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The martyrdom of Saint Paul
Miki and Companions, otherwise known as the Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan, is perhaps
the fulcrum of Japanese Christian history. Theirs was the martyrdom that laid
bare the core of Japan’s ancient conflict with private conscience—that is, the
sense that one’s own moral conviction overrides not only temporal social
convention, but even the orders of an earthly superior, when that convention or
those orders contravene the moral law.
Saint Paul tells us that that law is inscribed on every human heart,
that it is universal.
Here is a short rendition of the
Martyrs’ story—a piece I published some years back. Their feast is celebrated on the 6th
of February in the Roman Catholic Church, but their martyrdom actually took
place on February 5, 1597—Japan time.
The
Twenty-six Martyrs
by
Luke O'Hara
Above a
hilltop overlooking Nagasaki Bay floats a row of men and boys in bronze, frozen
eternally in attitudes of joy. 'Floats,' I say, because they seem to hang suspended
in mid-air along a wall of stone. These are the Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan. Most
of them have their hands folded in prayer, and all their mouths are open in
praise. Like a halo around each martyr's head, words are inscribed behind him
in bronze relief. These are the last words each was heard to say or sing before
being pierced with spears from below; this is how Japanese crucifixions usually
ended.
The
Twenty-six were crucified on this hill on the Fifth of February, 1597 because,
according to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the man who then ruled Japan, they were
"foreigners ... come from the Philippines" who had "built
churches, preached their religion, and caused disorders." In point of
fact, most of the martyrs—twenty of them—were Japanese.
The
'disorders' they had caused were as follows: they had built hospitals,
orphanages and leprosaria for the poor and outcast, offered charity to the
indigent, and labored tirelessly to spread the Gospel of Christ in a land whose
people had been esteemed by Saint Francis Xavier as "the best who have yet
been discovered." As for their having "built churches,"
Hideyoshi himself had given the Franciscans a plot of land on which to build.
But a
few of the Franciscans had indeed arrived recently from the Philippines. They had come in a crippled Spanish galleon
headed for Mexico that had been blown off course by a typhoon and had limped
into Japan in dire need of repairs. When the battered San Felipe showed
up at the port of Urado richly laden with Chinese silks and other treasured
cargo, the local ruler contrived to tow the ship into port against the ship's
pilot's wishes—ostensibly for repairs—and in the process broke her back on a
sand bar, spilling much of her cargo into the bay. Now the San Felipe was
a shipwreck, and now, by Japanese law, her cargo was forfeit.
But
Hideyoshi himself had promised his personal protection to Spanish ships only
four years earlier. With this in mind the Spaniards sent a deputation to him to
petition for return of the confiscated cargo, but by the time they arrived, the
divvying-up of the spoils had already been decided. Now Hideyoshi had to save
face. He contrived to 'discover' a Spanish plot to take over Japan by Catholic
infiltration, and when he had produced some fishy evidence he flew into a rage and
ordered the rounding-up of the Franciscans. In the end the round-up netted six
Franciscans, three Jesuits and seventeen hapless Japanese laymen: the youngest
twelve years old, another thirteen, and the oldest sixty-four.
Hideyoshi
ordered that their ears and noses be cut off and they be paraded around the
cities of Osaka and Kyoto in carts and then marched to Nagasaki to be
crucified, a journey of perhaps eight hundred kilometers; it would take them
twenty-seven days. A sympathetic official mitigated the sentence; only their
left ears were cut off.
Along
the route, Jesuit Brother Paul Miki distinguished himself for his constant
preaching; Bishop Dom Pedro Martins called him the best preacher in Japan. The
youngest, twelve-year-old Louis Ibaraki, traipsed along laughing, and
reportedly laughed even when they cut off his ear. Four days before the end the
boy was offered his life on condition that he renounce the Faith. His reply: "I
do not want to live on that condition, for it is not reasonable to exchange a
life that has no end for one that soon finishes."[1] When the Twenty-six arrived
at the execution-ground their crosses were there awaiting them. Louis asked
"Which one is mine?" and then ran to embrace the one pointed out.
The monument depicts in bronze how they
died: Paul Miki, hands spread, was preaching to the thousands of Nagasaki
Christians kneeling on the hillside below when the spears pierced his heart,
and Louis's last words shout out from the wall behind him: "Paradise! Jesus! Mary!"
Saint
Francis Xavier's praises still ring true.
(The
Twenty-six were canonized on June 8, 1862.)
(First published in Our Sunday Visitor.)
