What happened here
Local tradition holds that Blessed was arrested on this bridge, beside the Kurusuba cemetery (Tradition).The documented arrest took place nearby, in the castle town of Mizusawa.
Takagi Kazuo's account runs as follows. In October 1633 Kibe came by boat up the Kitakami River from Ishinomaki to the castle town of Mizusawa and hid in the house of Miyake Tōemon. He was 46.Mizusawa had been the castle town of Date Munetoshi (16,000 koku) since Kan'ei 6.6.8 (1629). Nearby Miwake and three other villages had once been the fief of the Christian Juan, and from about 1611 almost all their people were Christians.On Genna 9.12.18 and 19 (1623) the domain's officials for religious affairs burned the villages, and more than a hundred Christians fled to the neighboring Kubota and Nanbu domains.
The end came in 1639. On Kan'ei 16.2.13 (March 17, 1639; Disputed date), on the denunciation of the dōjuku (lay assistant) Chōsaburō, Kibe was caught hiding in Miyake Tōemon's house in the castle town of Mizusawa, after five years of work.Chōsaburō's statement survives, dated the thirteenth day of the second month. It names Miyake and his wife, both Christians and about fifty years old, and a son of about twenty, as the household that sheltered "Kibe".He was taken to Edo in chains and martyred there in 1639.
What is there today
A bridge beside the Kurusuba cemetery (クルスバ墓地横の橋) in Fukuhara, Mizusawa-ku, Ōshū City, near the mausoleum of Gotō Juan.
Visiting
The bridge is near the Gotō Juan mausoleum in Fukuhara, Mizusawa-ku, Ōshū City, about 10 minutes by car from JR Mizusawa Station.
People connected
- Blessed Petro Kasui Kibe.
- Miyake Tōemon and his family.
- Chōsaburō.
- Gotō Juan.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- Tradition: that the arrest happened on this bridge. Laudate reports the tradition; Takagi places the arrest at Miyake's house in the castle town and does not mention a bridge.
- Disputed: the arrest date. Takagi gives Kan'ei 16.2.13 (March 17, 1639); the chronology in the Diocese of Ōita leaflet gives about late May to mid-June 1639, with a question mark.
- Solid: the arrest year, 1639.Cieslik gives "1638 to 1639" for Kibe's capture in the north.
- Unverified: when Miyake Tōemon was executed. Takagi places the execution at the Fukuhara execution ground in Mizusawa; its date is not published here.
- Disputed: the address. Laudate gives Fukuhara, Mizusawa-ku; an earlier map link gave Aza Machiura.