A church for a condition
After Hideyoshi took his lands in 1587, Ukon was sheltered by Konishi Yukinaga; in 1588 invited him to Kaga. The parish history says that Ukon came on one condition: "if you will build one church of Jesus, I will come". He lived first near where the 21st Century Museum now stands; an old local history names the site as "the residence of Takayama ".
In Kaga he served the Maeda as a guest commander and in the business of the domain, and he built a church. In 1605 he obtained a resident priest and brother, and he built two more churches in Noto. He brought leading Christians to Kanazawa, among them , and he took in , Toshinaga's sister and the wife of Ukita Hideie, who had been baptised through Joan's sister Julia; after Sekigahara her husband was exiled to Hachijō and she returned to her brother in Kanazawa.
Sources: a church for a condition
The parish of Kanazawa tells this history on its own site, quoting the old local gazetteer 金沢古蹟志 for the sites; the Kanazawa tourism association gives the same outline.
A builder of castles
The inner moat on the east side of the castle town was dug in 1599 by order of the second lord, Maeda Toshinaga, with Ukon in charge, according to the stone that marks it. He is also credited with designing Takaoka castle in 1609, though the tourism association gives this only as "it is held". He served as a staff officer of the Maeda army at Odawara in 1590.
Leaving Kanazawa
In 1612, with the shogun now set against the Christians, the lord of Kaga, whom Profillet calls Figendono, did all he could to persuade Ukon to give up his faith and so escape the shogun's anger. Ukon answered that he held the one truth, and that at his age a man did not change. The lord, who loved him, left him in peace. Note: our translation of Profillet.
At the end of 1613 Tokugawa Ieyasu issued the order expelling the Christians. In 1614 Ukon and Naitō Joan left Kanazawa with their families, on foot to Kyoto, then by boat from Osaka to Nagasaki, and on to exile in Manila.
Before he set out, Profillet writes, Ukon sent sixty bars of gold to the lord's younger brother and heir, as the income of the lands he held from the house, since he had never had the chance to repay it in war; to the lord himself he sent a tea kettle weighing thirty bars of gold. The lord refused the kettle, and his brother took the gold. Fearing a rising, the lord shut himself in the castle with his best men as Ukon passed, and Ukon sent word to reassure him. Crowds came out along the road, so that, in Profillet's words, "this journey into exile was like a triumph".
At Nagasaki, before the ship sailed, he made the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius, as he had done once before, after Hideyoshi's edict of 1587. Bishop Mizobe Osamu sees both retreats at the turning points of his life: through them, he writes, Ukon prepared for martyrdom. Profillet dates his sailing from Japan to 7 November 1614; the parish says he was sent to Manila in December.
In Manila the governor and a great crowd met them with gun salutes and every honour, but worn out by the voyage and fever Ukon died on the night of 2 February 1615, aged 63. Profillet gives 5 February; the bishops' canonisation committee keeps 3 February as the anniversary of his death. On his deathbed he told his confessor: "I commend my family to no one. They have the honour, as I have, of being banished for the faith; that must be enough for them." Note: our translation. Naitō Joan built a Japanese Christian quarter, San Miguel, in Manila and died there in 1626.
The exiles of Urakami
The faith returned to Kanazawa in chains. In the winter of 1870, more than 500 of the Christians of Urakami, mostly from Nakano, were handed over to the Kaga domain and held on . Those who held firmest were put in a double fenced cell open to the wind. The persecution lasted until the ban was lifted on 24 February 1873.
The parish and the statue
In April 1888 a catechetical house opened at Katamachi, and in August the first baptisms were held; the church moved to its present site at Hirosaka in 1896. For its centenary in 1988, four hundred years after Ukon came, the parish set up a statue of him, unveiled on 10 April 1988; the sculptor, of Kanazawa, also made the statue of Maeda Toshiie below the Ishikawa gate. Inside are stained glass windows of Ukon and Hosokawa Gracia, a relic of Ukon, and an incense burner said to have been his. On 21 January 2016 Pope Francis signed the decree declaring Ukon a martyr, and he was beatified in Osaka on 7 February 2017. On 9 February 2017, two days after the beatification, Kanazawa held its own Mass of thanksgiving.
