Four
hundred years ago yesterday—27 January 1614—a writing-brush inscribed the silent
death-knell of Christendom in Japan, a sledgehammer-blow mandated by the shadow
ShÅgun Tokugawa
Ieyasu, pictured above. This Expulsion Edict would order
the rounding-up and expulsion of all Christian missionaries throughout Japan
and forbid thenceforth the practice of that religion on Japanese soil. The Shogunate would enforce its ban with an
increasingly-brutal regimen of executions and torture, finally perfecting a
method of slow torture called ana-zurushi
which would effect a number of apostasies by Japanese and foreign clergy and
lay believers—and produce some of human history’s most glorious examples of
heroism, of Christian martyrdom, true
martyrdom, as well.
In the days and weeks to come, this blog will chronicle the dark path of
the Tokugawa Shogunate’s brutal suppression of that religion of love while
focusing on those beacons of superhuman heroism, of true martyrdom, that
dazzled all human eyes enshrouded in that inhuman darkness—and, through the
printed word, would uplift the hearts and minds of humankind at large.
Author's Website: Kirishtan.com
