Friday, June 14, 2013
Julian Nakaura: Samurai, Ambassador, and Martyr (Part One)
website: Kirishtan.com
The
jumbled boulders of Nakaura lie brooding on the shore, defying the sea to do
its worst. Behind them squats a hill
clothed in bamboo, its giant knees of rock protruding through the trees. A continent of charcoal cloud looms over the
coast, yet the sun blazes triumphantly in the distant west, riding high above
the Gotoh Islands: it burns one’s face,
even in the tail-end of winter.
Julian
Nakaura was born here. They honor him
with a memorial that overlooks the village:
a pony-tailed boy in bronze pointing out at the sea, towards the Rome
the real boy visited. But I prefer the
Julian in bronze who stands, weathered and flinty, at the entrance to the
Shimabara Catholic Church, way down south: a gentle old man steeled by trial
and perseverance, a Missal in hand and nothing but his own two sandaled feet to
carry him. Those old feet would carry
him to a death unheard of even in a Europe where the burning of heretics and
the disemboweling and mutilation of Roman Catholic priests was the order of the
day.
In
1582 Catholicism was flourishing in some parts of Japan—especially on the
island of Kyushu. The Jesuits had opened
a school in Arima, southeast of Nagasaki, for training Catholic samurai youth
to become future teachers, catechists and priests—a Seminario. Father Alessandro
Valignano, dispatched by Rome as Visitor to Japan, had set up the school in
1580, and two years later he came up with a brainstorm: choose some fine young samurai from the
student body and send them on an embassy to Rome as showpieces of the Japanese
Church. Their mission would be to
impress upon the nobility of Catholic Europe the quality of this newest and farthest-flung
Catholic seedbed; and to impress upon themselves the grandeur of Catholicism in
Europe and report their impressions to their native brethren on their
return. Omura Sumitada, the first
Japanese daimyo (domainal lord) to be
baptized, loved the plan as soon as it hit his ears; he promised his full
support. Two other daimyo also joined
in; the mission was prepared immediately
(to be continued)
Sunday, June 9, 2013
Adam Arakawa: Samurai, Servant, and Martyr
author's website: Kirishtan.com
“Martyr” is a word much abused in our day;
here's one excellent definition: “True
Christian martyrs forgive others,” says Joseph Takami, the Archbishop of
Nagasaki. “Even while being killed by
others, they forgive them. They teach us
the meaning of a death like Jesus’ death.”
Take
Adam Arakawa, for example, one of the 187 Companions of Peter Kibe, beatified
en masse by Pope Benedict XVI on 24 November 2008:
“He was a man of prayer,” Jesuit historian and pastor Father Diego Yuuki
told me. “When the last missionary in Amakusa was expelled, he took the
responsibility of the church, and for that reason he was killed.”
Adam
was a samurai, brought up in that proud
martial tradition, but a samurai who had the humility to become a
servant to his fellow-Christians after having been dismissed by his feudal
lord. He served the church at Shiki, in
the Amakusa Islands.
The
Shōgun had banned the Faith in 1614, expelling all Christian missionaries, and
Kawamura Jirōemon, the castellan of Tomioka Castle, which overlooked Shiki from
a nearby mountaintop, was ordered by his lord to exterminate Christendom in the
Amakusa Islands. Humble old Adam, in his
seventies, was the obvious primary target:
if he renounced the Faith, the other local Christians would follow his
example, thought Kawamura.
Renounce? Not
Adam, steely old Catholic samurai: when
he
heard that they were looking for him, he fell to his knees, thanking God, and
asked Him to grant him martyrdom. Friends
warned Adam to abandon Christ, lest he be killed. His answer is recorded in history: “’Disobey God,’
you’re telling me? You’re telling me to
shame my God? Kawamura-sama’s orders or
the law of the Shōgun of all Japan notwithstanding, please understand: I am a Christian. A true Christian puts Christ’s teaching above
his own life. No matter how they torture
me, I cannot disobey Christ, true God.”
Kawamura,
the castellan, had Adam brought to his castle for interrogation and bound to a
pillar outside; to break the old man’s spirit he kept him out there all
night. Come morning, though, Adam’s
spirit was unbroken. When Kawamura told
him it was not just his own nor just his feudal lord’s command, but the very Shōgun’s
orders that he apostatize, Adam replied, “A man’s soul is more important to him
than his body. I obey the true God,
Deus, savior of souls.” In old Japan,
they called God by his Latin name, Deus, to avoid confusing Him with the “gods”
of superstition.
On March 21, 1614, the Friday before Palm
Sunday, Kawamura ordered Adam stripped naked and paraded through town, and then
hung by his elbows from a cross-bar (or lintel) supported by two pillars; they
tied his legs to these, with his tiptoes barely touching the ground. Adam was in constant agony, straining against
gravity, besides being exposed to the elements and public ridicule. It was March—cold and windy—and Kawamura had
had the pillars set up at land’s edge to expose him to the cold sea wind, but
to keep from killing him, they untied him at night and took him indoors. This torture lasted nine days. Unable to join his hands while praying, Adam
did his best to raise them toward Heaven.
Rather than show his pain, he encouraged the local Christians in their
faith, speaking only of things of the soul.
He was finally untied on Holy Saturday, his faith untouched, and put in
the hands of a local Christian, under house arrest—an internment that would
last for sixty days.
Kawamura eventually sent a message to Adam: “We’ll cut your fingers off unless you
renounce your faith. Not all at once,
but slowly, one by one, prolonging your agony.” Adam’s response: “I’m determined to bear any sort of torture. God will surely strengthen me and give
me perseverance to the end. Even if I
die after long suffering, having undergone repeated tortures, I’ll be happy to
get it, for penance’ sake and for love of God.”
On hearing that, Kawamura, the castellan, ordered his fingers cut off;
but his men, afraid of Heaven’s recompense should they mutilate such a good old
man, held off.
Finally
Kawamura sent to Terazawa Hirotaka, his feudal lord up in Karatsu, in northern
Kyushu, for orders, reporting Adam’s unshakable determination to hold onto his
faith. A courier came back at breakneck
speed with new orders: kill him. Meanwhile, in his imprisonment, Adam had seen
a vision of the Mother of God: she was
holding a cross in her hands, and Adam understood that he was to become a holy
Martyr.
Kawamura
had Adam brought to his castle. Along
the way a crier kept blowing a conch shell and announcing that Adam would be
executed in two or three days. This was
a lie: they just wanted to put the local
Christians off the track, lest they come in droves to his execution, seeking
relics. The next morning, at first
cock’s crow, they took Adam out of the castle in the pre-dawn darkness and led
him up a steep mountain path with a rope around his neck. Anxious for martyrdom, Adam “climbed like a leaping
deer,”[1]
pulling the soldier with the rope in his grip right off his feet. At the chosen place, Adam knelt and prayed. He then advised his executioners to make
their children study the Christian Faith, and told them they had better become
Christians too, and fast.
The
swordsman must have been unsteady on his feet on the steep slope, for his first
slash went awry, into Adam’s shoulder:
Adam didn’t flinch; he was too busy praying to Jesus. The second slash then took off his head.
They put Adam’s bloody remains in a net, weighted down
with two large stones, took them out in a boat and sunk them into the sea,
afraid, perhaps, of that eternal truth:
The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Faith. The local Christians, though, scooped up the
earth on that hillside that had drunk Adam’s sacred blood and saved it as a
relic.
Seed of the Faith indeed:
repentant Catholics all over the Amakusa Islands publicly declared their
faith, emboldened by Adam’s example after having been cowed into silence by the
Shōgun’s ban on Christ. In one village
alone, more than 150 emboldened souls declared their faith in the Truth that
has overcome the world.
One almighty Truth indeed, and terror to the Enemy of all
men’s souls.
**************************
Notes:
Blessed Adam Arakawa, beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on 24 November 2008, is one of the 187 Companions of Blessed Peter Kibe Kasui.
He was beheaded on or about Tuesday,
June 5, 1614. (The date is unclear; that
his martyrdom was fulfilled on a Tuesday, before dawn, is established.)
Father Diego Yuuki,
consummate historian of Japanese Christendom, passed away on November 17, 2008
in Nagasaki, city of Martyrs. As of today,
June 10, 2013, Joseph Takami continues in the office of
Archbishop of Nagasaki.
[1]
Kataoka Yakichi, Nihon Kirishitan Junkyō-shi (Tokyo: Jiji Tsushinsha, 1979) p. 252.
-End-
Copyright 2007/2013 by
Luke O’Hara
author's website: Kirishtan.com
author's website: Kirishtan.com
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