Life
In July 1629 reached and entered the Jesuit college. There he found Fr. Antonio Cardim and Fr. Miguel Matsuda, nine years his senior, both waiting for a chance to get into Japan, since there was no ship.O'Hara adds that Matsuda was a former schoolmate of Kibe's from Shiki in Amakusa (Unverified).
On Kan'ei 7.1.19 (March 2, 1630), Kibe and Matsuda bought an old boat with the help of their order, hired Christian sailors, and went to Lubang Island. There the parish priest, Fr. Martín de Ureta, looked after them, and around May they set out for Japan in the battered boat.O'Hara says the boat was repaired in secret and that they sailed in June (Disputed: May or June).
On the way, in the Tokara Islands near , a typhoon drove them aground; they bought a boat from the islanders and landed at Bōnotsu.Kibe went on to , where the magistrate Takenaka Uneme and the daikan Suetsugu were hunting Christians.
Matsuda did not last the year. In August, Fr. Miguel Matsuda, driven out by his host, died in the mountains.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- Disputed: the sailing month. Takagi says about May; O'Hara says June.
- Disputed, minor: how they reached Bōnotsu. Takagi says they bought a boat from the islanders; O'Hara says the islanders sailed them there.
- Unverified: his birthplace (Shiki, Amakusa), order, and place of ordination. Takagi calls him "Fr." but gives no order.
- Unverified: where in the mountains he died, and whether it was near Nagasaki.
- Unverified: a Wikipedia snippet links a Miguel Matsuda to Cardim's later journey to Tonkin and a martyrdom; this conflicts with Takagi, who has him dead in August 1630.
- Solid: he is not Miguel Minoes, who died on the voyage back to Asia before 1630.