A scar-faced volcano called Mount Unzen looms over the Shimabara
Peninsula, a land once known as Arima, a thoroughly-Catholic land. At the
mountain’s summit, shrouded in acrid steam, sulfurous volcanic springs boil and
bubble up gases that sting the nose and eyes.
Just as the volcano’s occasional eruptions would raze and sculpt the
Peninsula’s terrain, its boiling, sulfurous springs would prove many a human spirit
and, in the process, temper the spirit of Arima’s Catholic faithful at large—steeling Arima’s very soul.
Paulo
Uchibori, a Christian samurai who in his superhuman death glorified God, was
among the first group of Christians to be tortured and killed for their
faithfulness to Christ by being scalded to death in the boiling, sulfurous Unzen
“Hell.” (above, right)
Paulo
Uchibori Sakuemon was born in the village of Arieh, a few scant miles up the
coast from the Christian daimyo Arima Harunobu’s castle-town of Arima. Harunobu was a staunch Catholic who offered
his domain as a refuge for clergymen fleeing from the dictator Toyotomi
Hideyoshi’s persecution—Hideyoshi had banned the Faith in July of 1587—and
Paulo Uchibori was one of Harunobu’s samurai.
In
1612, however, Harunobu was executed by order of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the de-facto
Shogun. Harunobu’s son and heir Naozumi
apostatized on Ieyasu’s orders and, after an abortive effort to expunge
Christianity from the Peninsula, requested transfer to some less-challenging
turf. Arima then passed into the hands
of a crony of Ieyasu’s who did his utmost to drive out Christ by torturing,
mutilating and dismembering hundreds of faithful Christians in Arieh and the
castle-town of Arima. This man, named
Hasegawa, was soon recalled to the ruler’s palace, but he left behind in the
fields of Arima two hills of human flesh:
one of chopped-up Christian bodies and the other of Christian heads.
Then
came the Matsukuras, father and son, to rule over the Peninsula in
succession. The father, Shigemasa, was
at first willing to play live and let live with the Christian faithful of the
old Catholic domain of Arima, but the new Shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, eventually
infected Shigemasa with his own demonic, paranoiac hatred of Christ—for this
Shogun, Iemitsu, was enslaved by pederasty and bloodlust, the latter of which
he slaked by testing his sword on random victims wandering the streets of his
capital at night.
Iemitsu, 3rd Tokugawa Shogun
