The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature (Modern Asian Literature Series) by

Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Literary Criticism/Asian/General
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2011-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

Father Pedro de San Dominico

Matthias

Francisco Gorosuke

Miguel Shin’emon

Dominico Kisuke

This list includes only the names of the priests and monks who were martyred in the village in 1615. No doubt there were many more nameless peasants and fisherwomen who gave up their lives for the faith. In the past, as I devoted my free time to reading the history of Christian martyrdoms in Japan, I formulated within my mind an audacious theory. My hypothesis is that these public executions might have been carried out as warnings to the leaders of each village rather than to each individual believer. This will, of course, never be anything more than my own private conjecture so long as the historical records offer no supportive evidence. But I can’t help feeling that the faithful in those days, rather than deciding individually whether to die for the faith or to apostatize, were instead bowing to the will of the entire community.

It has been my long-held supposition that because the sense of community, based on blood relationships, was so much stronger among villagers in those days, it was not left up to individuals to determine whether they would endure persecution or succumb. Instead this matter was decided by the village as a whole. In other words, the officials, knowing that they would be exterminating their labor force if they executed an entire community that stubbornly clung to its faith, would only kill selected representatives of the village. In cases where there was no choice but apostasy, the villagers would renounce their beliefs en masse to ensure the preservation of the community. That, I felt, was the fundamental distinction between Japanese Christian martyrdoms and the martyrs in foreign lands.

The historical documents clearly indicate that in former times, nearly fifteen hundred Christians lived on this ten-by three-and-a-half-kilometer island. The most active proselytizer on the island in those days was the Portuguese father Camillo Constanzo, who was burned at the stake on the beach of Tabira in 1622. They say that even after the fire was lit and his body was engulfed in black smoke, the crowd could hear him singing the Laudate Dominum. When he finished singing, he cried “Holy! Holy!” five times and breathed his last.

Peasants and fishermen found to be practicing Christianity were executed on a craggy islet—appropriately named the Isle of Rocks—about a half hour from here by rowboat. They were bound hand and foot, taken to the top of the sheer precipice of the island, and hurled to their deaths. At the height of the persecutions, the number of believers killed on the Isle of Rocks never fell below ten per month, according to contemporary reports. To simplify matters, the officers would sometimes bind several prisoners together in a rush mat and toss them into the frigid seas. Virtually none of the bodies of these martyrs was ever recovered.

I read over the grisly history of the island’s martyrs until past noon. The drizzling rain continued to fall.

At lunchtime the priest was nowhere to be seen. A sunburned, middle-aged woman with jutting cheekbones served my meal.

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