当耶稣会遇见丰臣秀吉：日本的天主教世纪When the Jesuits Met Toyotomi Hideyoshi: Japan's Christian Century

The years 1549 to 1644 were the century of Japan's Kirishitan, its Catholics. This early chapter of Christianity in Japan overlaps closely with the Sengoku period. The Jesuits brought not only the Catholic faith but also Western medicine and firearms. Many daimyō in south-western Japan converted to Catholicism during the Sengoku period, while Toyotomi Hideyoshi's attitude went through a dramatic reversal. The spread of Catholicism also set off a chain of events, including the Nagasaki persecutions, the Shimabara Rebellion and the Tokugawa policy of national seclusion, that had a profound effect on the history of Japan and East Asia. In 1547, Francis Xavier, the Spanish co-founder of the Society of Jesus, baptised a Japanese man named Anjirō in Malacca. It was this man, the first Japanese Christian we know of, who brought Xavier to Japan. In 1578, Ōtomo Sōrin, daimyō of Bungo Province and formerly a follower of Zen, was baptised a Catholic, and his army carried a cross as its banner, just like the European crusaders. In the same year, Akechi Mitsuhide's daughter Tama married the Catholic daimyō Hosokawa Tadaoki. Hosokawa Tama was baptised a Catholic in the spring of 1587. That same year Ōtomo Sōrin died, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi issued his edict against the bateren (from the Portuguese padre, "father", meaning priests), expelling the Catholic missionaries. In 1596, Hideyoshi ordered the arrest of twenty-six priests and believers in Kyoto and Osaka, and in February of the following year they were publicly executed in Nagasaki for violating the ban on the faith, marking the start of the great persecution. In 1600, a Dutch merchant ship reached Japan. On board was an Englishman, William Adams, who, having built ships for the shogunate, became a diplomatic adviser to Tokugawa, was made a samurai and given the name Miura Anjin. Adams told Tokugawa that besides Catholicism, Christianity also included Protestantism; Protestant countries were not keen on missionary work, and for them religion and trade were separate, whereas Catholic countries often used missionary work as a means of conquering other lands. In 1637, the people of Shimabara in Kyushu rose up under the banner of Catholicism in the largest peasant revolt of the Edo period, which was eventually crushed by the shogunate. In 1644, the year the Manchu Qing entered China through the passes, Konishi Mancio (grandson of the Catholic daimyō Konishi Yukinaga), who had joined the Jesuits and been ordained a priest in Rome, was arrested and martyred. From then on there were no more priests in Japan, and Japan's "Christian century" formally came to an end. In the same period, Japan also entered its long era of seclusion. Points of interest: 1. What was it like to become a Catholic in the Sengoku period and chat and joke with Jesuits and daimyō? 2. What kind of force were the Sengoku crusaders, and what became of them? 3. Under persecution and torture, what choices did Japan's Sengoku-era Catholics make? Why did some renounce their faith while others did not? Questions we'd like to discuss in depth: 1. What influence did Catholicism and Spain and Portugal, and Protestantism and the Netherlands, the so-called "southern barbarians", have on the history of Sengoku Japan? 2. What special role has Nagasaki played in Japanese history? 3. How did the Jesuits' missionary work affect the history of East Asia? 4. How did the development of Catholicism in China, Japan and Korea compare? References: notes on Leopold Leeb's History of the Church in Japan Gonoi Takashi, A History of Christianity in Japan Martin Scorsese's film Silence Koei's game Taikō Risshiden V NHK documentary The Moment History Turned: The Sengoku Crusaders