The Religions of Japan Part 23

The Political Character of Roman Christianity.

The Roman Catholic "Histoire del' eglise Chretienne" shows the political character of the missionary movement in j.a.pan, a character almost inextricably a.s.sociated with the papal and other political Christianity of the times, when State and Church were united in all the countries of Europe, both Catholic and Protestant. Even republican Holland, leader of toleration and forerunner of the modern Christian spirit, permitted, indeed, the Roman Catholics to worship in private houses or in sacred edifices not outwardly resembling churches, but prohibited all public processions and ceremonies, because religion and politics at that time were as Siamese twins. Only the Anabaptists held the primitive Christian and the American doctrine of the separation of politics from ecclesiasticism. Except in the country ruled by William the Silent, all magistrates meddled with men's consciences.[12]

In 1597, Hideyoshi died, and the missionaries took heart again. The Christian soldiers returning by thousands from Korea, declared themselves in favor of Hideyori, son of the dead Taik[=o]. Encouraged by those in power, and by the rising star Iyeyas[)u] (1542-1616), the fathers renewed their work and the number of converts increased.

Though peace reigned, the political situation was one of the greatest uncertainty, and with two hundred thousand soldiers gathered around Ki[=o]to, under scores of ambitious leaders, it was hard to keep the sword in the sheath. Soon the line of cleavage found Iyeyas[)u] and his northern captains on one side, and most of the Christian leaders and southern daimi[=o]s on the other. In October, 1600, with seventy-five thousand men, the future unifier of j.a.pan stood on the ever-memorable field of Sekigahara. The opposing army, led largely by Christian commanders, left their fortress to meet the one whom they considered a usurper, in the open field. In the battle which ensued, probably the most decisive ever fought on the soil of j.a.pan, ten thousand men lost their lives. The leading Christian generals, beaten, but refusing out of principle because they were Christians, to take their own lives by _hara-kiri_, knelt willingly at the common blood-pit and had their heads stricken off by the executioner.

Then began a new era in the history of the empire, and then were laid by Iyeyas[)u] the foundation-lines upon which the j.a.pan best known to Europe has existed for nearly three centuries. The creation of a central executive government strong enough to rule the whole empire, and hold down even the southern and southwestern daimi[=o]s, made it still worse for the converts of the European teachers, because in the Land of the G.o.ds government is ever intensely pagan.

In adjusting the feudal relations of his va.s.sals in Kiushiu, Iyeyas[)u]

made great changes, and thus the political status of the Christians was profoundly altered. The new daimi[=o]s, carrying out the policy of their predecessors who had been taught by the Jesuits, but reversing its direction, began to persecute their Christian subjects, and to compel them to renounce their faith. One of the leading opposers of the Christians and their most cruel persecutor, was Kato, the zealous Nichirenite. Like Brandt, the famous Iroquois Indian, who, in the Mohawk Valley is execrated as a bloodthirsty brute, and on the Canadian side is honored with a marble statue and considered not only as the translator of the prayer-book but also as a saint; even also as Claverhouse, who, in Scotland is looked upon as a murderous demon, but in England as a conscientious and loyal patriot; so Kato, the _vir ter execrandus_ of the Jesuits, is worshipped in his shrine at the Nichiren temple at Ikegami, near T[=o]ki[=o],[13] and is praised by native historians as learned, brave and true.

The Christians of Kiushiu, in a few cases, actually took up arms against their new rulers and oppressors, though it was a new thing under the j.a.panese sun for peasantry to oppose not only civil servants of the law, but veterans in armor. Iyeyas[)u], now having time to give his attention wholly to matters of government and to examine the new forces that had entered j.a.panese life, followed Hideyoshi in the suspicion that, under the cover of the western religion, there lurked political designs. He thought he saw confirmation of his theories, because the foreigners still secretly or openly paid court to Hideyori, and at the same time freely disbursed gifts and gold as well as comfort to the persecuted.

Resolving to crush the spirit of independence in the converts and to intimidate the foreign emissaries, Iyeyas[)u] with steel and blood put down every outbreak, and at last, in 1606, issued his edict[14]

prohibiting Christianity.

The Quarrels of the Christians.

About the same time, Protestant influences began to work against the papal emissaries. The new forces from the triumphant Dutch republic, which having successfully defied Spain for a whole generation had reached j.a.pan even before the Great Truce, were opposed to the Spaniards and to the influence of both Jesuits and Franciscans. Hollanders at Lisbon, obtaining from the Spanish archives charts and geographical information, had boldly sailed out into the Eastern seas, and carried the orange white and blue flag to the ends of the earth, even to Nippon.

Between Prince Maurice, son of William the Silent, and the envoys of Iyeyas[)u], there was made a league of commerce as well as of peace and friendship. Will Adams,[15] the English pilot of the Dutch ships, by his information given to Iyeyas[)u], also helped much to destroy the Jesuits influence and to hurt their cause, while both the Dutch and English were ever busy in disseminating both correct information and polemic exaggeration, forging letters and delivering up to death by fire the _padres_ when captured at sea.

In general, however, it may be said that while Christian converts and the priests were roughly handled in the South, yet there was considerable missionary activity and success in the North. Converts were made and Christian congregations were gathered in regions remote from Ki[=o]to and Yedo, which latter place, like St. Petersburg in the West, was being made into a large city. Even outlying islands, such as Sado, had their churches and congregations.

The Anti-Christian Policy of the Tokugawas.

The quarrels between the Franciscans and Jesuits,[16] however, were probably more harmful to Christianity than were the whispers of the Protestant Englishmen or Hollanders. In 1610, the wrath of the government was especially aroused against the _bateren_, as the people called the _padres_, by their open and persistent violation of j.a.panese law. In 1611, from Sado, to which island thousands of Christian exiles had been sent to work the mines, Iyeyas[)u] believed he had obtained doc.u.mentary proof in the j.a.panese language, of what he had long suspected--the existence of a plot on the part of the native converts and the foreign emissaries to reduce j.a.pan to the position of a subject state.[17] Putting forth strenuous measures to root out utterly what he believed to be a pestilential breeder of sedition and war, the Yedo Sh[=o]gun advanced step by step to that great proclamation of January 27, 1614,[18] in which the foreign priests were branded as triple enemies--of the country, of the Kami, and of the Buddhas. This proclamation wound up with the charge that the Christian band had come to j.a.pan to change the government of the country, and to usurp possession of it. Whether or not he really had sufficient written proof of conspiracy against the nation's sovereignty, it is certain that in this state paper, Iyeyas[)u] shrewdly touched the springs of j.a.panese patriotism. Not desiring, however, to shed blood or provoke war, he tried transportation. Three hundred persons, namely, twenty-two Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustines, one hundred and seventeen foreign Jesuits, and nearly two hundred native priests and catechists, were arrested, sent to Nagasaki, and thence shipped like bundles of combustibles to Macao.

Yet, as many of the foreign and native Christian teachers hid themselves in the country and as others who had been banished returned secretly and continued the work of propaganda, the crisis had not yet come. Some of the Jesuit priests, even, were still hoping that Hideyori would mount to power; but in 1615, Iyeyas[)u], finding a pretext for war,[19] called out a powerful army and laid siege to the great castle of Osaka, the most imposing fortress in the country. In the brief war which ensued, it is said by the Jesuit fathers, that one hundred thousand men perished.

On June 9, 1615, the castle was captured and the citadel burned. After thousands of Hideyori's followers had committed _hara-kiri_, and his own body had been burned into ashes, the Christian cause was irretrievably ruined.

Hidetada, the successor of Iyeyas[)u] in Yedo, who ruled from 1605 to 1622, seeing that his father's peaceful methods had failed in extirpating the alien politico-religious doctrine, now p.r.o.nounced sentence of death on every foreigner, priest, or catechist found in the country. The story of the persecutions and horrible sufferings that ensued is told in the voluminous literature which may be gathered from every country in Europe;[20] though from the j.a.panese side "The Catholic martyrology of j.a.pan is still an untouched field for a [native]

historian."[21] All the church edifices which the last storm had left standing were demolished, and temples and paG.o.das were erected upon their ruins. In 1617, foreign commerce was restricted to Hirado and Nagasaki. In 1621, j.a.panese were forbidden ever to leave the country. In 1624, all ships having a capacity of over twenty-five hundred bushels were burned, and no craft, except those of the size of ordinary junks, were allowed to be built.

The Books of the Inferno Opened.

For years, at intervals and in places, the books of the Inferno were opened, and the tortures devised by the native pagans and Buddhists equalled in their horror those which Dante imagines, until finally, in 1636, even j.a.panese human nature, accustomed for ages to subordination and submission, could stand it no longer. Then a man named Nirado Shiro raised the banner of the Virgin and called on all Christians and others to follow him. Probably as many as thirty thousand men, women and children, but without a single foreigner, lay or clerical, among them, gathered from parts of Kiushiu. After burning Shint[=o] and Buddhist temples, they fortified an old abandoned castle at Shimabara, resolving to die rather than submit. Against an army of veterans, led by skilled commanders, the fortress held out during four months. At last, after a b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.sault, it was taken, and men, women and children were slaughtered.[22] Thousands suffered death at the point of the spear and sword; many were thrown into the sea; and others were cast into boiling hot springs, emblems of the eight Buddhist h.e.l.ls.

All efforts were now put forth to uproot not only Christianity but also everything of foreign planting. The Portuguese were banished and the death penalty declared against all who should return, The ai no ko, or half-breed children, were collected and shipped by hundreds to Macao.

All persons adopting or harboring Eurasians were to be banished, and their relatives punished. The Christian cause now became like the doomed city of Babylon or like the site of Nineveh, which, buried in the sand and covered with the desolation and silence of centuries, became lost to the memory of the world, so that even the very record of scripture was the jest of the infidel, until the spade of Layard brought them again to resurrection. So, j.a.panese Christianity, having vanished in blood, was supposed to have no existence, thus furnishing Mr. Lecky with arguments to prove the extirpative power of persecution.[23]

Yet in 1859, on the opening of the country by treaty, the Roman Catholic fathers at Nagasaki found to their surprise that they were re-opening the old mines, and that their work was in historic continuity with that of their predecessors. The blood of the martyrs had been the seed of the church. Amid much ignorance and darkness, there were thousands of people who, through the Virgin, worshipped G.o.d; who talked of Jesus, and of the Holy Spirit; and who refused to worship at the pagan shrines[24].

Summary of Roman Christianity in j.a.pan.

Let us now strive impartially to appraise the Christianity of this era, and inquire what it found, what it attempted to do, what it did not strive to attain, what was the character of its propagators, what was the mark it made upon the country and upon the mind of the people, and whether it left any permanent influence.

The gospel net which had gathered all sorts of fish in Europe brought a varied quality of spoil to j.a.pan. Among the Portuguese missionaries, beginning with Xavier, there are many n.o.ble and beautiful characters, who exemplified in their motives, acts, lives and sufferings some of the n.o.blest traits of both natural and redeemed humanity. In their praise, both the pagan and the Christian, as well as critics biased by their prepossessions in favor either of the Reformed or the Roman phase of the faith, can unite.

The character of the native converts is, in many instances, to be commended, and shows the direct truth of Christianity in fields of life and endeavor, in ethics and in conceptions, far superior to those which the j.a.panese religious systems have produced. In the teaching that there should be but one standard of morality for man and woman, and that the male as well as the female should be pure; in the condemnation of polygamy and licentiousness; in the branding of suicide as both wicked and cowardly; in the condemnation of slavery; and in the training of men and women to lofty ideals of character, the Christian teachers far excelled their Buddhist or Confucian rivals.

The benefits which j.a.pan received through the coming of the Christian missionaries, as distinct and separate from those brought by commerce and the merchants, are not to be ignored. While many things of value and influence for material improvement, and many beneficent details and elements of civilization were undoubtedly imported by traders, yet it was the priests and itinerant missionaries who diffused the knowledge of the importance of these things and taught their use throughout the country. Although in the reaction of hatred and bitterness, and in the minute, universal and long-continued suppression by the government, most of this advantage was destroyed, yet some things remained to influence thought and speech, and to leave a mark not only on the language, but also on the procedure of daily life. One can trace notable modifications of j.a.panese life from this period, lasting through the centuries and even until the present time.

Christianity, in the sixteenth century, came to j.a.pan only in its papal or Roman Catholic form. While in it was infused much of the power and spirit of Loyola and Xavier, yet the impartial critic must confess that this form was military, oppressive and political.[25] Nevertheless, though it was impure and saturated with the false principles, the vices and the embodied superst.i.tions of corrupt southern Europe, yet, such as it was, Portuguese Christianity confronted the worst condition of affairs, morally, intellectually and materially, which j.a.pan has known in historic times. Defective as the critic must p.r.o.nounce the system of religion imported from Europe, it was immeasurably superior to anything that the j.a.panese had hitherto known.

It must be said, also, that Portuguese Christianity in j.a.pan tried to do something more than the mere obtaining of adherents or the nominal conversion of the people.[26] It attempted to purify and exalt their life, to make society better, to improve the relations between rulers and ruled; but it did not attempt to do what it ought to have done. It ignored great duties and problems, while it imitated too fully, not only the example of the kings of this world in Europe but also of the rulers in j.a.pan. In the presence of soldier-like Buddhist priests, who had made war their calling, it would have been better if the Christian missionaries had avoided their bad example, and followed only in the footsteps of the Prince of Peace; but they did not. On the contrary, they brought with them the spirit of the Inquisition then in full blast in Spain and Portugal, and the machinery with which they had been familiar for the reclamation of native and Dutch "heretics." Xavier, while at Goa, had even invoked the secular arm to set up the Inquisition in India, and doubtless he and his followers would have put up this infernal enginery in j.a.pan if they could have done so. They had stamped and crushed out "heresy" in their own country, by a system of h.e.l.lish tortures which in its horrible details is almost indescribable. The rusty relics now in the museums of Europe, but once used in church discipline, can be fully appreciated only by a physician or an anatomist. In j.a.pan, with the spirit of Alva and Philip II., these believers in the righteousness of the Inquisition attacked violently the character of native bonzes, and incited their converts to insult the G.o.ds, destroy the Buddhist images, and burn or desecrate the old shrines. They persuaded the daimi[=o]s, when these lords had become Christians, to compel their subjects to embrace their religion on pain of exile or banishment. Whole districts were ordered to become Christian. The bonzes were exiled or killed, and fire and sword as well as preaching, were employed as means of conversion. In ready imitation of the Buddhists, fict.i.tious miracles were frequently got up to utilize the credulity of the superst.i.tious in furthering the faith--all of which is related not by hostile critics, but by admiring historians and by sympathizing eye-witnesses.[27]

The most prominent feature of the Roman Catholicism of j.a.pan, was its political animus and complexion. In writings of this era, j.a.panese historians treat of the Christian missionary movement less as something religious, and more as that which influenced government and polities, rather than society on its moral side. So also, the impartial historian must consider that, on the whole, despite the individual instances of holy lives and unselfish purposes, the work of the Portuguese and Spanish friars and "fathers" was, in the main, an attempt to bring j.a.pan more or less directly within the power of the Pope or of those rulers called Most Catholic Majesties, Christian Kings, etc., even as they had already brought Mexico, South America, and large portions of India under the same control. The words of Jesus before the Roman procurator had not been apprehended:--"My kingdom is not of this world."

CHAPTER XII - TWO CENTURIES OF SILENCE

"The frog in the well knows not the great ocean"

--Sanskrit and j.a.panese Proverb.

"When the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch."

--j.a.panese Proverb.

"The little island of Deshima, well and prophetically signifying Fore-Island, was j.a.pan's window, through which she looked at the whole Occident ... We are under obligation to Holland for the arts of engineering, mining, pharmacy, astronomy, and medicine ... 'Rangaku' (i.e., Dutch learning) pa.s.sed almost as a synonym for medicine," [1615-1868].--Inazo Nitobe.

"The great peace, of which we are so proud, was more like the stillness of stagnant pools than the calm surface of a clear lake."--Mitsukuri.

"The ancestral policy of self-contentment must be done away with. If it was adopted by your forefathers, because it was wise in their time, why not adopt a new policy if it in sure to prove wise in your time."--Sak.u.ma Shozan, wrote in 1841, a.s.sa.s.sinated 1864.

"And slowly floating onward go Those Black Ships, wave-tossed to and fro."

--j.a.panese Ballad of the Black Ship, 1845.

"The next day was Sunday (July 10th), and, as usual, divine service was held on board the ships, and, in accordance with proper reverence for the day, no communication was held with the j.a.panese authorities."

--Perry's Narrative.

"Praise G.o.d, from whom all blessings flow, Praise Him, all creatures here below, Praise Him above, ye heavenly host, Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

--Sung on U.S.S.S. Mississippi, in Yedo Bay, July 10, 1853.

"I refuse to see anyone on Sunday, I am resolved to set an example of a proper observance of the Sabbath ... I will try to make it what I believe it was intended to be--a day of rest."--Townsend Harris's Diary, Sunday, August 31, 1856.

"I have called thee by thy name. I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me. I am the LORD, and there is none else; besides me there is no G.o.d."--Isaiah.

"I saw underneath the altar the souls of them that had been slain for the word of G.o.d, and for the testimony which they held."--John.