Japan’s Glorious Ecclesial History

Talk of the ecclesial history of Japan is not commonplace in these latitudes. To speak of it as glorious is even less common. Celebrations for the 450th anniversary of its official evangelization are just coming to an end. It seems therefore appropriate to talk a little about what has been called Japan’s "Christian Century." Perhaps it would be better to call it the Heroic Period of its Evangelization; because it was during this very period that centuries of the persecution of Christians began. Considering its example of heroic fidelity to the faith, for the glory of God, could we be mistaken in calling it a glorious history?

The preaching of the faith in Japan begins with the arrival of the Jesuit Saint Francis Xavier. That, at least, is the "official" beginning of the evangelization of that country. The missionary arrived in Kagoshima aboard a Chinese junk on August 15, 1549. By the end of September, in Ijuin, he received official permission from the authorities to evangelize.

Francis Xavier was apparently received into a Buddhist and Shintoist world. Several historians, however, speak about the possible existence of Christian communities in Japan dating from before his arrival. They’re definitely not referring to the possibility of groups that may have had their origin in the arrival of the Portuguese in Tanegashima, in the western island of Kyushu, in 1543. There are theories which push the arrival of Christians to Japanese lands back to the second century. Others detect migrations of continental peoples with Christian beliefs to the island around about the eighth century, which they identify as Keikyo populations. Others point to the 13th century, that of the Mongol invasions, during which some may have carried the cross as a sign of their faith. This cultural and religious background is alluded to by certain specialists in order to explain the rapid success of Christian evangelization in the 16th century.

Multiplication

We know that when Saint Francis Xavier left Japan for India in 1551, he had already left behind hundreds of baptized men, women and children. He had been residing in the south of Japan. However, towards the north, in the capital Kyoto and in the central provinces where Father G. Vilela was later to preach there was a notable spread of Christianity from the year 1556. In 1560 Vilela received permission from the Shogun Ashikaga Yoshiteru to preach the Good News.

Towards 1563 there were already Buddhist bonzes that had been converted to the faith. Along with simple villagers, samurai warriors are known to have been baptized, and several feudal lords, called daimio, were numbered among the Christians as well. Lamentably, the rhythm of evangelization was subject to the Japanese feudal battles. Some feudal lords granted freedom to preach Christianity - some of these even adopted and supported it - while others opposed it. Altogether thousands of Japanese embraced the faith.

On the shores of Lake Biwa, in Azuchi, a school catering to nobles opened its doors in 1580. Four years earlier a large church was dedicated in the city of Kyoto and placed under the advocation of the Assumption. The evangelization of Japan had a markedly Marian accent. During the time of Saint Francis Xavier the image of the Virgin Mary with the Baby Jesus had already been making an intense impression. The whole period of the initial preaching of Christianity yielded abundant fruits. It’s said that there were some 400 thousand Japanese converts to the faith out of a total population of about 10 million. Some sustain that the number of converts was significantly higher.

Persecution

Soon, however, towards 1587, the persecution of Christians began. By means of a coup Toyotomi Hideyoshi became Shogun, thus gaining control of military power. He promulgated an edict expelling all missionaries and ordering the destruction of churches – it’s possible that he had been made uneasy by the conversion of some of his highest officials to Catholicism. Nevertheless, the Church in Japan continued to grow.

There was a pause in the persecution in 1591 when a Nipponese embassy that had been sent to Rome nine years earlier returned to Japan. Father Alessandro Valignano accompanied these emissaries at a decisive interview with Hideyoshi. In 1596 Bishop Martìnez became the first member of the episcopate to set foot on Japanese soil. The following year what turned out to be a long process of martyrdom, suffering, and death began. The persecution intensified from Edo (Tokyo). Six Franciscans, three Jesuits, and 17 laypeople were crucified in Nagasaki. Among them was a boy from Kyoto who, upon being repeatedly invited by his executioners to deny his faith, answered them by renewing it and, it’s said, asking: "Where’s my cross?" On it he died a martyr.

The remnants of feudal division allowed the Church to continue developing in the midst of an increasingly brutal siege. The death of Hideyoshi in 1598 granted the Christians a new reprieve. By 1602 there were Jesuit missionaries, Franciscans, Augustinians and Dominicans preaching the faith. Convents were founded in Miyaco, Fishima, Osaka, and Edo. That twelve-year reprieve would come to an end, due – among other things – to the conspiring of Dutch and English Protestant traders against the Catholics.

In 1603 the absolutist Tokugawa dynasty came to power. The bloody anti-Catholic campaign declared by the Japanese governor Ieyasu and his successors practically brought about the extermination of the Church in Japan.

The ‘golden century’ of Christian Japan extends from the arrival of the holy missionary Francis Xavier (in 1549) until the edict of persecution in 1613, despite the hostilities experienced. Due to the intensity of the persecutions the period ranging from this date until 1660 can be considered the glorious period of martyrdom.

The heroism of thousands of confessors of the faith did nothing to diminish the intensity of the persecution. Upon being discovered newly arrived priests and clandestine Christians became victims of the persecutory system. The most sophisticated tortures and humiliations were employed against the missionaries and the Japanese Christian converts. Pages of dark horror and the sadistic refinement of torture were written by the decades long hunt for the renunciation or extermination of Christians. The names of the Nipponese shoguns Ieyasu, Hidetada and Iemitzu join men such as Hitler or Stalin on history’s list of genocides.

The persecution and martyrdom of Christians lasted until the 19th century. The third Urakami persecution against clandestine Christians broke out in 1856. In 1858 the then Japanese government recognized religious freedom, but only for resident foreigners. In 1862 the first 26 martyrs of Nagasaki were canonized by Pope Pius IX. The two and a half century rule of the anti-Catholic dynasty of the Tokugawa came to an end in 1868. In February of 1873 the centuries of persecution also ended, albeit tacitly. It was only in 1889 that religious freedom was officially recognized. The following year the First Synod for the Church in Japan met. At that time thousands of Catholics still existed; these were either descendants of lapsed Catholics who had succumbed to the fear of torture but had secretly conserved their beliefs or descendents of those who ingeniously managed to evade the persecutions.

Perseverance

The long centuries of persecution left catastrophic traces in the development of the Church in Japan. It seemed at many times that the Christians had been almost totally exterminated but there were always some groups that had managed to persevere. The recognition of religious freedom near the end of the 19th century didn’t imply the immediate disappearance of the custom of considering Christians outsiders. The distrust extends well into the 20th century and is made manifest in diverse forms of social and cultural hostility.

A clear analysis of the flourishing in the 16th century and the beginnings of the 17th century demonstrates the accuracy of Saint Francis Xavier’s belief that the Japanese was a person open to the faith. "This island of Japan is well disposed for an increase in the faith within it," he wrote. The thousands of confessors who adorn the Church in Japan are a confirmation of it. The Church that now marches on in Japan is built upon the blood of martyrs, whose fidelity has made them witnesses to the faith that torture and death were unable to silence.

Today there are around half a million Japanese faithful. In percentage terms, the Church in Japan is significantly smaller than the population it reached in the 16th and 17th centuries. We can only hypothesize about what may have been if the persecutions had not truncated the process of conversions. To the eyes of faith the glory of the martyrs and the tragedy of the persecutions in Japan stand side by side. The difficulties encountered in today’s evangelization process can be suggestively explained by the psychological traces and cultural consequences of those persecutions and of the policies that sustained them.

1999

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