Below: Tokugawa Ieyasu (left) and one of the many fruits of his rule (right)
 |
| Tokugawa Ieyasu |
.jpg) |
| Japanese crucifixion |
On 14 February 1614, Tokugawa Ieyasu, “retired” Shogun and de-facto ruler of Japan, promulgated his Christian Expulsion Edict. How ironic that he chose Saint Valentine’s Day to set in motion the juggernaut that would, like a steamroller, smash into oblivion every public, visible manifestation of Christianity—that “religion of love and union” that his predecessor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, had first attacked in 1587 with his own Expulsion Edict.
Ieyasu’s 1614 edict declared: “the
Kirishitan band have come to Japan … longing to disseminate an evil law … so
that they may change the government of the country, and obtain possession of
the land.”[i] Far from aiming to ‘change
the government of the country, and obtain possession of the land,’ however, the
Jesuit mission to Japan strove to win souls to Christ so that the people of
Japan might ‘obtain possession’ of Heaven.
Firstly, in point of fact, Saint Francis Xavier, who
introduced Christianity to Japan in 1549, relied entirely on appealing to the rational
minds of Japanese of all classes to effect their conversion, and with
considerable success: he reported to the
Society of Jesus that:
The bonzes [i.e. the
native Buddhist clergy] were much displeased at [the mission’s success], and
when they were present at the sermons and saw that a great number became
Christians daily, they began to accuse them severely for leaving their
ancestral religion to follow a new faith. But the others [i.e. the converts] answered
that they embraced the Christian law because they had made up their minds that
it was more in accordance with nature than their own, and because they found
that we [Christian missionaries] satisfied their questions while the bonzes did
not.[ii]
Furthermore, Saint
Francis Xavier held the Japanese in such high regard that, after his
providential arrival in Kagoshima, he was inspired to report:
By
the experience which we have had of this land of Japan, I can inform you
thereof as follows,--Firstly the people whom we have met so far, are the best
who have as yet been discovered, and it seems to me that we shall never find
among heathens another race to equal the Japanese.[iii]
He
found no other race their equal because of the disposition of the Japanese to
embrace the truth, once it had been clearly presented to them and all their
doubts confuted.
Thirdly,
the mission’s goal was clearly not to ‘change the government of the country,’
and the missionaries’ reward was just as clearly not to ‘obtain possession of
the land’ as Ieyasu had falsely claimed.
Rather, their goal was to change human hearts and lead sinners to
Christ, and their reward was the joyful anticipation of hearing: ‘Well done,
good and faithful servant … enter thou into the joy of thy lord’[iv]
once they themselves passed from this life into Heaven. Another letter of Saint Francis Xavier’s makes
this clear:
The labours which are undergone for the
conversion of a people so rational, so desirous to know the truth and be saved,
result in very sweet fruit to the soul. Even at Amanguchi [Yamaguchi], when the
King allowed us to preach the faith and a vast concourse of people gathered
round us, I had so much joy and vigour and delight of heart, as I never
experienced in my life before. … These things made me so overflow with joy,
that I lost all sense of suffering. Would to God that these divine consolations
which God so graciously gives us in the midst of our labours might not only be
related by me, but also some experience of them be sent to our European
Universities, to be tasted as well as heard of! Then many of those young men
given up to study would turn all their cares and desires to the conversion of
infidels, if they could once taste the delight of the heavenly sweetness which
comes from such labours, and if the world knew and was aware how well the souls
of the Japanese are prepared to receive the Gospel, I am sure that many learned
men would finish their studies, canons, priests, and prelates even, would
abandon their rich livings, to change an existence full of bitterness and
anxiety for so sweet and pleasant a life. And to gain this happiness they would
not hesitate to set sail even to Japan.[v]
Setting sail to Japan from Portugal in the
mid-sixteenth century involved great risk:
besides the dangers of scurvy, amoebic dysentery, food poisoning, starvation,
shipboard fires, and countless communicable diseases, there were typhoons, shipwreck,
and pirates to be feared. No wonder then
that time and time again, when their Japanese hosts asked them why they had
braved such dangers to sail to the very end of the earth, to faraway Japan, the
missionaries’ answer was so astonishing: they had come to save human souls, pure and
simple.
Rather
than ‘longing to disseminate an evil law … so that they may change the
government of the country, and obtain possession of the land,’ then, the Jesuit
mission that opened Japan to Christ sought a much more lasting reward, an
eternal one, as described by Christ Himself:
‘But
lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven: where neither the rust nor moth doth
consume, and where thieves do not break through, nor steal. For where
thy treasure is, there is thy heart also.’[vi]
Where Saint Francis Xavier’s heart and treasure were, he himself
made clear in closing his letter of 29 January 1552:
So now I will end though I know not how
to end when I am writing to my dearest fathers and brothers, and about my joys in
Japan too, the greatness of which I could never express, how ever much I might
wish to do so. I end my letter then, begging and imploring God to vouchsafe to
unite us some day in the bliss of heaven. Amen.[vii]
Website: Kirishtan.com
[i]
C.R.
Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan. (Manchester: Carcanet, 1993) p. 318.
[ii]
St. Francis Xavier: Letter from Japan, to the Society of Jesus at
Goa, 1551
[iii]
St. Francis Xavier: Letter from Kagoshima, Japan, to the Society of
Jesus at Goa, November 1549.
[iv]
Matthew
25:21, Douay Rheims Bible, excerpt.
[v]
The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, v.
2, Henry J. Coleridge, S.J., ed. (London:
Burns and Gates, 1872.) p. 349.
[vi]
Matthew
6:20-21, Douay Rheims Bible.
[vii]
The Life and Letters of
St. Francis Xavier, v. 2, Henry J. Coleridge, S.J., ed. (London: Burns and Gates, 1872.) p. 349.
