignace, aged eleven.
When Catholic missionaries returned, the two churches, hospitals and other works of the first mission had all vanished.Bishop Petitjean laid the first stone of a new church on March 17, 1878, the thirteenth anniversary of the discovery of the hidden Christians.Built by a Japanese Christian with brick walls and keyaki wood inside, it was blessed on March 25, 1879, and dedicated to the Immaculate Conception.In 1881 Fr Cousin baptized seventy-five adults, and about ten families met every Thursday to pray the rosary together.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- Who led the 1614 persecution in Osaka. Bartoli and Solier name Sangamindono (Ōkubo Tadachika), with three hundred volunteers and fifty-eight put in sacks;Delplace names Katagiri Katsumoto (Ichinokami) and says he would arrest only fifty of three hundred;Pagès, through Murdoch, says Katagiri registered and persecuted the Christians but had no power to kill them.
- Leo Kaemon's master is "Imanda Fanchiro" in Profillet and "Ivada Fasciro" in Bartoli; Anesaki lists Leo as beheaded, while Profillet and Bartoli describe a single sword blow.
- Army sizes vary widely. Hideyori had about 90,000 in the winter of 1614 (Morris, Murdoch) and 200,000 in 1615 (Bartoli, Charlevoix); Ieyasu had about 180,000 (Morris), 300,000 (Bartoli) or 260,000 to 270,000 (the missionaries, as reported by Murdoch).
- Losses in the winter siege. Bartoli gives 30,000 of Ieyasu's men lost; the missionaries cited by Murdoch give some 35,000 put out of action.
- The date of the fall. June 4, 1615 in Cary and Murdoch; the decisive battle on June 3 in Bartoli, on "the first day of June" in Charlevoix, and on June 9 in Pagès.
- Hideyori's end. Murdoch says he killed himself in a storehouse; Charlevoix says he was never seen again; his body was never found, and rumours said he had escaped to Satsuma or Ryukyu.
- The clergy in the castle. three Franciscans, two Jesuits and two Japanese priests (Morris thesis) or six missionaries (Murdoch).
- The six great banners with the legend "The Great Protector of Spain" rest on missionary reports.
- How the boy and the Paul Yamamoto family died. Anesaki says burned alive or beheaded; Profillet says Paul was burned alive and Ignace beheaded.
- Workforce for the castle. 30,000 (Fróis in the Avvisi), 50,000 (Bartoli), 60,000 (Charlevoix), and 150,000 for the later wall.
- A Jesuit observatory at Osaka (1609) is recorded by Charlevoix, but the fact reader flagged the passage as a possible source error.
- Bartoli calls Hideyori's mother "Chitano Mandocorosama", a slip for Yodo-dono.