The Japanese Martyrs

of all of the stories that i'm telling in this lecture series on atrocities in the early modern age this evening's one is the least remembered at least in this country and it is a strange twisting story we know about the age of global exploration the age of columbus and magellan and cortez and pizarro the brutal colonization of the americas by spain and portugal in the 16th century we also know that that's a religious as well as a political story bringing catholicism to the new world on the point of sword but we know much less in this country about the spread of catholicism during the same era in the old world as missionaries sent out by the catholic religious orders traveled with and forged ahead of the soldiers and the traders we could tell the very contrasting stories of the missions to the kingdom of congo in west africa or to imperial china but my focus tonight is on japan the jesuits properly speaking the society of jesus the the mix of modesty and assertiveness contained in that blunt title the society of jesus is very characteristic this is a religious order founded in 1534 by a spaniard former soldier ignatius loyola an order which from the beginning had a single-minded dedication to missionary work four years after the orders foundation in 1538 the portuguese king asked the jesuits to come to his burgeoning trading empire in the indian ocean and to spread the gospel there ignatius his colleague francis xavier another spaniard was the first to answer the call eventually setting out in 1541. it's worth emphasizing that embarking for the east indies as a missionary in the 1540s was not something to be done lightly even the voyage was fantastically dangerous reaching the far east took the best part of a year most of it confined to tiny ships eating meager supplies and eking out the stagnating fresh water xavier believed that when he set out that this was going to be a one-way ticket he expected that he would never return to europe and he was right his first stop was the portuguese foothold at goa in western india where he set about trying to win converts but quickly ran into political problems the portuguese had a rather more aggressive notion of how a mission ought to be conducted than he did he left india in 1545 for the spice islands of malacca but he's already aware that there are a pair of other societies in east asia which his attention was drawn towards complex sophisticated wealthy militarily powerful societies which dominated the region societies which even the most self-satisfied europeans of the age recognized as their equals incivility and which by most measures were plainly more advanced namely china and japan savior and the jesuits were drawn to them like moths xavier would in fact die of a fever um on on the edge of china in 1552 but first of all he went to japan where from 1549 to 52 he established the first catholic mission two things made japan particularly propitious for the missionary effort at this date first of all surprisingly for an island nation it wasn't at this point a significant maritime power and the portuguese who by now had made themselves into the shipping workhorses of east asia were able to use trade with japan as a foothold for other kinds of ventures and the other thing is that japan at this point was in some political turmoil formally speaking japan was a single empire covering the islands of honshu and kyushu the northern island of hokkaido wasn't brought fully into the empire until the 19th century but the emperor had long been a revered figurehead with real power held by the shoguns in effect military dictators who ruled in the emperor's name but after a disputed succession to the shogunate in 1477 this system broke down and the feudal lords of each locality the so-called daimyos asserted their independence and this is the context where the portuguese show up selling amongst other things that newfangled contraption the musket and they found plenty of ego customers so arriving in this context i think it's better to look at look at the look at it as they saw it arriving in this context xavier had a strategic choice to make the conventional missionary approach in hostile territory was to start at the margins to look for the oppressed for voiceless or powerless groups people for whom christian talk of justice for the poor and spiritual equality could have an appeal this was the way it had been done in india there were excellent reasons for doing this of reasons of high principle it was also quite a good way to get quick results xavier and his handful of assistants chose a different a more ambitious strategy they did not want catholicism in japan to be a religion of the marginal and the despised but a religion of the people as a whole and that meant it seemed to them working through the structures of power xavier initially tried to reach the emperor and the shogun in kyoto but he slowly became aware that despite their grand titles they had very little real power instead the mission would for now depend on the local daimyo persuading them either to become christians themselves or at the very least to permit christian preaching in their territories and that meant respecting japanese ways a project which meant much more than just learning the japanese language it meant asserting the the cultural and intellectual credibility of christianity in a scholarly conservative culture that was generally suspicious of foreign learning and it meant some radical adaptation whoops for example xavier had taken a vow of poverty as a jesuit and in europe visible apostolic poverty was part of the society's moral authority but he recognized now that in japan the moral authority attached to being poor simply didn't obtain and so he and his fellows instead dressed as wealthy japanese scholars and they presented themselves as foreign dignitaries bearing valuable gifts the daimyo of yamaguchi uchi yoshikawa sitaka was one of the first to accept this in 1551 he gave the jesuits permission to preach in his dominions and he gave them the use of a buddhist temple that last detail is not an accident buddhism was a substantial minority religion in contemporary japan and it was also a controversial one during the era of of civil war and of you know this era of chaos that lasts from the late 15th through the 16th century many buddhist monasteries had in effect become independent military powers and for daimyo who are trying to consolidate their local control the buddhists were often a threat the jesuits offered the possibility not just of a direct link to the portuguese and to the firearms which they sold but also of a religious counterweight to the buddhists and what harm it seemed could come from letting this handful of eccentric foreigners preach their alternative religion at least that's the cynical way of seeing it but too much cynicism about this mission will not do it's vital for this whole story to understand that japanese christianity was never merely a tactical political entity real converts converts of persuasion and conviction were already being made to take the man whom we know only by the name he chose on his conversion irma lorenzo the first japanese actually to become a jesuit brother himself this man was virtually blind was a traveling minstrel who was converted by xavier himself and now seamlessly added christian evangelism to his repertoire he's one of the first signs that catholicism was genuinely going to put down roots in early modern japan xavier left japan in late 1551 but others stayed to continue the work a turning point a promising and also ominous one came in 1562 when for the first time a daimyo umuro sumitatu actually converted and was baptized he promptly embarked on a purge of buddhist worship from his territories burning temples destroying statues despite the jesuits urging him not to and this is a sign of what's to follow thanks in part to the most extraordinary political figure in 16th century japan the daimyo nobunaga from owari province in central honshu in 1568 he successfully installed a new shogun following the murder of his predecessor and he emerged as the country's most powerful military leader he's not of high enough birth to become shogun himself nobunaga was no christian but he was ferociously anti-buddhist and he understood the old principle about my enemies enemy in the same year 1568 he extended formal privileges to the jesuits during the 1570s nobunaga's power and christian conversions grew almost in parallel especially on the southern island of kyushu which had been the center for christian activity from the start by the early 1580s there were astonishingly some 150 000 baptized christians in japan the vast majority of them on kyushu that number was astonishing and it was also suspicious the numbers had far outstripped any kind of priestly provision in 1583 there were 32 priests in japan ministering to that that enormous number of converts all of them were european at that point many of these were plainly factional political conversions taking their lead from political leaders whole territories were being baptized at a stroke of course that was the way things worked in europe it was the way things had worked in europe back back in the in the in the days of initial conversion a more cynical missionary establishment might have accepted that and worked with it but not alessandra valenyana the new visitor of missions to the indies for the jesuits who arrived in 1579 having been fed exciting tales of the growth of the japanese mission and was horrified rather than excited by what he found not the glorious mission field which the letters had described but a deeply politicized movement that was pursuing sheer numbers rather than deep or sustainable conversions he swiftly imposed a series of changes setting up a seminary in japan itself patronizing translations of texts into japanese pressing for much greater embrace of japanese culture by the missionaries japanese social norms and hierarchies and formalities he insisted must be followed the jesuits should build homes in the japanese style participate in tea ceremonies adopt japanese customs of hygiene which let's say would rather more exacting than those of contemporary europeans he also faithfully secured a major logistical coup in 1580. a daimyo on the christianized island of kyushu granted the jesuits a lease over the small port of nagasaki including the rights to regulate trade there and to keep the accompanying customs revenues and that was going to become a key base of operations for the japanese mission and also a vital source of funds and the most significant center of the christian population that small port would off the back of this these privileges balloon into one of japan's most substantial cities as that shows although valinano was concerned to nurture the spiritual side of the mission to de-politicize it he wasn't naive about the political context he met nobunaga in the same year in 1580 and was clear that the strategic alliance with him offered enormous potential unfortunately for the jesuits nobunaga's military luck ran out in 1582 and he was forced into a ritual suicide one of his generals toyotomi hideyoshi took up his cause and indeed finished the job united most of japan under his effective rule by the end of the 1580s at first the alliance with the jesuits seemed to continue hideyoshi was as anti-buddhist as his old master had been the jesuits received grants of land he employed christians as his generals when he established full military control over kyushu in 1587 the christian daimyos were favored but hideyoshi was also growing concerned by the christian counterweight to the buddhists that had been created the story we have is that after an evening drinking on kyushu in 1587 he summoned the commander of his guards a christian named takayama khan and demanded that as a test of loyalty he renounced his christianity on the spot when he refused he was sent into exile and hideyoshi summoned the head of the japanese jesuits accused him of forced conversions foreign allegiances and selling japanese subjects as slaves to the portuguese that last accusation seems to have been completely groundless but it tells you something of the mood the following day he issued an edict expelling all foreign missionaries from the from japan and banning daimyos from being christians now obviously this produced an immediate crisis but partly because there wasn't at present a ship on which the foreigners could leave the order had to be suspended and it slowly became clear that hideyoshi was not going to enforce it it remained hanging as a permanent threat and slowly the jesuits began operating again under its shadow in 1591 valignano had a cordial meeting with hideyoshi the suspicion seemed to be lifting but then in 1593 a new element entered the picture a second catholic mission led this time not by jesuits but by spanish franciscan friars the order who had pioneered the mission in the americas and who had their own very distinct ideas about how these things should be done which didn't involve so much cautious and respectful acculturation the franciscans opened a public church in nagasaki in 1594 without permission and they acquired a reputation for being abrasive even this might not have exploded into trouble if it were not for the so-called san felipe incident on the 19th of october 1596 a badly off-course spanish galleon called the san felipe was washed up in japan and its officers who were indignant at being arrested and brustly handled tried to bluster their way out of trouble by boasting about the vast size of the spanish empire and brandishing a world map of it and also apparently insisting that their missionaries were a vital part of such conquests this did not it turned out have the desired effect if hideyoshi had suspected the loyalty of his christian subjects before now it now seemed that they were positively dangerous he had the ship seized its crew deported and he ordered all the franciscans in japan to be executed around 160 people were arrested both spanish franciscans and their japanese adherents although the officer in charge ensured that most of them were spared the final total of those who were executed on the 5th of february 1597 was 26. six european franciscans 10 japanese franciscan brothers three japanese jesuits and seven ordinary japanese christians lay christians they spent a couple of months being marched from kyoto to nagasaki all the way down halfway through japan paraded through the streets they had their ears partly cut off as humiliation and then at last in nagasaki they were crucified using the punishment that they had taught to their captors although they were tied with ropes rather than nailed and they were then speared rather than being left for days to die in the old roman style the order for the jesuits to leave the country was renewed and nobody knew of this time it was for real because this was all happening amidst another political crisis the aging hideyoshi was desperately and vainly trying to ensure that when he died his son would succeed him a show of anti-christian strength was at least part in part part of that power struggle matters was still unclear when hideyoshi died in september 1598 and that kicked off first a struggle for power and then an actual civil war which ended with a crushing victory not for hideyoshi's hapless son but for tokugawa iyasu who was de facto ruler of japan from 1600 and formally became shogun in 1603. he died in 1616 but he created the strongly unified government the so-called tokugawa shogunate that would govern japan until 1868. the political situation is now the opposite of the one the jesuits had found when they first arrived half a century earlier there's now only one center of political power in japan with which to deal iyasu at first permitted the jesuits to remain and the period between 1590 and 1614 actually turns out to have been the heyday of christian growth in japan despite the killings in 1597. the numbers of jesuits of jesuit missionaries peaked at 140 in 1607 and by 1614 there was something like 300 000 japanese christians no longer it seems politically organized mass conversions but actual grassroots growth drawn from all levels of society nagasaki had become in effect a christian city with relatively few priests still lay con fraternities governed for and by ordinary japanese believers became central to the community's life often with charitable works at their heart which helped to grow the community further so this substantial minority is now on a collision course with iyasu's regime some local daimyos engaged in some persecution in one notorious case in heisen province on kyushu in 1613 um daimyo executed eight families of christians and was daunted when as we're told twenty thousand christians showed up not to protest but to silently and peacefully witness the executions assembled in ranks which may have been more threatening than an actual rebellion would have been equally any japanese suspicions about the portuguese and the spanish and the jesuits and their intentions were being stoked by two groups of newcomers dutch and english traders who were keen to assure their hosts that the jesuits and catholics in general were scheming in malicious agents of the devil but we don't know quite what triggered eos's edict of 1614 the edict in which he declared that the christian band have come to japan not only sending their merchant vessels to exchange commodities but also longing to disseminate an evil law to overthrow right doctrine so that they may change the government of the country and obtain possession of the land they must be instantly swept out so that not an inch of soil remains to them in japan under this edict all christian clergy were expelled and the policing of the whole country's religious orthodoxy was put under the control of as you've probably already guessed the buddhists whom ayasu now turned into part of the state religion and this this time the decree was in earnest churches were destroyed the power of the last pro-christian daimyos was broken clergy were assembled in nagasaki for deportation and by the end of 1614 most of them had gone but at least 33 priests remained in japan illegally and for the time being lay christians were left largely undisturbed during this period of sort of phony persecution christian growth continued there's in fact quite rapid spread into northern honshu the real shift came when ayasu died in 1616 and is succeeded by his son tokugawa hidetata who turned an anti-christian policy into general opposition to foreign contacts and adventures of any kind he oversaw a slow increase of persecution by the time he abdicated in 1623 at least 323 christians had been executed that included a particularly severe purge in 1622 provoked by the discovery of two european priests whom a japanese christian trader had tried to smuggle into the country 55 christians were killed in nagasaki on the 10th of september 1622 25 by burning 30 bubba heading the burning was done in part to prevent relics being gathered anybody who was seen to be praying at the executions was threatened with the same fate the next shogun tokigawa emitsu redoubled the same policy he was shocked or maybe emboldened by the discovery of a clandestine christian community complete with jesuit priests in the capital city of edo and he began his reign with a show of force 89 people were killed in two mass executions in december 1623 and significantly for the first time 14 of these weren't actually christians but were accused of sheltering or assisting christians the movement wasn't yet broken we still have formal jesuit records from the years 16 24 to 6 they're still winning converts only in 1627 did this turn into a full-scale general persecution the regime now recognized that merely killing christians could be counterproductive because of the classic logic of martyrdom and so they set their sights on making christians publicly renounce their faith by the use of brutal torture where necessary scolding was one favored method another was being hanged upside down over a festering pit until you either recanted or died and to the regime's dismay no priests or lay brothers recanted or not until 1633 when christopher ferreira the portuguese vice principal of the jesuits in japan cracked after six hours hung over the pit um and he not only recanted but then turned in former in total something like 1200 christians were killed either by execution or torture between 1627 and 34. the final end to the drama came in december 1637 on western kyushu which had been a christian stronghold for so long and to which many christians from elsewhere in japan had retreated including some form of samurai the confraternities were still functioning now those networks but the new daimyo was determined at last to implement official policy and the result was a rebellion of course this confirmed all the regime's fears about christian subversion in fact the rebels didn't receive any outside assistance and nor were they led by priests who were now all gone or dead but it was plainly an unmistakably a christian indeed a messianic rebellion the grim proof that this was more than a political game of shadows they're inspired by prophecies of revival from dark times under plainly christian banners they were stirred up by an unusual autumnal flowering of the cherry trees which fitted with a prophecy they won initial victories against the daimyo's forces they came close to taking the castle of shimabara if they had marched on nagasaki they very likely would have taken that too when the shogun's own forces landed on kyushu they fought with a ferocious apocalyptic fervor and with some success the first attempt to break them in battle failed in february 1638 and so a new commander decided simply to pen them in and starve them out they were broken in april and they were slaughtered with no quarter given the figures for the deaths are very hard to establish but we're certainly talking tens of thousands the lesson of this rebellion was never forgotten by the tokugawa regime to an extraordinary extent it organized itself for the next two centuries and more around the fear and hatred of christianity from 1639 all contact with the outside world for japanese subjects was strictly forbidden in 1640 a portuguese embassy arrived by ship in japan which was attempting in part to pay debts that were owed to japanese merchants no missionaries but nevertheless the ship was destroyed along with its cargo and almost all on board were executed only a handful sent back to make sure that the message was received foreigners were not welcome a new authority the christian inquisition office was created charged with hunting down all hidden christians and central to this became the so-called fumier this was a technique used to compel christians to reveal themselves remarkably for decades every year on kyushu a little less regularly elsewhere every adult was required publicly to tread on an image like these an image of the crucifix or of the virgin mary some other plainly christian icon this extraordinary requirement was enforced right across the country for most of the 17th century it is only formally relaxed in 1792. in 1687 new regulations were put in place to ensure that anyone related to or descended from a known christian was put under additional lifelong surveillance and this is not mere paranoia arrests and executions continue through this period they do tail off by the end of the century but the last mass execution of christians that we know of took place in 1697. all of this took place in japan that was now completely inaccessible to the catholic world a few further attempts by missionaries to land ended badly but this did not mean that they were forgotten in instead the sheer scale of this drama a mission which went from nothing to a thriving church hundreds of thousands strong to extraordinary levels of persecution to apparently nothing again all within the course of a single century this gripped the imagination of catholic christians all over the world and nowhere more so than back home in europe the jesuits who are always excellent at keeping records and sharing news feeding the publicity machine made sure that their readers devoured tales of this impressively civilized country where the christian gospel had fallen on such fertile soil where it was growing faster more robustly than anywhere else in the world and then when the tide turned and the killings began not least because of that striking beginning with the crucifixions in 1597 catholic christendom was ready with its reactions horror and dismay but also a certain grim triumph martyrdom had been part of christianity's story about itself since ancient times this fitted all too cleanly into the narrative the initial account of the 1597 executions by a portuguese jesuit was published in italian and latin in 1599 ran through at least five editions that year french versions were soon to follow this was a fairly straight account no time for lavish illustration or interpretation that was going to follow over the course of the 17th century the masters of japan would be celebrated again and again by european catholics this french woodcut from 1628 is maybe the most famous the portrait of what by then we're known to have been only the first of the martyrs so we move from the the persecuting crowds at their feet all of them you'll notice faceless to the ranks of the martyrs who are in unison but each face is picked out with with striking individuality above them the company of heaven preparing their martyrs palms of victory this german engraving of the same date doesn't have quite the same dignity to it but it makes up for it i think with vividness the reason that we have these multiple images from 1628 is that in september of the previous year pope urban viii had beatified the 26 nagasaki victims formally recognizing them as martyrs for the faith and they remain known by catholics down to the present as the 26 martyrs of japan but as with any atrocity story we always need to ask who benefits from the telling of this story whose interest is it in whose cause does it serve in europe this is the age of the counter reformation and of the 30 years war so examples of catholic militancy and faithfulness were very welcome there were heroes to be emulated there's also a lower more political story about the perennial rivalry between different religious orders the japanese mission had mostly been the work of the jesuits but the 26 martyrs of nagasaki had been predominantly franciscan and since urban the eighth had earlier made saints of some of the early some of the first jesuit founders this helped to even the score but there's another more specific story that's maybe of more local interest to us by the late 1610s the japanese mission was effectively over but there was another prickly assertive island kingdom which had recently switched from being welcoming to catholicism to persecuting it with brutal vigor english catholics didn't suffer quite so genocidal a purge as their japanese brethren but the story of what happened on the other side of the world and especially of how heroically japan's believers had held firm to the end was very relevant here this book is an english translation of the first-hand account of that persecution written by the spanish jesuit pedro morocco published in 1619 and it came with a freshly written preface addressed to all that suffer persecution in england for catholic religion and the translator emphasized just how similar the japanese and english situations were they he says to english catholics be falsely slandered and colombiated in many many things by the devil's ministers and so be you they be persecuted for their religion many of them to death more to loss of goods by the enemies of christ and his holy church and so be you finally they for their valor and constancy and god's cause be famous in all those parts of the world yay and in europe also and you for yours be no less glorious both in all europe and in all the rest of the christian world and the point of this isn't just flattery but also to exhort english catholics be more careful to commend in your prayers to almighty god the necessities of those poor afflicted christians your brethren in japan as also more willing to imitate to the admirable examples of valor and courage in the cause of christ he does then go on to add that some of the examples of japanese sufferings were so extreme that readers should admire them but as he didn't quite put it shouldn't try this home the book even claimed rather tenuously that the protestants who were persecuting english catholics were also involved in the japanese persecutions this is an apparent nod to the role of english and dutch merchants in feeding suspicions of the jesuits in japan it's a valiant attempt to unite the eastern western persecutions into one vast struggle and it's not completely groundless but in fact what made the example of the japanese persecution so powerful in a divided europe was that even protestants were forced to concede to their admiration for the steadfast of japan's catholics a dutch protestant merchant stationed in nagasaki in the mid 1620s unproblematically called the japanese catholic victims martyrs that's not what a protestant supposed to say and he added their resolution is all the more to be admired since they knew so little of god's word that they might one might term its stubbornness rather than steadfastness it's extraordinary that amongst them are so many who remain steadfast to the end and endure so many insufferable torments in spite of their scanty knowledge of the holy scriptures this isn't what protestants expect of catholics this gentleman seems to have found it genuinely baffling in what greater proof is there of how valuable a story this was for catholics still as the japanese persecution faded into memory and japan itself remained resolutely closed these atrocities slowly lost their prominence for the catholic world the stories were retold the accounts were reprinted english versions particularly surfaced right through the 17th century but it becomes a trickle rather than a flood what changes that is the sudden reopening of japan in the mid-19th century as the rising european and american imperialism makes isolation unsustainable famously on the 8th of july 1653 the american naval commodore matthew perry under orders to open japan to american trade sailed into idol bay tokyo bay as we now call it with eight ships armed with 73 cannon firing explosive shells and as they say made the japanese an offer that they couldn't refuse the result was a 20-year process in which japan switched from aggressive isolationism to a determination to meet the western imperial powers on their own terms this did though involve opening to trade and also eventually reluctantly to christian mission western memories of japan's long ago christian century are dusted off hopes that the christianization of japan might resume ran high the christian missionary surge into japan is beyond my scope today is enough to say that there is enormous effort made in the late 19th early 20th century for very little return or again that when the united states occupied japan after 1945 general macarthur made christianizing the defeated enemy his personal mission to very little avail what i want to notice is how the memory of the 17th century atrocities has figured since japan was reopened because if the 19th century missionaries didn't succeed in converting japan they did make an astonishing discovery that despite two and a half centuries of systematic persecution japanese christianity had not in fact been entirely exterminated once christianity is legalized in 1873 several scattered communities of so-called kakure karishitan hidden christians slowly revealed themselves they were and are found chiefly on kyushu and its offshore islands in particular two small islands off the northwest corner of kyushu these communities had endured alone for nearly two and a half centuries they had no priests but they baptized their children they taught them japanese language prayers sometimes versions of latin or portuguese texts they met secretly in private homes for worship some of them concealed their worship under buddhist forms for example using tradition traditional japanese buddhist images of a mother and child like these and venerating them as images of the virgin mary and the infant christ in particular they preserved a strong sense of the liturgical year arranged around the series of key festivals and of course they burnished and treasured the memory of their martyrs this was a very dangerous thing to do and one result is that the rights of commemoration were often dressed up in buddhist or shinto clothes sites associated with the deaths of christian martyrs were often marked in shinto fashion by the planting of a central pine tree surrounding a ring of smaller trees there are tales of relics being buried at the roots of the trees these groves were mostly destroyed in the 20th century the modern kakuri karishitan have added stone shrines like like these to these spots and incense is burned and offerings of food and sake are made there some of these are graves of individuals who are otherwise unrecorded but there are some that we can document like gasupara nishi who was a high born administrator sent into exile on the island of ikitsuki after his christian master was driven from office in 1609 and who was beheaded later the same year together with his wife and son the stone graves are still tended and when the more when the memorial tree was fell the wood from it some of the wood from it was used to make a crucifix which is now on display in nagasaki and other sites are more general so such as the so-called mound of a thousand people at senen zuka said to be the site of a mass grave which has now got a modern memorial on it or the memorial to a smaller group of christians elsewhere on the island who included a pregnant woman who had vainly begged to be spared on the account of her unborn child one of the most important is the tiny island of nakanoshima which between 1622 and 1624 was the site of 14 executions of christians who were taken there and strangled or beheaded and their bodies thrown into the sea in a deliberate attempt to thwart relic collectors and the result was that the island itself became a relic of sorts the long-standing practice of the local kakuri karishitan community is to bring water from this island for use in baptisms water taken from a small intermittent spring of fresh water in one spot on the island the spring sometimes the entire island is known as the spring of saint john the baptist the spring's intermittency is part of its power a kakura karishitan account from the early 20th century claimed that the waters flow from the spring when the prayers that are set in front of it are heard in rome it appears that the mood of these commemorations is not and has not been confrontational or vindictive this is a defeated and almost an exterminated community for whom anger even righteous anger was a luxury that couldn't be afforded the prominence of the martyrs and their cults reflects simply the huge impact on this community of the cataclysmic events of the early 17th century the relative ease with which christian shrines could be disguised as buddhist or shinto once sometimes even attracting non-christian devotees but there's also a sense of atonement the kakura kirishitan brought bought their survival at a price in such a heavily christianized area the only way that faith could be preserved was by succumbing to the fumierite by proving allegiance to the emperor by trampling christian images for communities which have only survived by making such terrible compromises to honor the memory of the martyrs who had chosen to die rather than to give in is more penitential than triumphalist and worse because for catholic christians who don't have priests the sacramental healing offered by confession and atonement and reconciliation wasn't available to them it's been i think very plausibly argued that the kakura karishitan honored their martyrs so assiduously because this was the best and only way that they could repent for their own and their ancestors sins it is a painful reading of the story but i could only wish that religious communities which suffer and remember atrocities might learn from that example to remember atrocities with sorrow and repentance rather than with righteous rage might be the beginning of wisdom some of the kurukirishitan especially on the islands retained their distinctive identity and traditions after the opening but the majority were welcomed back into the global catholic church we are not talking about a lot of people maybe 30 000 in the 19th century nevertheless nagasaki once again became the capital of christian japan and the catholic church revived its own memory of the martyrs the original 26 martyrs of 1597 who as you'll remember had been by beatified in 1627 are canonized as saints by pope pius ix in 1862 and they're only the start in 1867 a further group of 205 japanese martyrs of the 17th century are beatified in rome and this group has grown still further in our own lifetimes pope john paul ii canonized 16 japanese martyrs saints in 1987. benedict the 16th beatified a group of 188 japanese martyrs in 2008 these martyrs have become hugely important to the japanese catholic church's sense of itself that church nowadays stands at some half a million people around not quite half of one percent of japan's population many of them are filipino immigrants or the descendants of japanese migrants to south america who've returned to their ancestral country the focus of memory remains above all on the original 26 martyrs to whom this vast public monument with accompanying museum was built in 1962. modern japan has not embraced christianity but it has embraced this part of its past the basilica of the 26 martyrs in nagasaki which was built in 1864 before catholicism was formally re-legalized was recognized in 2018 along with 11 other sites in the region as a unesco world heritage site the whole group being known as hidden christian sites and the proposal to unesco didn't come from the catholic community but from the japanese government the wider japanese awareness of the persecution owes a great deal to one extraordinary book the 1966 novel silence by the japanese catholic shusaku endo which centers on the moral struggle of a captured 17th century missionary who knows that unless he renounces his faith by trampling ifumiya image his fellow christians will die for his defiance the book was a prize-winning critical success in japan and it was particularly embraced by japan japan's pacifist left rather more so than it was by the small catholic community and it's since been adapted into a stage play an opera and no less than three films most recently martin scorsese's harrowing 2016 version also called silence the mood of this novel and much modern recollection of the japanese martyrs is not angry nor celebratory nor even penitential about somber a recollection of suffering from which there was no deliverance and which is not sweetened by any palpable redemption there are many reasons why that might be so but let me finish by talking about just one on the 6th of august 1945 the united states air force dropped an atomic bomb over the city of hiroshima despite president truman's ultimatum the following day japan did not surrender and on the 9th of august a second american mission set off to drop a second bomb over the city of kokura but heavy cloud cover forced the pirate pilots to revert to their secondary target nagasaki which had been chosen for the target base chiefly on account of its heavy shipbuilding industry but cloud cover was heavy there too and with fuel running critically low the bomber box scar dropped its bomb nearly two miles away from the planned target site the resulting 22 kiloton explosion was therefore not quite as destructive as the hiroshima bomb despite being nearly twice as powerful the brunt was born by the urakami valley where the bomb hit the hills surrounding the valley gave some protection to the rest of the city the total death toll remains uncertain from that bombing but at least 40 000 people died in and shortly after the attack and more likely 70 maybe even 80 000 the reason that this is part of my story today is that urakami the suburb that was destroyed was the center of nagasaki's catholic population of some 12 000 catholics living in the city maybe eight and a half thousand died that is over two-thirds of the entire community and over one-tenth of all the casualties with one bomb the u.s air force had killed more japanese catholics than had been executed in two and a half centuries of persecution how were the surviving japanese catholics to make sense of this fresh calamity one which they shared with the country but was also peculiarly theirs the most influential response came from the catholic convert and doctor takashi nagai whose wife died in the bombing and who was himself injured he eventually died of radiation-related illness in 1951. for him nagasaki and in particular urakami was again become a field of martyrs this was an extension of the 17th century persecutions and it was that past which gave the event meaning in 1948 he wrote so many martyrdoms uninterrupted persecution and the atomic bomb these are the trials that tell of the glory of god was not urakami the most sacred place in all japan chosen as a victim a pure lamb that had to be slaughtered and burned on the altar of sacrifice to expiate this sin of humanity the world war to be the place where the war ended the book became a bestseller throughout japan far beyond the catholic community this view of nagasaki as a burnt offering mutually sacrificing itself for peace is one which some japanese catholics have begun to push back against but the notion that remains powerful not least in the city itself the catholic community there had by then long organized its memory of the persecution of the centuries of suppression into what it called the four persecutions uh culminating in the fourth persecution of the late 1860s the atomic bombing came to be known as the fifth persecution and this time the martyrs that were memorialized weren't a few individuals picked out of the thousands but a symbol of them all namely urakami's cathedral which was destroyed but not leveled in the blast even immediately afterwards its ruins became a sight for memorial worship it's been rebuilt now but the blast damaged statues still survive and are preserved in its grounds and this stained glass window in the rebuilt cathedral commemorates the martyrdom of the building that went before it last year when notre dame cathedral in paris was partly destroyed by fire the catholics of nagasaki offered themselves as a sign of comfort and hope to their distraught french co-religionists we don't need to describe either catastrophe as a burnt offering to accept that in some way a circle has been closed here or that in our own century as in the 17th shared suffering can also mean some shared consolation thank you [Applause] you

Channel: Gresham College

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Keywords: gresham, gresham college, education, lecture, public, london, debate, academia, knowledge, japan, japanese martyrs, martyrs, christianity, catholic missionaries, catholicism, Catholic, 17th century, history, religious history, religion, Japanese Christians, Francis Xavier, Jesuits, Kyushu, Honshu, Hokkaido, Oda Nobunaga, Valignano, Hideyoshi, Tokugawa Shogunate, Shimabara, Black Ships, Edo Bay, Nagasaki, Twenty-Six Martyrs, Nagai, Silence, Scorsese

Id: pp81rxaTcy8

Length: 52min 8sec (3128 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 11 2020