# How Japan (Almost) Eradicated Its Christians

An episode of [Human History ASMR](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6793196842), 28 Sep 2026, 1 h 13 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75116748/how_japan_almost_eradicated_its_christians_human_voiced_no_ads.mp3

Journey into one of the most dramatic religious transformations in Japanese history and discover how Christianity, once a rapidly growing faith in Japan, was eventually driven underground through persecution, political restrictions, and isolation. This episode explores the rise, suppression, and survival of Christianity in early modern Japan. Discover how Portuguese and Spanish missionaries arrived in Japan during the 16th century and established Christian communities with remarkable speed. Explore the work of Jesuit missionaries, the conversion of powerful regional lords, the growth of Christian towns, and the complex relationship between religion, trade, diplomacy, and political power. As Christianity expanded, Japan’s rulers became increasingly concerned about foreign influence and the loyalty of Christian converts. Explore the policies of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the Tokugawa shogunate, including restrictions on missionaries, bans on Christian practice, arrests, executions, and the systematic measures used to suppress the religion. This episode examines the famous persecution of Japanese Christians, including the martyrdom of believers, the destruction of churches, the use of fumie to identify Christians, and the emergence of hidden Christian communities. Discover how some believers secretly preserved their faith for generations while adapting religious practices to an increasingly hostile environment. The story also reveals why Christianity was never completely erased. Explore the survival of the Kakure Kirishitan, or Hidden Christians, and how isolated communities preserved elements of their traditions long after open Christian worship had been prohibited. Drawing on missionary writings, Japanese government records, letters, archaeological discoveries, Christian documents, and modern historical scholarship, this episode separates established evidence from later myths and romanticized accounts. Narrated with a calm, human voice, this immersive journey is perfect for history enthusiasts, Japanese history lovers, religious history fans, documentary listeners, relaxation, or listening before sleep. Discover the rise, persecution, survival, and remarkable legacy of Christianity in Japan.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: It was the mid-16th century. Catholic missionaries from Europe arrived
[0:06] Speaker 1: on the shores of Japan with high hopes of a
[0:10] Speaker 1: spiritual conquest. And indeed, over the ensuing decades, tens of
[0:15] Speaker 1: thousands of Japanese, including peasants, samurai, and even some feudal lords,
[0:22] Speaker 1: had embraced the new faith. This had raised the prospect.
[0:27] Speaker 1: that Japan might become a predominantly Christian nation in the East.
[0:33] Speaker 1: By 1582, the Catholic population had grown to roughly 150,000,
[0:37] Speaker 1: and by 1614, it reached an estimated 300,000 out of
[0:37] Speaker 1: a population of 15 to 20 million Japanese at the time. Yet,
[0:41] Speaker 1: things did not go to plan. By the mid-17th century,
[0:58] Speaker 1: this nascent Christian community was all but crushed, wave after
[1:04] Speaker 1: wave of persecution wiping them out. Japan's rulers not only
[1:09] Speaker 1: outlawed Christianity, but they also sealed the country off from
[1:14] Speaker 1: most Western contact for over 200 years. But the faith
[1:21] Speaker 1: survived in the shadows. reserved by clandestine communities of hidden Christians,
[1:29] Speaker 1: passing down their beliefs in secret. It's a rather interesting story.
[1:36] Speaker 1: From start to finish, it's quite fascinating. And today, that's
[1:39] Speaker 1: what we're going to talk about. Why Japan Never Christianized.
[1:46] Speaker 1: Or rather, the more incendiary title, How Japan Crushed Christianity.
[1:54] Speaker 1: I want to welcome you to the channel. It is
[1:57] Speaker 1: good to meet you if you're coming here for the
[1:59] Speaker 1: first time. And if you're returning, good to see you again. Now,
[2:03] Speaker 1: this video is ad-free, along with all the other videos
[2:07] Speaker 1: on this channel. Feel free to check out the playlists.
[2:11] Speaker 1: All because of the kind support on Patreon, YouTube memberships,
[2:15] Speaker 1: those who checked out the merch store with lots of
[2:17] Speaker 1: little goodies on there, and the occasional donation through YouTube
[2:22] Speaker 1: Super Thanks or Patreon. All the links can be found
[2:25] Speaker 1: in the description. But if you're not inclined to check
[2:28] Speaker 1: that out, then just enjoy the video. After all, that's
[2:33] Speaker 1: what we're here for. So, with welcomes all out of
[2:37] Speaker 1: the way, let's begin. And we begin with none other
[2:44] Speaker 1: than St. Francis Xavier, a Spanish priest and actually a
[2:50] Speaker 1: co-founder of the Jesuit Order. He was the one who
[2:55] Speaker 1: spearheaded the first major Christian mission to Japan. He arrived
[3:00] Speaker 1: in Japan in 1549, almost by accident. His ship, a
[3:06] Speaker 1: Chinese junk, blown off course and landed in Kagoshima and Kyushu,
[3:11] Speaker 1: the homeland of his Japanese companion and translator, Anjiro, who
[3:16] Speaker 1: took the Christian name Paolo de Santa Fe. Interpreting this
[3:21] Speaker 1: landing as divine providence, Xavier wrote back to his colleagues
[3:27] Speaker 1: that in Japan he had counted, quote, the best people
[3:31] Speaker 1: who have yet been discovered, predicting that we shall never
[3:36] Speaker 1: find among heathens another race equal to the Japanese. Interesting compliment,
[3:44] Speaker 1: I suppose, but a compliment nonetheless. Pretty early signs of optimism,
[3:50] Speaker 1: and it stemmed from Xavier's observations of Japanese society in general,
[3:55] Speaker 1: You see, he was not encountering a backwards land of
[3:59] Speaker 1: savages and barbarians, this kind of thing, but rather he
[4:03] Speaker 1: was impressed by their intelligence, decorum, and a general curiosity
[4:10] Speaker 1: and eagerness to learn. The mission of Xavier made a
[4:15] Speaker 1: promising start. The local lord of Kagoshima initially welcomed the strangers,
[4:22] Speaker 1: and over one hundred people were baptized in the first
[4:25] Speaker 1: year including many of Xavier's interpreter's own relatives. Xavier reported
[4:31] Speaker 1: that these new converts were led by what Paul told them,
[4:36] Speaker 1: and that entire families became Christian, until, of course, a
[4:41] Speaker 1: local edict forbade any further conversions. And indeed, the warmth
[4:46] Speaker 1: of Kagoshima's welcome cooled once the daimyo, that is the
[4:50] Speaker 1: feudal ruler, realized the political implications of this. foreign religion.
[4:57] Speaker 1: It's all fun and games when they first show up
[5:00] Speaker 1: in the early days, but, well, when people start converting
[5:05] Speaker 1: to a different religion that's different to the ruler's religion, well,
[5:09] Speaker 1: that's when you get rebellions and break-off kingdoms, this kind
[5:13] Speaker 1: of thing. So this is essentially, in a simplified term,
[5:18] Speaker 1: what the Daimyo would have been worried about. Well, facing
[5:22] Speaker 1: a ban in that domain of Kagoshima, Xavier decided to
[5:26] Speaker 1: move on in search of more receptive authorities. Travelling through
[5:33] Speaker 1: Kyushu and Honshu, Xavier learned just how complex Japan's religious
[5:39] Speaker 1: and political landscape was. In 1550, he ventured to Yamaguchi,
[5:46] Speaker 1: the capital of a powerful domain, where he tried out
[5:49] Speaker 1: a new tactic. Dressed in fine garments and bearing gifts
[5:53] Speaker 1: and letters from Portuguese authorities, he presented himself to the
[5:57] Speaker 1: Lord of Yamaguchi as a kind of ambassador of a
[6:01] Speaker 1: great Western king. And the strategy worked pretty well. The
[6:08] Speaker 1: daimyo of Yamaguchi granted Xavier permission to preach publicly, and
[6:12] Speaker 1: even provided an abandoned Buddhist monastery for his missionaries to use.
[6:18] Speaker 1: And so, for several weeks after, Xavier and his companions
[6:22] Speaker 1: preached in the streets twice a day, attracting audiences of
[6:27] Speaker 1: commoners and samurai noble classes alike. Many listened with curiosity
[6:35] Speaker 1: and a little bit of emotion. The missionaries recounted the
[6:38] Speaker 1: story of Jesus and, quote, when we came to his
[6:43] Speaker 1: most bitter death, they were unable to restrain their tears.
[6:49] Speaker 1: That's a quote from Xavier. Well, I tell you what,
[6:54] Speaker 1: he must have been a pretty good teller of the gospel,
[6:58] Speaker 1: if he was bringing everyone to tears, if indeed that
[7:01] Speaker 1: is what happened. Some noblemen invited the Jesuits into their
[7:06] Speaker 1: homes to hear more in private, expressing that if Christianity
[7:11] Speaker 1: proved to be better than their own beliefs, they would
[7:13] Speaker 1: embrace it unhesitatingly. The pressure is certainly on for the
[7:19] Speaker 1: Jesuits now. Yet genuine conversions in Yamaguchi were few, illustrating
[7:25] Speaker 1: the cultural headwinds that the Jesuits faced. Xavius noted that
[7:31] Speaker 1: some townspeople openly mocked the missionaries as they were walking by, joking,
[7:38] Speaker 1: There go the men who declare that it is wicked
[7:41] Speaker 1: to have more than one wife. A reference to Christianity's
[7:45] Speaker 1: monogamy in contrast to the concubine age accepted in Japan
[7:49] Speaker 1: at the time. But more fundamentally, Xavier was struck by
[7:53] Speaker 1: the Japanese people's lack of concept of a single creator god.
[7:59] Speaker 1: Monotheism was a confusing thing to them. A foreign concept,
[8:06] Speaker 1: I suppose we could say. In a letter, he marvelled
[8:11] Speaker 1: that the Japanese, quote, were greatly astonished on hearing it
[8:15] Speaker 1: said that there is one sole author and common father
[8:19] Speaker 1: of souls, by whom they were created. Because the Japanese
[8:24] Speaker 1: religious tradition, nowhere is any mention of a creator of
[8:28] Speaker 1: the universe. The Japanese were steeped in Buddhist and Shinto
[8:33] Speaker 1: cosmology that assumed the universe and nature had no singular beginning.
[8:39] Speaker 1: So getting this concept across was going to be a
[8:42] Speaker 1: bit of a challenge. It made the Christian doctrine of
[8:46] Speaker 1: a soul god and creation ex nihilo, a pretty novel idea,
[8:53] Speaker 1: one that required quite a lot of elaboration. Fortunately for
[8:57] Speaker 1: these missionaries, Xavier found the Japanese eager to debate and learn.
[9:04] Speaker 1: He observed, the Japanese are led by reason in everything
[9:09] Speaker 1: more than any other people, describing how they bombarded the
[9:13] Speaker 1: Jesuits with questions on astronomy and theology. and listened most
[9:17] Speaker 1: eagerly when the foreigners could satisfy their curiosity. This intellectual
[9:23] Speaker 1: engagement gave Xavier hope. By the time that he left
[9:28] Speaker 1: Japan in 1551, he had planted the seeds of a
[9:32] Speaker 1: Japanese Christian church, numbering perhaps a few thousand converts in total.
[9:37] Speaker 1: In letters to St. Ignatius Loyola, Xavier expressed confidence that
[9:43] Speaker 1: Japan could be one for Christ. given more time and
[9:47] Speaker 1: a few more workers, calling it the delight of his soul,
[9:52] Speaker 1: and urging more missionaries to follow. But at this point, Xavier,
[10:00] Speaker 1: had gone. In the decades after Xavier's departure, the Christian
[10:04] Speaker 1: mission in Japan indeed grew quite significantly. But it also
[10:09] Speaker 1: became entangled in the country's turbulent politics. Jesuit missionaries, building
[10:17] Speaker 1: on the groundwork set by Xavier, concentrated their efforts in
[10:21] Speaker 1: western Japan, that is, Kyushu, where they found that converting
[10:25] Speaker 1: a local daimyo often led to the conversion of his subjects, too.
[10:28] Speaker 1: This top-down strategy yielded remarkable results. A number of regional lords,
[10:35] Speaker 1: such as Omura Sumitada and Arima Harunobu, accepted baptism, and
[10:41] Speaker 1: in turn thousands of their retainers and villagers became Christians.
[10:46] Speaker 1: By 1580, The port city of Nagasaki, given to the
[10:50] Speaker 1: Jesuits by a Christian lord, had become a thriving centre
[10:54] Speaker 1: of Catholicism. The Christian presence was strongest on the peripheries
[10:59] Speaker 1: of Japan, far from the capital, and for one time
[11:04] Speaker 1: it enjoyed the protection, or at least tolerance, of the
[11:08] Speaker 1: country's supreme warlord, Oda Nobunaga. Now, Nobunaga, who was then
[11:17] Speaker 1: campaigning to unify Japan, warmly welcomed the Jesuit trade, and
[11:22] Speaker 1: especially the guns. But he also appreciated the missionaries' open
[11:26] Speaker 1: opposition to Buddhism. In fact, Nobunaga saw militant Buddhist monasteries
[11:33] Speaker 1: as a political threat. He had many of them destroyed.
[11:37] Speaker 1: He therefore viewed the Christian priests as useful allies against
[11:42] Speaker 1: his Buddhist rivals. He allowed churches to be built in Kyoto,
[11:47] Speaker 1: and even hosted Jesuits at his castle. However, Nobunaga's assassination
[11:53] Speaker 1: in 1582, and the subsequent rise of Toyotomi Hideyoshi as
[11:58] Speaker 1: his successor, dramatically changed the fortunes of Christianity. Hideyoshi initially
[12:05] Speaker 1: continued Nobunaga's pragmatic tolerance. He enjoyed the exotic gifts bought
[12:11] Speaker 1: by the Westerners. and even welcomed a Jesuit embassy in
[12:14] Speaker 1: 1586 with all the European novelties. But, as Hideyoshi solidified
[12:22] Speaker 1: his control over Japan, unifying the feudal domains under his authority,
[12:28] Speaker 1: he grew suspicious of the foreign creed. In 1587, after
[12:35] Speaker 1: leading a campaign in Kyushu, Hideyoshi was startled by the
[12:38] Speaker 1: fervor of the local Christian population. a great many of
[12:42] Speaker 1: them samurai, some of them feudal lords, according to one account.
[12:48] Speaker 1: He began to fear that Christian Daimyo might not be
[12:52] Speaker 1: fully loyal to him, or even worse, that European powers
[12:57] Speaker 1: might use religion as a pretext for invasion. And so
[13:03] Speaker 1: that year, Hideyoshi abruptly issued the Anti-Christian Edict, ordering all
[13:10] Speaker 1: Jesuit missionaries to leave Japan immediately. He declared, quite forthrightly,
[13:18] Speaker 1: I do not want this religion. Calling Christianity a religion
[13:24] Speaker 1: of love and union, and therefore harmful for this kingdom.
[13:28] Speaker 1: This pretty striking statement, it reveals the mindset of Japan's rulers.
[13:37] Speaker 1: Hideyoshi said, perceived that Christianity bound people together in an
[13:42] Speaker 1: allegiance that transcended the feudal divisions of society. And that's
[13:47] Speaker 1: an allegiance that could undermine the absolute rule that he sought.
[13:52] Speaker 1: If they were all united under Christianity, well, they were
[13:56] Speaker 1: not united under him. So Hideyoshi's 1587 expulsion edict was
[14:03] Speaker 1: only sporadically enforced at first. The Jesuits largely went into hiding.
[14:09] Speaker 1: but they did not leave Japan, and many converts continued
[14:13] Speaker 1: to practice in secret. For several years Hideyoshi seemed content
[14:19] Speaker 1: with nominal compliance, perhaps because he valued trade with the Portuguese,
[14:26] Speaker 1: or because he was preoccupied with other campaigns, but probably
[14:30] Speaker 1: because he wanted the guns to keep flowing in, I'd say. However,
[14:35] Speaker 1: There was a tragic incident in 1596 that swung Hideyoshi
[14:39] Speaker 1: back towards persecution. The Spanish galleon, San Felipe, wrecked off
[14:46] Speaker 1: the coast of Shikoku, became the catalyst for a rather
[14:50] Speaker 1: deadly turn. When Japanese officials interrogated the ship's pilot about
[14:56] Speaker 1: Spain's intentions, the frightened or perhaps boastful Spaniard allegedly claimed
[15:03] Speaker 1: that the missionaries came as the first step in the
[15:06] Speaker 1: Spanish conquest of these lands. Probably not the wisest thing
[15:10] Speaker 1: to tell them. This claim, which was likely a desperate bluff,
[15:17] Speaker 1: confirmed Hideyoshi's worst fears about Christian missionaries being agents of
[15:21] Speaker 1: colonial powers, and he reacted with swift brutality. February, 1597.
[15:31] Speaker 1: Hideo shielded the execution of 26 Christians, foreign missionaries and
[15:36] Speaker 1: Japanese believers alike, as a macabre warning to the Church.
[15:44] Speaker 1: The 26 Martyrs of Nagasaki, as they were called, they
[15:47] Speaker 1: were a diverse group, six Franciscan friars, mostly Spaniards, three
[15:53] Speaker 1: Japanese Jesuits, and 17 Japanese lay Christians, including catechists and
[16:00] Speaker 1: even children, They were forced to march over 600 miles
[16:04] Speaker 1: from Kyoto to Nagasaki in the dead of winter, each
[16:08] Speaker 1: man's left ear cut off as a mark of criminality.
[16:13] Speaker 1: On a hill overlooking Nagasaki Bay, the 26 were crucified
[16:17] Speaker 1: on wooden crosses and then pierced with spears on Hideyoshi's authority.
[16:24] Speaker 1: Among them was 33-year-old Paul Miki, who preached from his cross.
[16:31] Speaker 1: forgiving his executioners. In his final sermon of sorts, delivered
[16:37] Speaker 1: in a loud voice to the stunned onlookers, Miki proclaimed,
[16:43] Speaker 1: There is no way to be saved except the Christian way.
[16:48] Speaker 1: And he publicly pardoned Hideyoshi and urged him to seek baptism.
[16:54] Speaker 1: According to missionary reports, the martyrs remained composed and resolute
[16:58] Speaker 1: in their faith till the end, Their bodies were left
[17:02] Speaker 1: on display for months as an intended deterrent. But instead,
[17:09] Speaker 1: the site of their death became hallowed ground for Japanese Catholics.
[17:15] Speaker 1: Hideyoshi died the following year, 1598, leaving a tenuous situation.
[17:21] Speaker 1: Around 300 churches still existed in the Christian community. and
[17:27] Speaker 1: that community itself was now about 150,000 strong, enduring, albeit
[17:35] Speaker 1: the threat of persecution loomed over them. Hideyoshi's death ushered
[17:43] Speaker 1: in a struggle for power that ended with Tokugawa Ieyasu
[17:47] Speaker 1: establishing himself as shogun, that is, the military ruler of
[17:51] Speaker 1: a unified Japan in 1603. Ieyasu would found the Tokugawa
[17:56] Speaker 1: shogunate a regime that brought peace and stability to Japan
[18:01] Speaker 1: for over two centuries, in part by rigorously controlling foreign
[18:05] Speaker 1: influence and also stamping out Christianity. In the first years
[18:11] Speaker 1: of his rule, Tokugawa appeared more tolerant than Hideyoshi had been.
[18:18] Speaker 1: He was more pragmatic and interested in foreign trade. European
[18:22] Speaker 1: traders bought firearms technology and exotic goods that Ieyasu wanted
[18:28] Speaker 1: for Japan's benefit. Jesuit missionaries cautiously returned to open activity,
[18:35] Speaker 1: and a new order of Catholic ministries, missionaries rather, the
[18:39] Speaker 1: Spanish Franciscans, also entered Japan in the 1590s with Hideyoshi's
[18:44] Speaker 1: begrudging permission. By 1605, There were even a few Japanese
[18:51] Speaker 1: who had been ordained as Catholic priests. That was pretty quick,
[18:55] Speaker 1: wasn't it? Well, the Christian cause, for a brief moment,
[19:00] Speaker 1: seemed to revive under the new Shogun. A very brief moment.
[19:06] Speaker 1: Of course, Ieyasu's tolerance had its limits. From the outset,
[19:12] Speaker 1: he kept a wary eye on Christianity's spread and enacted
[19:16] Speaker 1: small-scale restrictions. In 1600, soon after taking power, he issued
[19:22] Speaker 1: orders forbidding missionaries from proselytizing in his personal domain around Edo,
[19:28] Speaker 1: that is, modern-day Tokyo. He was testing the waters, basically.
[19:33] Speaker 1: Over the next decade, as Ieyasu consolidated political control, reports
[19:38] Speaker 1: of seditious behavior by converts, and a little bit of
[19:41] Speaker 1: intelligence from English and Dutch traders, rivals of the Catholic Portuguese,
[19:46] Speaker 1: by the way, heightened that suspicion that Christianity might be
[19:51] Speaker 1: a threat to social order, and ultimately a Trojan horse
[19:56] Speaker 1: for European conquest. Ieyasu was also constructing an ideology to
[20:02] Speaker 1: buttress his rule. With the help of advisors schooled in
[20:06] Speaker 1: Confucianism and Buddhism, he envisioned a strictly hierarchical society, with
[20:13] Speaker 1: a shogun at the apex, and a populace, of course,
[20:17] Speaker 1: unified by traditional religious values, as long as they were
[20:22] Speaker 1: traditional Japanese religious values. Christianity, which acknowledged no lord above God,
[20:31] Speaker 1: was certainly a clash with that vision. A Jesuit of
[20:36] Speaker 1: the time perceptively noted, that Ieyasu's government was developing, quote,
[20:41] Speaker 1: the most peculiar form of government in the world, in
[20:46] Speaker 1: which each man enjoys absolute power over his family and servants,
[20:50] Speaker 1: and he may cut them down as he pleases, without
[20:53] Speaker 1: having to give an account to anybody. In such a
[20:58] Speaker 1: system of absolute, patriarchal and feudal authority, the Christian message
[21:04] Speaker 1: of the spiritual equality of all souls was, profoundly subversive.
[21:09] Speaker 1: He also instituted a rigid caste system in Japan. There
[21:17] Speaker 1: was a social pyramid, and guess who was at the top? Well,
[21:23] Speaker 1: one Japanese Jesuit had said, Christianity, on the contrary, was
[21:27] Speaker 1: a creed of all men equal. Those two mentalities could
[21:33] Speaker 1: not co-exist. Ieyasu's distrust finally hardened into outright persecution in 1614.
[21:41] Speaker 1: In that year, after a series of regional incidents and baps,
[21:47] Speaker 1: under pressure from his outraged Buddhist and Confucian advisers, Ieyasu
[21:52] Speaker 1: promulgated the Christian Expulsion Act. This edict banned the practice
[21:58] Speaker 1: of the Christian religion throughout all of Japan. and ordered
[22:02] Speaker 1: all Catholic clergy and missionaries to immediately go home. It
[22:08] Speaker 1: also mandated that all Japanese converts abandon the faith, coming
[22:13] Speaker 1: back into the fold of the old religions. In chilling language,
[22:19] Speaker 1: the edict justified itself by painting Christianity as an existential
[22:24] Speaker 1: threat to Japan's polity and native belief. As one chronicle records,
[22:30] Speaker 1: Ieyasu's decree warned, The Christian band have come to Japan,
[22:37] Speaker 1: not only sending their merchant vessels to exchange commodities, but
[22:40] Speaker 1: also longing to disseminate an evil law, to overthrow right doctrine,
[22:47] Speaker 1: so they may change the government of the country and
[22:50] Speaker 1: obtain possession of the land. Thus, in no uncertain words,
[22:58] Speaker 1: Christianity was denounced as an evil law, a false and
[23:04] Speaker 1: subversive doctrine, spread under the guise of free trade and
[23:09] Speaker 1: friendly commerce. The edict went on to contrast this evil
[23:15] Speaker 1: Christianity with Japan's time-honoured traditions, declaring that Japan is the
[23:21] Speaker 1: country of the gods and Buddha, the principles of benevolence
[23:25] Speaker 1: and right-doing, are held to be of prime importance, quickly
[23:30] Speaker 1: cast out the evil law, and spread out true law
[23:34] Speaker 1: more and more. It was here that Ieyasu, or the
[23:40] Speaker 1: advisors drafting the edict, such as the scholar-monk Isshin Suden,
[23:45] Speaker 1: explicitly upheld the true law of Japan's own gods and
[23:48] Speaker 1: of Buddhism, as well as the Confucian virtues of benevolence
[23:53] Speaker 1: and righteousness, in direct opposition to Christianity. The message is
[23:59] Speaker 1: pretty unmistakable. No politicians mincing words here. The message was
[24:06] Speaker 1: that the foreign faith was completely incompatible with Japan's sacred
[24:10] Speaker 1: heritage and moral order. And therefore, it had to go. Importantly,
[24:20] Speaker 1: the 1614 edict not only appealed to religious patriotism, but
[24:25] Speaker 1: it also showed the political danger of Christianity. It accused
[24:29] Speaker 1: the Christians of seeking to overthrow the proper government and
[24:33] Speaker 1: seize the land. Ieyasu had likely heard of how Spain
[24:38] Speaker 1: used its missionaries in the Philippines, and he had been
[24:41] Speaker 1: warned by Protestant Dutch and English merchants that Catholic powers
[24:46] Speaker 1: might colonize Japan if they were given the chance. Now
[24:50] Speaker 1: the edict's dire tone, another quote, this is the germ
[24:55] Speaker 1: of great disaster and must be crushed. reflects Ieyasu's determination
[25:00] Speaker 1: to snuff out the danger before it could metastasize. The
[25:07] Speaker 1: enforcement of the edict was pretty merciless. Ieyasu's agents rounded
[25:13] Speaker 1: up the foreign missionaries, by now mostly Jesuits and Franciscans,
[25:18] Speaker 1: and they forced them onto ships out of Nagasaki, Bantha Macau,
[25:23] Speaker 1: and Manila. Entire boatloads of clergy brothers and catechists, were
[25:30] Speaker 1: expelled in late 1614, shoved onto ships and compelled to
[25:35] Speaker 1: abandon their flocks. Among them was the renowned samurai convert
[25:42] Speaker 1: Takayama Ukon, a Christian lord who refused to renounce his faith.
[25:48] Speaker 1: He was exiled, and he eventually died in the Philippines
[25:52] Speaker 1: in 1615. Japanese authorities investigated further commanded all Daimyo to
[25:57] Speaker 1: eradicate Christianity within their domains, or face dire punishment. Many
[26:04] Speaker 1: lords who had been sympathetic or lenient, were now forced
[26:07] Speaker 1: to choose between their loyalty to the Shogun, or their
[26:11] Speaker 1: loyalty to the foreign religion. And unsurprisingly, most chose the Shogun.
[26:19] Speaker 1: The alternative was, well, Yunho. Some Christian samurai lords went
[26:25] Speaker 1: into exile rather than apostatize. But many more converts, especially
[26:30] Speaker 1: the ordinary people, had to conceal their faith or renounce
[26:34] Speaker 1: it under duress as the noose tightened. Ieyasu's death in
[26:41] Speaker 1: 1616 did not slow the persecution either. In fact, it
[26:45] Speaker 1: intensified under his son, Tokugawa Hidetada, and especially his grandson,
[26:52] Speaker 1: Tokugawa Iemitsu. the Tokugawa shogunate had committed itself to an
[26:58] Speaker 1: anti-Christian policy as a matter of state security. In the
[27:02] Speaker 1: years after 1614, surveillance was institutionalized to ensure the eradication
[27:07] Speaker 1: of the, quote, evil creed. Families were required to register
[27:12] Speaker 1: at Buddhist temples and obtain certification that they were followers
[27:16] Speaker 1: of Buddhism or Shinto, as long as they weren't Christians.
[27:22] Speaker 1: In every village and every urban neighborhood, Groups of households
[27:26] Speaker 1: were organized into mutual monitoring units. If one Christian were
[27:31] Speaker 1: discovered in a group, the entire unit would be punished.
[27:37] Speaker 1: This created an intense pressure on communities to police themselves
[27:41] Speaker 1: and ferret out the hidden Christians. The authorities also enlisted
[27:46] Speaker 1: the help of Buddhist clergy in this effort. A striking
[27:50] Speaker 1: example of how native religious institutions were mobilized to reinforce
[27:55] Speaker 1: this ban on Christianity. But why did Christianity, which had
[28:02] Speaker 1: initially won so many Japanese converts, come to be seen
[28:07] Speaker 1: as an intolerable threat? Well, we've answered that a little bit.
[28:12] Speaker 1: But part of the answer lies in the profound cultural
[28:16] Speaker 1: and religious resistance that it provoked. Let me explain. Japan
[28:22] Speaker 1: in the 16th and 17th centuries had a pretty rich
[28:26] Speaker 1: spiritual tradition, dominated by Shinto, Buddhism, and Confucian ethical principles.
[28:34] Speaker 1: These belief systems were deeply interwoven into the Japanese identity,
[28:39] Speaker 1: and also the political authority and social order. So Christianity
[28:44] Speaker 1: was not only a foreign import, its theology and practice
[28:47] Speaker 1: challenged the very underpinnings of the Japanese worldview. it was
[28:52] Speaker 1: going to be a very hard sell from the beginning,
[28:55] Speaker 1: especially to those who would effectively have to give up
[28:58] Speaker 1: their power. So let's consider how each of these traditions
[29:03] Speaker 1: set that stage for a backlash against the new foreign religion.
[29:09] Speaker 1: First of all, we have Shinto, the indigenous belief system
[29:13] Speaker 1: of Japan. It venerates a pantheon of what are called kami,
[29:17] Speaker 1: or divine spirits or deities. associated with different natural phenomena,
[29:23] Speaker 1: particular places, and ancestors, too, including, of course, the imperial
[29:28] Speaker 1: family's divine lineage. Now Shinto doesn't have a dogmatic creed
[29:33] Speaker 1: or a single founder. It's rather a collection of old
[29:36] Speaker 1: stories and rituals and reverence for the native gods of Japan.
[29:41] Speaker 1: In the late 1500s, Shintoko existed and mingled with Buddhism
[29:47] Speaker 1: for the most part, but it was also a wellspring
[29:51] Speaker 1: of Japanese patriotism and uniqueness. The Tokugawa Edict of 1614
[29:59] Speaker 1: pointedly described Japan as the country of gods, Shinkoku. Well,
[30:05] Speaker 1: that implies that the land was under the special protection
[30:08] Speaker 1: of the Shinto deities. Christian missionaries, by preaching one exclusive
[30:14] Speaker 1: god and denouncing all the others as false, inevitably insulted
[30:18] Speaker 1: the Shinto worldview. And in fact, missionaries were known to
[30:23] Speaker 1: slander Shinto by dismissing the native gods as devils or idols,
[30:29] Speaker 1: which is generally not a very good idea. Not the
[30:34] Speaker 1: manners of a good house guest, I suppose. So you see,
[30:37] Speaker 1: from the standpoint of the Japanese villagers and leaders, a
[30:42] Speaker 1: Christian convert's refusal to participate in Shinto observances, for example,
[30:47] Speaker 1: not offering prayers at a local shrine or not honouring
[30:50] Speaker 1: the emperor's divine status, could be seen as an act
[30:54] Speaker 1: of disloyalty to the community and the nation. As time
[30:58] Speaker 1: went on, the shogunate deliberately fostered Shinto alongside Confucian ethics
[31:04] Speaker 1: as a part of its state ideology, emphasizing loyalty and
[31:08] Speaker 1: reverence for Japan's unique gods as an antidote to this
[31:12] Speaker 1: Christian influence. So in short, Shinto provided a cultural immune
[31:19] Speaker 1: response of sorts. Christianity's exclusivist monotheism and rejection of Japan's
[31:25] Speaker 1: native deities were just too alien for most Japanese to embrace,
[31:29] Speaker 1: and they were easy for native propagandists to cast as
[31:34] Speaker 1: blasphemous and dangerous. Now, as for Buddhism, that had been
[31:40] Speaker 1: Japan's dominant organized religion since the 6th century, and it
[31:45] Speaker 1: permeated all levels of society. By the 16th century, however,
[31:50] Speaker 1: numerous Buddhist sects such as Zen, Pure Land, and Nichiren
[31:55] Speaker 1: had flourished, each with extensive monasteries, clerical hierarchies and lay followings.
[32:03] Speaker 1: Buddhist temples were not only religious centres, but also educational
[32:07] Speaker 1: institutions and community gathering places, even registrars of births and deaths.
[32:14] Speaker 1: And the Buddhist monastic establishment in Japan initially viewed the
[32:18] Speaker 1: Christian missionaries as just another rival sect, albeit a peculiar
[32:24] Speaker 1: one from across the sea. Jesuits like Francis Xavier often
[32:30] Speaker 1: referred to Buddhist monks as Bonzes from the Bonzo Buddhist priests,
[32:37] Speaker 1: and noted their considerable influence. Xavier wrote that there were
[32:41] Speaker 1: a great number of these Bonzes and Bonzesses, that is
[32:46] Speaker 1: nuns in Japan, and that they enjoyed immense respect among
[32:50] Speaker 1: the people. It was inevitable that Buddhist clergy would resent
[32:55] Speaker 1: the inroads Christianity was making, especially when some zealous converts
[33:01] Speaker 1: went so far as to destroy Buddhist statues or shrines
[33:04] Speaker 1: in their domain with the encouragement of certain militant Jesuits.
[33:10] Speaker 1: Which is never good, no matter what side you're on
[33:13] Speaker 1: of anything, destroying statues and historical monuments. I cannot see
[33:20] Speaker 1: any way that that is a good idea. Well, the
[33:24] Speaker 1: Jesuits themselves saw Buddhist monks as their chief detractors and obstacles,
[33:30] Speaker 1: of course. Missionary reports frequently mentioned public debates held between
[33:35] Speaker 1: Catholic priests and learned Buddhist monks over points of doctrine.
[33:40] Speaker 1: While these debates sometimes earned the admiration of Japanese audiences
[33:44] Speaker 1: for the foreigners' knowledge, they also highlighted the pretty stark
[33:49] Speaker 1: differences in belief. Let's take, for instance, that Buddhist teachers
[33:55] Speaker 1: taught the salvation and enlightenment could be achieved through following
[33:59] Speaker 1: the path of the Buddha, and many Japanese believed in
[34:02] Speaker 1: the mercy of Amida Buddha to save souls, ideas utterly
[34:07] Speaker 1: incompatible with the Christian teaching that salvation comes only through Christ,
[34:14] Speaker 1: no one else, nothing more, nothing less. The Jesuits, confident
[34:19] Speaker 1: in their own theology, called Buddhist teachings morally lax or fraudulent.
[34:26] Speaker 1: Xavier recounts that the Bonzers preached that even the most
[34:30] Speaker 1: sinful people could escape hell through the monks' intercession, a
[34:34] Speaker 1: claim that he considered a deceit to extract donations. Such
[34:39] Speaker 1: criticisms did not endear the missionaries to the Buddhist establishment,
[34:43] Speaker 1: that's saying the least. So in response, Buddhist monks at
[34:48] Speaker 1: times stirred up popular opposition to the western barbarians by
[34:53] Speaker 1: accusing them of blasphemy and sacrilege. The 1614 edict echoes
[34:59] Speaker 1: these complaints. It accuses the Christians of calumniating, oh, calumniating,
[35:06] Speaker 1: excuse me, calumniating, my goodness, third time lucky, huh? The
[35:11] Speaker 1: true law, calumniating the true law, rather, which in context
[35:16] Speaker 1: means slandering Buddhism. It's a new word for you and me,
[35:20] Speaker 1: I suppose. and of disrupting the social harmony that Buddhism
[35:25] Speaker 1: and Confucianism norms maintained. Well, once the Tokugawa had outlawed Christianity,
[35:34] Speaker 1: Buddhist temples became enforcers on the ban, the boots on
[35:38] Speaker 1: the ground, issuing the required certificates and organizing the fumier
[35:44] Speaker 1: ceremonies to test people's faith. This symbiosis between the shogunate
[35:49] Speaker 1: and Buddhism meant that by 1630, every Japanese was effectively
[35:54] Speaker 1: required to be Buddhist on paper. This made it exceedingly difficult,
[36:00] Speaker 1: as you can imagine, for Christianity to compete or even survive.
[36:05] Speaker 1: Buddhist institutions formed a powerful bulwark that the new religion
[36:09] Speaker 1: could simply not overcome. And then we have Confucian Values.
[36:20] Speaker 1: It added yet another layer of resistance. Now, Confucianism's interesting
[36:26] Speaker 1: because it's not a religion per se, but rather a
[36:30] Speaker 1: moral philosophical system originating from China. It emphasizes filial piety,
[36:37] Speaker 1: loyalty and proper conduct, and above all, social harmony. Now,
[36:45] Speaker 1: during the Tokugawa era, Neo-Confucianism was adopted by the shogunate
[36:50] Speaker 1: as an official ideology to rationalize that rigid social order.
[36:54] Speaker 1: Ieyasu and his successors patronized Confucian scholars who taught that
[37:00] Speaker 1: everyone had a proper place, samurai, artists, peasants, merchants, everyone,
[37:08] Speaker 1: and that obedience to one's lord and parent was the
[37:12] Speaker 1: highest virtue one could attain. To these Confucian thinkers, Christianity
[37:18] Speaker 1: appeared to be disruptive for several reasons. The first reason
[37:22] Speaker 1: is that it taught that loyalty to God and the
[37:24] Speaker 1: Church could supersede loyalty to the temporal authorities, which was
[37:30] Speaker 1: anathema to Confucian hierarchies. In practice, converts sometimes defied their
[37:37] Speaker 1: feudal lord's commands, for example, refusing to renounce Christianity or
[37:42] Speaker 1: fighting against their lord in the name of the faith.
[37:45] Speaker 1: confirming Confucian fears that the religion bred this kind of insubordination. Secondly,
[37:54] Speaker 1: Christianity's assertion that all men are equal in the sight
[37:57] Speaker 1: of God was a complete contradiction to the stratified class
[38:01] Speaker 1: system that Confucianism upheld. The very idea that a lowly
[38:06] Speaker 1: farmer and a high-born samurai should kneel side by side
[38:11] Speaker 1: as brothers in Christ well, that was pretty radical in
[38:15] Speaker 1: feudal Japan. Tokugawa ideologues capitalized on this point, with one
[38:22] Speaker 1: advisor warning that, quote, those who join the Christian sect
[38:26] Speaker 1: throw aside all social obligations, children disobey their parents, and
[38:33] Speaker 1: vassals regard their lords as equals, paraphrasing the sentiment of
[38:37] Speaker 1: anti-Christian literature of the time. Whether or not such claims
[38:42] Speaker 1: were true, they amplified the perception that Christianity was antithetical
[38:47] Speaker 1: to the Confucian virtues of filial duty and loyalty. Ieyasu's
[38:52] Speaker 1: edict alluded to, quote, the principles of benevolence and right-doing,
[38:58] Speaker 1: key Confucian terms, as being under attack by the Christians.
[39:04] Speaker 1: Though in essence, Confucian scholars portrayed Christianity as a source
[39:09] Speaker 1: of social chaos, undermining ethical norms and the chain of
[39:13] Speaker 1: authority from family patriarchs all the way up to the Shogun.
[39:18] Speaker 1: And the Shogunate buttressed this view through propaganda and education.
[39:24] Speaker 1: By the mid-17th century, Confucian ethics and Buddhist Shinto worship
[39:29] Speaker 1: were fused into a state-sanctioned orthodoxy, sometimes even called Japanism,
[39:34] Speaker 1: a term one scholar uses to denote the synthesis of
[39:39] Speaker 1: native beliefs that Christianity could neither accommodate nor ultimately supplant.
[39:45] Speaker 1: The strength of this native three-fold religion made it exceedingly
[39:51] Speaker 1: difficult for a foreign creed to take permanent hold. It's
[39:55] Speaker 1: like when everyone's standing in a circle talking at a party,
[40:00] Speaker 1: and they will just not let you in. Think about
[40:03] Speaker 1: it like that. Well, in the eyes of most Japanese,
[40:08] Speaker 1: one could not be a good subject and a Christian
[40:12] Speaker 1: at the same time. They were just poles apart. This
[40:17] Speaker 1: cultural conviction... cultivated by the authorities, meant that even before
[40:22] Speaker 1: the persecutions began, Christianity faced inherent limits on its own accord. Well,
[40:32] Speaker 1: despite the growing headwinds, many Japanese Christians remained ardent in
[40:36] Speaker 1: their new faith, and some would pay the ultimate price
[40:41] Speaker 1: for that. The period from 1614 to 1640 is often
[40:44] Speaker 1: described as a time of great martyrdom, an era when
[40:53] Speaker 1: thousands of believers, rather than recant their faith, endured torture
[40:57] Speaker 1: and execution. The shogunate intended these brutal crackdowns to eradicate Christianity.
[41:05] Speaker 1: But in the process, they created a legacy of martyrdom
[41:08] Speaker 1: that would inspire stories and legends for centuries to come.
[41:10] Speaker 1: In any case, once the Tokugawa prohibitions took effect, officials
[41:17] Speaker 1: devised increasingly cruel methods to expose and eliminate any Christians.
[41:24] Speaker 1: One infamous practice was the annual Fumier ritual. Suspected Christians
[41:30] Speaker 1: were ordered to trample on an image, usually a wooden
[41:34] Speaker 1: or bronze tablet of Christ or the Virgin Mary. Those
[41:38] Speaker 1: who hesitated or refused unmasked themselves as believers and were arrested.
[41:45] Speaker 1: This test of apostasy was psychologically agonizing for devout Catholics.
[41:51] Speaker 1: It meant desecrating the image of the very figures they worshipped,
[41:55] Speaker 1: and it effectively forced a choice between faith and staying alive.
[42:00] Speaker 1: Which one's more important? Well, that's for the individual to decide,
[42:04] Speaker 1: I suppose. Many Japanese Christians, in fact, did commit what
[42:10] Speaker 1: they saw as the sin of apostasy under much duress.
[42:14] Speaker 1: perhaps consoling themselves that God would forgive them. But a
[42:19] Speaker 1: steadfast core refused, and for them they reserved the more
[42:24] Speaker 1: harsh torments. The torments inflicted on unrepentant Christians were deliberately
[42:32] Speaker 1: designed to break the spirit and serve as a terrifying
[42:35] Speaker 1: deterrent to others. The common punishment was in the Nagasaki
[42:40] Speaker 1: region was to send captive Christians to the volcanic hot
[42:43] Speaker 1: springs of Unzen, known as Unzen Jigoku. Now, Jigoku actually
[42:49] Speaker 1: means hell, though it's not a very nice place. Beginning
[42:55] Speaker 1: in 1627, the local lord Matsukura Shigemasa and his officers
[43:00] Speaker 1: used Unzen's boiling sulfurous pools as execution grounds. Christians who
[43:07] Speaker 1: refused to recant were taken to this hell and forced
[43:11] Speaker 1: to watch as others were scolded alive, stripped naked, bound
[43:15] Speaker 1: and slowly doused with ladles of boiling water from the springs.
[43:20] Speaker 1: The ordeal often continued until the victims' skin peeled and
[43:24] Speaker 1: they died in unimaginable pain. Another dreaded technique was the anazuri,
[43:33] Speaker 1: or hole-hanging technique. described by officers like Inoue Masashige, the
[43:41] Speaker 1: Tokugawa official in charge of Christian suppression after 1638. In Anazuri,
[43:48] Speaker 1: the victim was tightly bound with ropes and hung upside
[43:51] Speaker 1: down by the ankles over a pit, with one arm
[43:55] Speaker 1: usually left free so the torturers could prod the body.
[44:00] Speaker 1: The head and torso would also be lowered into the pit,
[44:04] Speaker 1: and a lid placed around the victim's waist. trapped them
[44:07] Speaker 1: in darkness, and sometimes this pit was sometimes filled with
[44:11] Speaker 1: excrement or other corpses. Not a very nice pit. Well,
[44:18] Speaker 1: in this inverted position, blood rushes to the head, causing
[44:22] Speaker 1: excruciating pressure. According to one account, the victim's blood would
[44:28] Speaker 1: collect in their heads, causing pain that gradually intensified, eventually
[44:33] Speaker 1: beyond description. But death did not come quickly. Pain came quickly,
[44:40] Speaker 1: but not death. It could take days. In some cases
[44:45] Speaker 1: the torturers would periodically raise a victim out of the
[44:49] Speaker 1: pit to ask if they were still a Christian. And
[44:53] Speaker 1: if they were, back down to the pit they went.
[44:58] Speaker 1: The slow torture often broke the will of all but
[45:01] Speaker 1: the most resolute. and indeed officials like Inouye preferred it
[45:06] Speaker 1: precisely because it extracted renunciations without creating the inspiring, heroic
[45:11] Speaker 1: beauty of quick martyrdom. European witnesses later marveled that any
[45:16] Speaker 1: faith could survive such an assault. Nevertheless, there were martyrs
[45:22] Speaker 1: that endured until the end. Desolate records and letters chronicle
[45:27] Speaker 1: many instances of extraordinary faith under torture. For example, Pietro Kibbe,
[45:33] Speaker 1: a Japanese Jesuit priest who clandestinely returned to Japan in 1630,
[45:39] Speaker 1: was eventually captured and subjected to the pit torture. Even
[45:45] Speaker 1: as he and two catechist companions hung upside down in filth,
[45:50] Speaker 1: Kibbe reportedly encouraged them to remain steadfast. Frustrated by his resolve,
[45:56] Speaker 1: the torturers finally pulled him up from the pit and
[45:58] Speaker 1: and executed him by heaping wood on his belly and
[46:01] Speaker 1: lighting it on fire. When asked why he simply would
[46:05] Speaker 1: not give up his faith to end the agony, Kibbe's
[46:08] Speaker 1: final words to his tormentors were, You cannot understand this. Therefore,
[46:14] Speaker 1: it's no use guiding you. Well, such stories, smuggled out
[46:21] Speaker 1: through letters or told later by surviving witnesses, spread an
[46:25] Speaker 1: aura of sanctity around the fallen believers, By the 1630s,
[46:29] Speaker 1: the litany of martyrs included not only priests and samurai,
[46:34] Speaker 1: but women, children, humble farmers who chose death over apostasy.
[46:41] Speaker 1: These were people for whom, in the words of one
[46:44] Speaker 1: doomed convert, the heart's belief was more important than the
[46:48] Speaker 1: body's life. The Tokugawa authorities had coked. hoped rather that
[46:55] Speaker 1: a combination of fear and attrition would make Christianity simply
[46:58] Speaker 1: fade away, and indeed, by the mid-1630s, the open practice
[47:05] Speaker 1: of the religion had been virtually extinguished in most regions.
[47:09] Speaker 1: The Christian population, once approximately 300,000, was reduced to a
[47:15] Speaker 1: combination of apostasy and martyrdom, to perhaps half that number
[47:20] Speaker 1: or fewer, and those remaining, had been driven underground. Yet
[47:27] Speaker 1: just when it appeared that organized Christianity was finished, one
[47:32] Speaker 1: final convulsion occurred that would shake the Tokugawa regime, the
[47:37] Speaker 1: Shimabara-Amakusa rebellion of 1637-38. This uprising was not exclusively religious.
[47:45] Speaker 1: It was also provoked by harsh taxation and hunger, but
[47:49] Speaker 1: it was heavily composed of desperate Catholic peasants and ronin
[47:53] Speaker 1: and it was led by a charismatic young Christian, Amakusa
[47:57] Speaker 1: Shiro Tokusada. Amakusa Shiro was a teenage samurai from the
[48:03] Speaker 1: Amakusa Islands of Kyushu, born around 1621 into a Catholic family.
[48:10] Speaker 1: By his mid-teens, he had gained a reputation among hidden
[48:14] Speaker 1: Christians as a prophet or miracle worker. Some even called
[48:18] Speaker 1: him Heaven's Messenger and attributed miraculous powers to him. As
[48:24] Speaker 1: the Tokugawa crackdown intensified, the people of his region, already
[48:28] Speaker 1: suffering under tyrannical lords' taxes and cruel punishments, began to
[48:33] Speaker 1: see in Shiro a kind of saviour figure. Secret prophecies
[48:38] Speaker 1: circulated that God would send a deliverer, and many came
[48:42] Speaker 1: to believe Shiro was the one. In late 1637, when
[48:48] Speaker 1: simmering grievances in the Shimabara Peninsula boiled over into open revolt,
[48:53] Speaker 1: Thousands of oppressed farmers and masterless samurai flocked to Shiro's banner.
[48:59] Speaker 1: They painted their banners the Christian motto, praised be the
[49:03] Speaker 1: holy sacrament in Portuguese, and according to tradition, one rebel
[49:09] Speaker 1: banner even proclaimed, we were born in the age of martyrs,
[49:14] Speaker 1: and we are ready to die for our faith. Armed
[49:19] Speaker 1: with whatever weapons they had, could seize spears swords and
[49:23] Speaker 1: lucky ones got a few muskets if they knew how
[49:26] Speaker 1: to use them the rebels chose as their stronghold the
[49:30] Speaker 1: abandoned hara castle on the ariake sea coast there in
[49:35] Speaker 1: december of 1637 about 20,000 to 30,000 insurgents, including women
[49:41] Speaker 1: and children who had joined them for safety, barricaded themselves inside,
[49:46] Speaker 1: preparing to withstand the retaliation of the Shogun. The Shimabara
[49:52] Speaker 1: Rebellion was the last major armed conflict of the Tokugawa period,
[49:57] Speaker 1: and one of the largest civil uprisings in Japanese history.
[50:02] Speaker 1: Tokugawa Iemitsu, the third Shogun, grandson of Ieyasu, dispatched a
[50:08] Speaker 1: massive punitive force to quash the rebels, viewing them not
[50:12] Speaker 1: only as traitors, but heretics. In early 1638, Shogunate armies
[50:19] Speaker 1: numbering over 100,000 converged on Harakaso, and what they encountered
[50:26] Speaker 1: was fierce resistance. Amakusa Shido, though only 16 years old,
[50:33] Speaker 1: was said to have inspired his followers with messianic fervor,
[50:38] Speaker 1: He allegedly told the besieged, Those who accompany in being
[50:42] Speaker 1: besieged in this castle will be my friends unto the
[50:45] Speaker 1: next world, promising eternal reward for their loyalty. His presence
[50:51] Speaker 1: gave the rebels unity and hope that God was on
[50:55] Speaker 1: their side. In the initial assaults, the poorly provisioned rebels
[51:00] Speaker 1: miraculously repelled the samurai armies. inflicting heavy casualties, and even
[51:05] Speaker 1: managing to kill the commanding general, Itokura Shigemasa. These setbacks
[51:12] Speaker 1: shocked the Tokugawa leadership. Eventually, the shogunate forces settled into
[51:17] Speaker 1: a long siege, surrounding the castle through the winter of 1638.
[51:21] Speaker 1: They cut off all food and water to starve the
[51:25] Speaker 1: rebels out, and even enlisted the help of the Dutch
[51:29] Speaker 1: traders at Nagasaki, who were Protestant, by the way, who
[51:35] Speaker 1: sailed a ship to bombard the castle with fire from
[51:38] Speaker 1: the sea. By the early spring, starvation and ammunition depletion
[51:46] Speaker 1: sealed the fate of the insurgents, and in April of 1638,
[51:50] Speaker 1: the shogunate army stormed Harakasl for the final time. What
[51:56] Speaker 1: followed was a slaughter. Virtually all the rebels, Some 37,000 men,
[52:03] Speaker 1: women and children were utterly annihilated. Amakusa Shiro was captured,
[52:11] Speaker 1: and he was given a nice retirement in the countryside. No,
[52:15] Speaker 1: I'm just joking. They beat him and then cut his
[52:19] Speaker 1: head off, and then his severed head was displayed on
[52:22] Speaker 1: a bike in Nagasaki as a grim warning to any
[52:24] Speaker 1: other would-be Christian upstarts. One contemporary account notes, that the besiegers,
[52:32] Speaker 1: upon entering the castle ruins, found nothing but emaciated corpses
[52:37] Speaker 1: and skeletal survivors too weak to put up a fight.
[52:41] Speaker 1: The rebellion's end was unspeakably violent, and its repression marked
[52:47] Speaker 1: the final nail in the coffin for Christianity in Tokugawa, Japan.
[52:52] Speaker 1: In the aftermath, the chauvinist was even more convinced that
[52:56] Speaker 1: Christianity had been the root cause of the unrest. A
[52:59] Speaker 1: seditious doctrine that incited peasants against their lords. Iemitsu's government
[53:05] Speaker 1: responded by tightening the policy of national seclusion. In 1639,
[53:11] Speaker 1: just one year later, Japan completely expelled the Portuguese, who
[53:16] Speaker 1: had been, of course, the main conduit for Catholic priests,
[53:20] Speaker 1: and closed its borders to almost all foreigners. Only a
[53:25] Speaker 1: small Dutch trading post at Dijima and trade with Korea
[53:29] Speaker 1: and China were permitted thereafter, and that was under strict supervision.
[53:37] Speaker 1: For the next 220 years, Japan remained isolated, and the
[53:43] Speaker 1: very word Christian became synonymous with danger and treason. The
[53:49] Speaker 1: Shimabara Rebellion was thus the dramatic full stop to Japan's
[53:54] Speaker 1: brief Christian century. the dying gasp of old Catholic Japan.
[54:04] Speaker 1: But in the wake of the Shimabara Rebellion's suppression, the
[54:07] Speaker 1: Tokugawa Shogun had believed that Christianity in Japan had been
[54:11] Speaker 1: eradicated for good. The penalties for being discovered as a
[54:16] Speaker 1: Christian were terrifyingly clear. Torture and death, not good. and
[54:24] Speaker 1: the surveillance apparatus across the country was very pervasive. Publicly,
[54:30] Speaker 1: Christianity disappeared, churches had been demolished, missionary priests were gone,
[54:38] Speaker 1: and former converts were compelled to register as Buddhists and
[54:41] Speaker 1: participate in temple rituals. For all appearances, Japan had succeeded
[54:47] Speaker 1: in exercising this evil creed. Yet remarkably, The Christian faith
[54:53] Speaker 1: was not entirely extinguished. In remote villages on small islands,
[55:00] Speaker 1: and even in the privacy of some farmhouses, small groups
[55:04] Speaker 1: of the faithful continued to practice their religion in great secrecy.
[55:09] Speaker 1: These communities came to be known as the Hidden Christians,
[55:14] Speaker 1: and their quiet perseverance over more than two centuries is
[55:18] Speaker 1: perhaps one of the most extraordinary tales of religious survival
[55:21] Speaker 1: in history. So how did they do it? Well, the
[55:26] Speaker 1: very measures that the missionaries had taken during the years
[55:28] Speaker 1: of persecution to prepare lay people to carry on the
[55:32] Speaker 1: faith made it possible for this clandestine church to survive,
[55:37] Speaker 1: albeit always hanging on by a thread. During the mission era,
[55:43] Speaker 1: a shortage of priests meant that Jesuits and others had
[55:45] Speaker 1: to train Japanese catechists and leaders to perform baptisms, lead prayers,
[55:51] Speaker 1: and teach doctrine. This created a class of hidden elders,
[55:57] Speaker 1: often called Mizukata or Koshi, that is, baptizers and exhorters, respectively,
[56:04] Speaker 1: who took on priest-like roles once the actual priests had gone.
[56:08] Speaker 1: In the 1640s and beyond, these hidden Christian elders let
[56:12] Speaker 1: their villagers in what truncated form of Catholic practice they
[56:17] Speaker 1: could manage. They baptized infants, preserved fragments of liturgy, and
[56:24] Speaker 1: passed down prayers orally from generation to generation. Many of
[56:29] Speaker 1: these prayers were in heavily Japanized Latin or Portuguese, memorized
[56:35] Speaker 1: syllables whose original meanings had sometimes been lost or garbled,
[56:40] Speaker 1: yet cherished as sacred sounds. The core beliefs, the Trinity,
[56:46] Speaker 1: the sacrifice of Christ, intercession of Mary, etc., were all
[56:50] Speaker 1: kept alive, though often without a deep understanding, due to
[56:55] Speaker 1: lack of scriptures and clergy to guide them, but always
[57:00] Speaker 1: doing their best with what they had. But how to
[57:03] Speaker 1: avoid detection? Well, the hidden Christians developed ingenious methods of camouflage.
[57:11] Speaker 1: They knew they would be scrutinized by neighbors and required
[57:15] Speaker 1: to show outward adherence to Buddhism. Thus they syncretized elements
[57:19] Speaker 1: of Buddhism and Shinto into their practices. They created statues
[57:24] Speaker 1: and icons that looked Buddhist, but carried Christian significance. The
[57:30] Speaker 1: famous example is the Maria Canon, statues of the Virgin Mary,
[57:36] Speaker 1: disguised as the Bodhisattva Canon, the Goddess of Mercy. These
[57:41] Speaker 1: porcelain figures, often depicting a gentle mother with child, could
[57:46] Speaker 1: be placed on a household altar. and passed off as
[57:49] Speaker 1: a Buddhist image, while secretly serving as an object of
[57:53] Speaker 1: Marian devotion. Similarly, some hidden Christians referred to God as Dainichi,
[58:01] Speaker 1: the cosmic Buddha, or used other syncretic terminology in public,
[58:07] Speaker 1: all the while meaning the Christian God in their hearts.
[58:12] Speaker 1: They also had religious items hid in plain sight. For instance,
[58:18] Speaker 1: They fashioned rosaries that looked like Buddhist prayer beads, and
[58:23] Speaker 1: they consecrated everyday objects as stand-ins for the Eucharist or crucifix.
[58:28] Speaker 1: Baptism remained the cornerstone of faith. They would, well, baptize
[58:33] Speaker 1: their children at birth, of course, thus initiating them into
[58:36] Speaker 1: the Christian community without any outward sign. But despite complete
[58:42] Speaker 1: isolation from the global church, Most of these secret communities
[58:47] Speaker 1: maintained a surprising continuity with Catholicism. They observed sacred days
[58:53] Speaker 1: as best as they could remember. For example, they would
[58:57] Speaker 1: celebrate a kind of Christmas and observe a certain saint's day,
[59:02] Speaker 1: though quietly and often on adjusted dates. They preserved the
[59:06] Speaker 1: practice of prayer in common. It was noted later that
[59:10] Speaker 1: hidden Christians in different villages still knew Pater Noster, the
[59:14] Speaker 1: Lord's Prayer, and Ave Maria, albeit in a creolized form.
[59:20] Speaker 1: One report says that they recited the Our Father in
[59:24] Speaker 1: Japanese and the Hail Mary in Latin. so corrupted that
[59:28] Speaker 1: it was barely recognizable. Points for trying, though. Crucially, they
[59:34] Speaker 1: kept alive the memory of their identity. They knew they
[59:38] Speaker 1: were Christian, followers of Yoisotto, the Japanese rendering of Dios, God,
[59:47] Speaker 1: and of Jesu, Sir, Kurishito, Jesus Christ, even if they
[59:53] Speaker 1: had to outwardly behave as Buddhists. For protection, hidden Christian
[1:00:00] Speaker 1: families developed signals and codes to transmit their faith. They
[1:00:05] Speaker 1: would inform tight-knit clandestine networks, usually comprising a few families
[1:00:10] Speaker 1: that would intermarry or preserve the faith lineage. Outsiders were
[1:00:15] Speaker 1: rarely admitted for fear of betrayal. Under the constant threat
[1:00:19] Speaker 1: of denunciation, they prefaced the art of dissimilation known as kakurei,
[1:00:24] Speaker 1: Some communities went as far to create dual religious lives,
[1:00:28] Speaker 1: attending Buddhist temples regularly to avoid suspicion, while secretly performing
[1:00:34] Speaker 1: Christian rites in their homes. The dilemma of duplicity, of course,
[1:00:39] Speaker 1: would weigh on them after a while. After all, their
[1:00:42] Speaker 1: ancestors had died rather than trample on an image of Christ.
[1:00:46] Speaker 1: Yet in the context of this absolute prohibition, quite a
[1:00:51] Speaker 1: few of them saw it as the only way not
[1:00:54] Speaker 1: just to keep themselves alive, but to keep the faith alive.
[1:01:01] Speaker 1: And alive it stayed, albeit on life support. For two
[1:01:06] Speaker 1: hundred years, through the Edo period, small pockets of hidden
[1:01:11] Speaker 1: Christians endured in areas like Nagasaki, Hirado and the Goto Islands.
[1:01:17] Speaker 1: Generations passed without any priest or outside sacrament. There were losses,
[1:01:25] Speaker 1: Some groups gradually drifted into complete syncretism, or lost their
[1:01:29] Speaker 1: Christian identity, essentially becoming a folk religion. But others held
[1:01:35] Speaker 1: firm to the inner truth of their creed, awaiting the
[1:01:39] Speaker 1: day when the Christian church would return openly. It was
[1:01:44] Speaker 1: a pretty remarkable perseverance, and it was finally revealed to
[1:01:48] Speaker 1: the outside world after Japan reopened to foreign contact in
[1:01:52] Speaker 1: the mid-19th century. In 1854, Japan's self-imposed isolation was forcibly
[1:02:00] Speaker 1: ended by Western powers, and by the 1860s, foreign missionaries
[1:02:05] Speaker 1: were once again operating illegally, in a few port cities
[1:02:09] Speaker 1: at least, albeit for the benefit of expatriates, since Christianity
[1:02:13] Speaker 1: was still officially banned for the Japanese. In Nagasaki, French
[1:02:19] Speaker 1: Catholic priests built a small church, that is, Ohura Church,
[1:02:24] Speaker 1: in 1864 to serve their European merchants. And what happened
[1:02:29] Speaker 1: next seemed nothing short of miraculous. In March of 1865,
[1:02:37] Speaker 1: a group of about 15 Japanese villagers from Urukami approached
[1:02:41] Speaker 1: the French priest, Bernard Taddei Petitjean, and revealed themselves as Christians.
[1:02:49] Speaker 1: After cautiously observing the church from afar, these people, mostly women,
[1:02:54] Speaker 1: entered and kneeled, whispering to the priest, We are of
[1:02:59] Speaker 1: one heart with you. Where is the statue of Santa Maria?
[1:03:03] Speaker 1: Where do you keep the Pope? Petitjean was astonished. By
[1:03:09] Speaker 1: all expectations, there should not have been any Japanese Christians left.
[1:03:15] Speaker 1: Yet here they were, after more than two centuries, secretly
[1:03:21] Speaker 1: keeping the flame alive. They tested him with three key
[1:03:25] Speaker 1: questions their ancestors had passed down as the criteria to
[1:03:29] Speaker 1: recognize true faith once it returned. Do you venerate Mary?
[1:03:35] Speaker 1: Are you led by celibate priests? And do you obey
[1:03:38] Speaker 1: the Pope in Rome? When Petitjean affirmed all three of
[1:03:43] Speaker 1: the questions, the visitors began to weep with joy. News
[1:03:48] Speaker 1: of the event spread rapidly. Over the next month, Thousands
[1:03:53] Speaker 1: of hidden Christians emerged from the surrounding countryside to see
[1:03:57] Speaker 1: the foreign priest. Estimates say about 10,000 people in Nagasaki
[1:04:01] Speaker 1: region alone had maintained the faith in secret. This extraordinary
[1:04:06] Speaker 1: discovery vindicated the sacrifices of their martyred forefathers and astonished
[1:04:11] Speaker 1: the international community. It was as if a time capsule
[1:04:15] Speaker 1: from hundreds of years ago had opened. These humble farmers
[1:04:20] Speaker 1: and fishermen had preserved the core of Christianity through oral
[1:04:23] Speaker 1: tradition under an unprecedented persecution. Some carried with them the
[1:04:30] Speaker 1: ancient Medals of the Virgin or faded pieces of Scripture
[1:04:34] Speaker 1: that had been handed down. They had even developed their
[1:04:38] Speaker 1: own version of confession and litany to compensate for the
[1:04:42] Speaker 1: absence of priests. The return of open Christianity was not
[1:04:47] Speaker 1: without its complications. Even after the Meiji restoration of 1868,
[1:04:50] Speaker 1: the Japanese government was initially reluctant to lift the ban.
[1:04:57] Speaker 1: In fact, in the late 1860s, some hidden Christians who
[1:05:00] Speaker 1: went public were exiled or punished by local officials, still
[1:05:05] Speaker 1: hostile to the religion. But international pressure finally led to
[1:05:10] Speaker 1: the ban's complete removal in 1873. Meanwhile, Some hidden Christian
[1:05:17] Speaker 1: communities faced a heart-wrenching choice. Rejoin the Catholic Church, now
[1:05:22] Speaker 1: that the priests and resources were available, or continue their
[1:05:26] Speaker 1: unique syncretic traditions that had been sanctified by generations of secrecy.
[1:05:30] Speaker 1: A majority returned to Catholicism, receiving proper sacraments for the
[1:05:37] Speaker 1: first time. But a minority refused, not out of a
[1:05:42] Speaker 1: lack of faith, but because their Christianity had over two
[1:05:46] Speaker 1: centuries diverged in form, they had come to cherish their
[1:05:50] Speaker 1: prayers and customs, even if they were a little irregular.
[1:05:55] Speaker 1: They were theirs, they were unique, and old habits die hard.
[1:06:01] Speaker 1: These groups persisted as independent, hidden Christians well into the
[1:06:05] Speaker 1: 20th century, a living link to the past. But in
[1:06:11] Speaker 1: any case, by the late 19th century, Japan had once
[1:06:15] Speaker 1: again an openly practicing Christian minority, with churches being built
[1:06:21] Speaker 1: in major cities and missionary schools sprouting up. However, that
[1:06:28] Speaker 1: opportunity for mass conversion had long since passed. Japan never
[1:06:34] Speaker 1: became a Christian nation, quite far from it, and I
[1:06:39] Speaker 1: don't think it ever will. At least, not in the
[1:06:43] Speaker 1: way the missionaries of the 1500s had once hoped. The
[1:06:48] Speaker 1: number of Christians, even today, remains a pretty small percentage
[1:06:51] Speaker 1: of the population. It's about 1-2%. And of course, how
[1:06:57] Speaker 1: many of them are practicing, or the degree of which
[1:07:02] Speaker 1: they take it seriously is... well, that's something that's hard
[1:07:07] Speaker 1: to quantify. In any case, the brief... bloom of that
[1:07:13] Speaker 1: Christian century in Japan was followed by a very, very
[1:07:18] Speaker 1: long winter. Well, that was interesting, wasn't it? Thank you
[1:07:25] Speaker 1: for joining me. Who knows what'll happen in the future?
[1:07:30] Speaker 1: Perhaps one day Japanese Shinto priests will come to Europe
[1:07:37] Speaker 1: to proselytize and get a lot of converts. Who knows, maybe.
[1:07:43] Speaker 1: In any case, it was an interesting story. And if
[1:07:47] Speaker 1: you go around Japan today, I was actually there a
[1:07:49] Speaker 1: few weeks ago, actually, you'll see the occasional Christian church.
[1:07:55] Speaker 1: Same as in China, you'll see the occasional Christian church
[1:07:58] Speaker 1: pop up. It's quite eerie to go and sit in
[1:08:02] Speaker 1: a few of the older ones, especially the ones set
[1:08:05] Speaker 1: up by missionaries of the time that are still there.
[1:08:10] Speaker 1: Quite eerie indeed. In any case, I'd like to thank
[1:08:14] Speaker 1: the top tier patrons, keeping the channel ad-free and all
[1:08:18] Speaker 1: that good stuff. Kimberly, Christine, Sally, Ember, Susan, Cameron, Gary, Charlene, Lynn-Therese, Katiana, Nicholas, Ulf, Anir, Alexander, Charles, Christine, Dr. Neuronerd, Aaron, Jayden, Jim, Jeffrey, Jessica, Madeline, Melissa,
[1:08:36] Speaker 1: Orthodox Review, which, if you want to learn more about Christianity,
[1:08:40] Speaker 1: you probably should go to him. He's better at the
[1:08:44] Speaker 1: theological side than I am. Then we've got Scott, Shell, Wendy, Josie, Sarah, Ryan, Thor, Cameron, Stefan, Kevin, HMSHH, Crystal, Talbury, Anthony, Lucy, Brandon,
[1:08:58] Speaker 1: Gugu Bubonic, Nicholas, Craig, Neftis, Alexander, Gogan, Dorsey, Venita, Claire, Courtesy, Carol, Robert, Mary, Bridget, Nefertari, Yvette,
[1:09:08] Speaker 1: Miss Mochi, Eleven, Allison, Free American. I love saying that. Jennifer, Brittany, David,
[1:09:18] Speaker 1: and Cody. All right. Well, that's enough for me for
[1:09:23] Speaker 1: one night, or one morning, or one afternoon, wherever or
[1:09:27] Speaker 1: however you're enjoying this. I hope you learned a lot,
[1:09:31] Speaker 1: and I hope I will see you around here next time.
[1:09:36] Speaker 1: As the Americans say, y'all come back now. Lots of
[1:09:41] Speaker 1: love to you all, and I will see you when
[1:09:44] Speaker 1: you feel like returning. Goodbye for now, and drink plenty
[1:09:49] Speaker 1: of water. Bye-bye.

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