Kirishitan - Toyotomi Hideyoshi and The Christian Daimyo

Toyotomi Hideyoshi and The Christian Daimyo

The situation was changed when Toyotomi Hideyoshi reunified Japan. Once he became the ruler of Japan, Hideyoshi began to pay attention to external threats, particularly the expansion of European power in East Asia. The turning point for Catholic missions was the San Felipe incident, where in an attempt to recover his cargo, the Spanish captain of a shipwrecked trading vessel claimed that the missionaries were there to prepare Japan for conquest. These claims made Hideyoshi suspicious of the foreign religion. He attempted to curb Catholicism while maintaining good trading relations with Portugal and Spain, which might have provided military support to Dom Justo Takayama, a Christian Daimyo in western Japan. Many Daimyos converted to Christianity in order to gain more favorable access to saltpeter, used to make gunpowder. Between 1553 and 1620, eighty-six Daimyos were officially baptized, and many more were sympathetic to the Christians.

By 1587, Hideyoshi had become alarmed, not because of too many converts but rather because the hegemon learned that Christian lords reportedly oversaw forced conversions of retainers and commoners, that they had garrisoned the city of Nagasaki, that they participated in the slave trade of other Japanese and, apparently offending Hideyoshi's Buddhist sentiments, that they allowed the slaughter of horses and oxen for food. After his invasion of Kyushu, Hideyoshi Toyotomi promulgated the Purge Directive Order to the Jesuits (バテレン追放令, bateren tsuihō rei?) on July 24, 1587. It consists of 11 articles: "No. 10. Do not sell Japanese people to the Namban (Portuguese)." Among the contents were a ban on missionaries. The Jesuits in Nagasaki considered armed resistance, but the plans did not come to fruition. Led by Coelho, they sought help from Kirishitan daimyo, but the daimyo refused. Then they called for a deployment of reinforcements from their homeland and its colonies, but this plan was abolished by Valignano. Like the Kirishitan daimyo, he realized that a military campaign against Japan's powerful ruler would bring catastrophe to Catholicism in Japan. Valignano survived the crisis by laying all the blame on Coelho, and in 1590, the Jesuits decided to stop intervening in the struggles between the daimyo and to disarm themselves. They only gave secret shipments of food and financial aid to Kirishitan daimyo.

However, the 1587 decree was not particularly enforced. In contrast to the Jesuits, the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Augustinians were openly preaching to the common peoples; this caused Hideyoshi to become concerned that commoners with divided loyalties might lead to dangerous rebels like the Ikkō-ikki sect of earlier years; this led to Hideyoshi putting the 26 Martyrs of Japan followers to death in 1597 on his order. After Hideyoshi died in 1598, amidst the chaos of succession there was less of a focus on persecuting Christians.