1597: The 26 Martyrs of Japan, for God and trade routes

ExecutedToday.com ^ | February 5, 2008 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

On this date in 1597, 26 Christians were crucified at Nagasaki’s Tateyama (“Hill of Wheat”) as Japan began to close itself against western interference.

The 26 martyrs — five Europeans of Spanish extraction, one from Portuguese India, and 20 local converts — had been marched hundreds of kilometers over a period of weeks as a warning to the populace, before they were raised up on crosses and lanced to death. They could have had their liberty at the price of renouncing Catholicism; a 12-year-old altar boy among them reputedly answered such an offer on this day with the words, “Sir, it would be better if you yourself became a Christian and could go to heaven where I am going. Sir, which is my cross?”

Martyrs always cut heroic figures. The backdrop of these deaths, however, was a struggle over power and resources in Europe’s colonial age that was far from black-and-white.

European missionaries began their contact with Japan in the waning stages of Japan’s protracted civil wars. They did not scruple to interfere, winning converts with plum trade concessions like saltpeter.

At the same time, Spanish and Portuguese interests were contending with one another for overseas trade, as the European naval powers carved the world into colonies. To greatly simplify a conflict that would continue to unfold well into the 17th century, this day’s martyrdom was suffered by Spanish-backed Franciscans pressing into Portuguese territory in a proxy contest for access conducted by their respective secular authorities.

Portugal, in essence, got there first — and Japan was (disputably) within that seafaring realm’s official sphere of influence. Since legal recognition followed facts on the ground rather than the other way around, Spain sponsored mendicant orders like the Franciscans to make its own inroads....

[viewfromthefrontier]

Thanks, Cheshire. This feast day of St. Paul Miki and companions is a special one to me. Among other reasons, I believe that one of the martyrs, St. Thomas Kozaki, obtained the conversion to the RCC of my cousin many years ago and subsequently my own conversion 16 years ago.

[hanamizu]

Couple of things. Some Japanese families remained secret Christians for centuries in spite of the fearsome consequence of getting caught.

Later when the Japanese banned all travel both in and out of the country, they allowed the Dutch to live on an artificial island to conduct the necessary trade with China. They picked the Dutch for this job because they were Protestant, not Catholic.