June
23, 1587 is a noteworthy date in human history, for it marks the death of Ōmura Sumitada (above), the first
Japanese daimyō received
into Holy Mother Church. To his dying
breath he was a champion of the Faith: a staunch warrior for Christ and a
selfless donor of land and fortune to the Kingdom of Heaven. He donated the port of Nagasaki to the Church—soon
to become Japan’s window to the world—and the port-town of Mogi, too, which
faced the Shimabara Peninsula and still connects by ferry to the isles of Amakusa. Amakusa: the home of Amakusa Shiro, the
seedbed of the Shimabara Rebellion and a longtime haven for Christian refugees
from tyrants’ persecution. But let us
return to Ōmura.
Ōmura, the sizeable
domain ruled by Sumitada, was home to two ports suitable for hosting visits by
the great sailing-ships of Portugal:
Nagasaki and Yokose-ura. Overcome
by the power of the truth of the Gospel, Sumitada offered the port of Yokose-ura
to the missionaries of Christ as a home where they could live freely and preach
their Gospel and convert whomever they could; to the Portuguese merchants who
accompanied the missionaries he offered anchorage and trading-rights in Yokose-ura
with the first decade tax-free. As soon
as he had been instructed in the basic tenets of the Christian faith, Sumitada
declared that he was already a Christian in his heart.
Sumitada,
Lord of Ōmura, felt that, for
familial considerations, he was not yet able to receive baptism—he feared that his
elder brother Yoshisada, Lord of Arima, would object—but he nevertheless had a golden
cross made for himself and wore it proudly and publicly on his chest. He even wore it on a visit to Yoshisada in
Arima. One must here understand that the
male head of the family held, for all practical purposes, dictatorial power—even
the power of life and death—in old Japan.
Seeing the cross on his brother’s
chest, Yoshisada asked if he were Christian, and on hearing Sumitada’s ‘Yes,’
the elder brother “grieved not, whence Ōmura-dono received great contentment
and happiness.”[1]
Sumitada thereafter went to visit Padre Cosme de Torres
in Yokose-ura, only to learn that he was away, as it was Holy Week, a time of
sadness and retreat from worldliness. He
humbly asked (through Brother João
Fernandes) for permission to build the Padre a retreat house behind the church
at Yokose-ura, although he himself, Lord of Ōmura,
had donated the land and paid for the construction. He also requested leave to have Christian
laws written on placards and, according to Japanese custom, set up on posts in
public places, in order that the people who came to that port from diverse
places might “live in union and peace.”[2]
TO BE CONTINUED
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