A prison for priests
The Suzuta (鈴田) prison was built in 1617 by the lord of Ōmura (大村) to hold missionaries arrested in his lands.Its first prisoner was the Franciscan Fr Apolinar Franco, who had come to Ōmura in his habit, preached openly and been arrested on July 7, 1617.Fifteen days later the Dominican Fr Tomás de Zumárraga, the brother Mancio and the catechist Paul were taken on an island and shut up with him.The prison stood at the hamlet of Suzuta, some miles from Kushima (玖島), the lord's fortress.On their first Christmas there, in 1617, the prisoners managed to say Mass in secret with what Christians smuggled in at their own risk.
The prison filled up after a raid in Nagasaki (長崎).The Jesuit Fr Carlo Spinola was seized just after midnight on December 14, 1618, and the missionaries and their servants were sent to Suzuta, while their hosts stayed in the Nagasaki jail.On the road, at Urakami (浦上), an Ōmura officer unbound the priest's hands and gave him a good horse, and the prisoners sang psalms as they went.As the newcomers reached the prison they sang the psalm Laudate pueri Dominum, and those inside answered them.
The hut on the rock
The first prison was a thatched hut on a rock or hilltop near the sea, forty palms long and twenty wide, surrounded by water on three sides.It was divided into three rooms, and the middle one served as a chapel.The prisoners could walk a few paces between the hut and an inner stockade, and hidden Christians among the guards let the faithful of Nagasaki and Ōmura send them alms.Its roof was so damaged that it gave little shelter.
Only two prisoners died at Suzuta of their treatment.The first was the Dominican Fr Juan de Santo Domingo, a Spaniard who had walked on alms from Salamanca to Seville on his way to the missions, who died in the hut on March 19, 1619, the feast of St Joseph, worn out by hardship and lack of medicine.The guards burned his body so that it could not be venerated, but his brethren kept a finger and a foot as relics.
That spring the guards were ordered to swear by Shaka and Amida that they would no longer let Christians bring food to the prisoners.One of them, Linus Toyemon, a member of the Rosary confraternity, refused and was beheaded, and his wife and children were made the lord's slaves.Several other guards refused to sign oaths against the prisoners in the years that followed.
The birdcage
In the summer of 1619 the hut was falling down, so a new and narrower prison was built.On July 21 the sixteen prisoners were shipped to Kubara, a village in sight of Ōmura, and kept for eighteen days in a hot little house where dysentery broke out.On August 7 they were led into the new prison, singing psalms, and Fr Spinola knelt on the threshold.
The new prison measured only twenty-four palms by sixteen, about four yards by six.It was a cage of square timbers set two fingers apart, "just like a bird cage" (translated).Food came through a hole the size of a rice bowl, and a narrow locked door let people in and out.An eight-palm walk ran round the cage inside a double palisade of sharpened stakes filled with thorns, and an outer stockade held the guardhouses and a kitchen.Fr Spinola drew a plan of it and sent it to Rome.
Hunger, weather and filth
Life in the cage was so hard that, as Fr Spinola wrote, there was no one among them who, "consulting only the cry of nature, would not prefer burning alive to life in this".The daily food was two bowls of rice boiled in plain water, a bowl of poor greens and a little radish or two small salted sardines.A contractor paid to feed them cheated, and the guards stole most of what Christians smuggled in.Knives and scissors were banned, so hair and beards grew long like those of hermits, and clothes could not be washed.
The cage stood on a small hilltop, open to the summer sun and to wind and snow in winter, and the guards never allowed a mat against the north wind.The latrine was an open pit in a corner that flooded into the prison in heavy rain.When there were thirty-two prisoners, each had only about two and a third palms of width to lie down.
The Jesuit brother Ambrósio Fernandes, the oldest and weakest of them, died there in the night of January 7, 1620.The guards refused a light, so Fr Spinola anointed him by the glow of a burning arquebus match while the others sang the Laudate Dominum.His body lay three days in the cage before the guards dragged it out and buried it beside the last stockade.
A church behind bars
The prisoners kept a common rule that made the cage something like a religious house.A superior was chosen each week; the day held meditation, the priests' Masses, the Rosary, spiritual reading, the Office and, except on feasts, the discipline.At midnight, sunrise and sunset they sang hymns and psalms together, which amazed the guards.Except in the first months they said Mass daily with hosts, wine and candles smuggled in from Nagasaki, hiding the altar lights inside an earthenware jar.
The prison also became a novitiate.Four Japanese prisoners asked to join the Society of Jesus and made their novitiate under Fr Spinola, and later three more followed.Fr Franco gave the Franciscan habit to his catechists Francisco of Edo and Pedro de Santa Clara, after a regular novitiate in the prison.Several guards also became Christians.
For a time in 1621 the lord's pages took turns supervising the guards, and two Christian pages let people in to hear the prisoners, so that the prison became a church with confessions and a baptism.After three months the chief governor, Ficoyemon, found out, the pages narrowly escaped death, and from July 1621 the guards were changed and the food cut.Even so, the prison was known throughout Japan, and its sufferings and the prisoners' joy preached in place of the missing missionaries.
The last months
By early 1621 the cage held nine priests, among them Fr Spinola, Fr Franco, the Dominicans Francisco de Morales, Alonso de Mena, Tomás de Zumárraga and Angelo Orsucci, and the Japanese priest Thomas Araki.In the autumn the Jesuit Fr Sebastião Kimura, the Franciscan Fr Richard of St Anne and the Dominican Fr Jacinto Orfanel joined them.From November 1621 thirty-two people were crammed together, and most fell gravely ill.The Portuguese and the Christians of Nagasaki, even the poor, competed to send them food and clothing.
In August 1622 the guards were doubled, and halters, straps and torches were made ready.In September most of the prisoners were led out to Nagasaki, thanking the cage that had sheltered them for four years.Eight stayed behind, Fr Zumárraga, Fr Franco and six Japanese religious, all taken in Ōmura lands, and they were burned near Ōmura on September 12, 1622.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- The year of the move to the cage. Spinola's own letter and Profillet give 1619; Bartoli places it in 1620.
- The cage's roof. Bartoli and Boero describe a tiled roof, Spinola 1868 says it had neither walls nor roof, and Charlevoix speaks of four thick walls without a roof.
- The first prison. most accounts describe a thatched hut, but Caddell and Solier say the prisoners were first kept in an underground cave without light.
- The size of the cage. Spinola gives twenty-four by sixteen palms, while a letter of Richard of St Anne gives the same figures in feet.
- The number held. thirty-two in most accounts, thirty-three at one time in another.
- Linus Toyemon is dated May 3, 1619 and is called Leo by Anesaki and Delplace; Caddell says the guard who refused was martyred the next morning.
- Fr Juan de Santo Domingo died on March 19, 1619 in most accounts, but on May 19 in Boero's catalogue and in Delplace.
- Br Ambrósio Fernandes's death is dated January 7, 1620 in most accounts and January 6 in Boero's catalogue; Spinola suspected poison.
- The distance from Kushima. about six miles according to Wilberforce, two leagues according to Profillet.
- Bouix wrongly placed the prison near Arima.
- Delplace calls the village of the 1619 move Kobara and seems to identify it with Suzuta.