A Christian town in Higo
Yatsushiro (八代) became the first place of martyrdom of the Tokugawa era.It was a busy trading city in Higo (肥後), with a citadel outside the town where the Christian officers lived.The faith had grown there under Konishi Yukinaga (小西行長), the Christian lord who then held most of the country.His vassal Diego Mimasaka, made governor of the town, won most of its people and nobles by his eloquence and the example of his life.In 1599 baptisms grew from a few chosen people to hundreds at a time, and more than 25,000 people were baptized in this first harvest.
After a war, the province passed from its Christian lord to a pagan one.The new lord, Katō Kiyomasa (加藤清正), followed the Hokke (Nichiren) sect.He expelled the Jesuit Fathers from Higo and set close guards on every way into it.
1603
In October 1603 Katō Kiyomasa heard that many who had signed a list of apostates the year before had returned to the faith.He sent a trusted bonze to make them place the Lotus Sutra on their heads, on pain of death, a sign of professing its teaching.The bonze reached Yatsushiro on November 23, 1603.Four days later the governors ordered every Christian gentleman and soldier to go to his lodging.
Fourteen samurai met at the house of John Minami Gorozaemon and resolved to refuse.Kept under guard and worn down by pagan relatives, all of them gave way except their host and Simon Takeda Gohyōe.The townspeople stood firm. They kept forty hours of prayer and set their crosses and holy images over their doors in public view.Fabian, captain of one quarter, told the governors that about 800 Christians lived there and would die rather than change their religion.The governors let the common people be.
Simon Takeda, an officer of the lord of Higo, had been baptized ten years earlier and was held up as a model of every virtue.The fortress commander Kakuzaemon, his close friend, offered him ways out, such as paying the bonze only a courtesy visit.The samurai refused them all, and so did John.Both men were sentenced to die with their families.
John Minami was beheaded at Kumamoto (熊本) on December 8, 1603, the feast of the Conception of Our Lady.Kakuzaemon arranged for Simon to die at home in Yatsushiro, sparing him a public execution.At midnight the order came.The condemned man prayed before an image of the Ecce Homo, bathed, wrote his farewells and, at his mother's wish, cut the hair of his wife Agnes, a Japanese woman's sign of giving up the world.A kinsman beheaded him with one blow shortly before dawn on December 9.Guards said they saw a wonderful light over his house.
That night four more Christians died on crosses at Yatsushiro.Simon's mother Joanna, aged 55 and from Ise (伊勢), had asked to die with her son.Magdalena, John's widow, aged 33 and from Settsu (摂津), came with Louis, a nephew of seven or eight whom she and her husband had adopted.With them was Agnes, aged 30 and also from Ise.Joanna prayed aloud for Katō Kiyomasa, wishing that he rule Higo in peace and that the whole land become Christian.Crucified first, she preached from the cross until a second lance thrust pierced her.Magdalena and the boy were crucified facing each other.When the executioner asked Louis why he was not more afraid, he answered: "I finde no griefe at all in my minde, neyther am I trubled but rather Rejoyce".Hired men crucified Agnes last, after the executioners refused, and she suffered many unskilled blows.Witnesses said they saw a great light over the four crosses.
The lord would not let the women's remains be taken down for a whole year.Christians gathered the bones as they fell and carried them to Nagasaki (長崎).The kinsman who had beheaded Simon asked for baptism and gave the bishop his sword.
1605
By 1605 three lay officers of charity (jihiyaku) were in the Yatsushiro prison.They were Joachim Watanabe Jirozaemon, Michael Mitsuishi Hikoemon and John Hattori Jingorō.With the priests gone, they had baptized infants, visited the sick and buried the dead, and they had taken the martyrs' bodies to Nagasaki.
Kakuzaemon accused them of stealing the bodies of the four crucified to sell them.John Hattori answered that he had only gathered bones that had fallen to the ground, to bury them as Christians.When the governor argued that all things came from the chance mixing of the four elements, the prisoner replied that mixed colours never make a picture without a painter.Joachim was away when the officers came, so they seized his wife Maria.He came back and persuaded the governor to free her and take him instead.
The prison measured 20 palms by 15, was crammed with debtors and was never cleaned.One pagan inmate went mad from the stench and howled day and night.A priest sent to Yatsushiro that year could not reach the prisoners.They wrote to the Jesuit vice-provincial that they did not consent to any Father seeking their release.
1606
Joachim fell ill with fever after about eighteen months in prison.Fr Luis, a Japanese priest from Arima (有馬), slipped into the prison by night to hear his confession.Afraid that delirium might make him seem an apostate, the dying man dictated and signed a profession of faith.In it he wrote: "if my captivity were to last ten or twenty years, I would always be ready and eager to suffer it" (translated).He died in the prison on August 26, 1606.Three days after his burial in the public cemetery, his body was secretly carried by water to Arima, where the Jesuits laid him near the martyr John Minami.The other two officers of charity were soon condemned to prison for life.
1607
Kiyomasa chose not to kill Michael and John, so that they would not triumph as martyrs, and gave them harsher guards instead.The prisoners kept a fixed rule of prayer.John prayed from midnight until the first meal and said the rosary after supper.Every morning both knelt for half an hour facing the nearest church outside Higo and joined in the Mass in spirit.They read lives of the saints which Michael had copied out by hand.At Christmas the prison served as their church.
The two men preached to criminals, guards and visitors, baptized condemned criminals and brought back apostates.Letters from the prison were read aloud at Christian gatherings, and the prison became, in effect, the church of Yatsushiro.
1609
The harsh governor Nogiri Hachiemon died suddenly, and his milder son joined another governor in asking Kiyomasa to free the prisoners, exile them or put them to death.The lord ordered the two men beheaded, and with them their young sons, aged twelve and six.On January 7, 1609, Michael wrote that four years in prison had passed with such joy that they seemed only a day.
On January 11, 1609, the two were told they would die that day.Michael asked: "And why not crucified? To die like Christ, since we die for Christ" (translated).He put on a white garment he had kept ready for martyrdom.His companion asked to have the rope round his neck tied tight, which moved an apostate in the crowd to declare himself a Christian.Michael's son Thomas, twelve, put on his best clothes, gave his coins to his playmates and met his father at the town gate.The officials turned aside into a wheat field rather than use the usual execution ground.Michael was beheaded with one stroke, Thomas knelt by his father's body calling on Jesus and Mary, and John was struck down at the same moment.
The officer of charity's son Peter, not yet six, was fetched from his grandfather's house.He knelt and offered his neck so calmly that the executioner sheathed his sword, and two other men also refused.A Korean slave killed him with three blows.The four heads were set on lances over the east gate with a placard saying they died for openly professing Christianity and bringing back apostates.
The relics and the memory
A young Christian of Kumamoto, Yamada Leo, dug up the bodies by night and took them by boat out of Higo.Christians at Konzura kept Peter's body, since a Jesuit there, Fr Marco Ferraro, had baptized the boy.The other bodies, and later the four heads, were laid in the Jesuit church at Arima.Four years later, it was reported, the priest opened Peter's coffin and found the body whole.The story of the little boy spread as far as the court at Edo.
The relics went to Macao in 1614 and came back to Japan in 1995.In 1783 a tragedy on Agnes Takeda was printed at Parma.Persecution returned to the town in 1617, when many Christians were exiled or jailed.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- Place and date of the two beheadings. most accounts put John Minami's death at Kumamoto on December 8 and Simon Takeda's at Yatsushiro on December 9, 1603; the martyrology printed by Delplace puts both at Yatsushiro on December 9.
- Origins of the two samurai. Profillet makes Simon a native of Yamato and John a native of Kyoto;Delplace's martyrology reverses this, with John of Yamato and Simon of Miyako.
- Date of the crucifixions. Solier once dates them to September 1603, against his own and others' date of December 9, 1603.
- Age of Louis Minami. seven, or seven to eight.
- Name of Simon's wife. Agnes (Agnès) in Charlevoix and Delplace, Inès in Profillet and Pagès.
- The 1603 samurai. Profillet says fourteen refused and twelve gave way;Bartoli says eighteen and then twelve resolved to stand.
- The Christian governor of the 1590s. the accounts name him Sacuiemon Diego, Jacques Sacouïman, and Diego or James Konishi Mimasaka; it is not clear that all refer to one man.
- When the three officers of charity were jailed. Pagès says 1604;Bartoli gives February 1, 1605 and says Michael and John were held from New Year 1605 to New Year 1609;Solier places John's arrest after the Bon festival of August 1605.Pagès also says nearly five years.
- Joachim's death. most sources give death in the Yatsushiro prison on August 26, 1606;Anesaki lists him as beheaded at Kumamoto;Delplace says one of the three died in prison on January 7, 1609.Higashibaba dates the martyrdom behind the 1609 letters to August 26, 1606, which conflicts with the 1609 of Ebisawa's title and with his own earlier note.
- Joachim's age and name. about 60 or about 55;Pagès's annex calls him Watanabe Hiroyemon and Delplace calls him Joachim Furoya.
- Michael's name and age. written Mitsuishi, Mizuuchi, Mizuishi and Mizzuiski; aged about 55 or 46.
- The second boy of 1609. Peter in most accounts;Delplace's martyrology and Anesaki name him Louis or Ludovicus.His age is given as five or six.
- The relics of 1609. most say they went to Arima, with Peter's body at Konzura;Delplace says Kokura and Arima.Caddell says the slave hacked him to pieces, while Profillet says Peter's body was left intact.
- Bartoli's report that the bodies reached Arima on January 20, still uncorrupted, is uncertain.
- Kakuzaemon. Bartoli calls him a cruel idolater;Solier says he was converted two years after 1603.