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.
Matsuda, also called Miguel Pineda, came from Shiki in Amakusa and entered the Society of Jesus in 1607, after studying Latin at a seminary.He taught Latin, received permission for ordination in 1621, and was among the Japanese Jesuits exiled to Manila.One catalogue lists his ordination in 1621 and his arrival in Macao in March 1623.
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: 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 died after his return to Japan, but accounts disagree on whether his death came in 1630 or as late as 1633. After his host drove him out, Matsuda died from illness and exposure, although other accounts place his death near Nagasaki in September or October 1633.
Accounts of his last days agree that he became homeless when the person sheltering him forced him to leave, and that he died from illness and hardship near Nagasaki.One account places his death at the end of September 1633, after 26 years in the Society, rather than in 1630.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- The sailing month. Takagi says about May; O'Hara says June.
- , 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.
- Birth year. one catalogue gives 1577, while a biographical note gives 1578.
- Departure for Japan. one account dates the voyage with Kibe to around November 1629, against the current page's spring 1630 sailing chronology.
- Death year. the current account says August 1630; other sources give 1632 or September to October 1633 near Nagasaki.
- Ordination. a catalogue gives 1621, but another biography says only that authorization was granted that year.