Christianity in the Orient
Part II
A monument to St. Francis and the evangelization of Japan.
After the Republic of Lisbon
Macau and outlying outposts
Most ‘feitorias’, prevalent mainly in the Indonesian archipelago, fortified trade posts where goods were kept until they were shipped to Goa and then Europe, fell into disrepair; others were appropriated by the local sultanates or even transformed into pirate strongholds, led by mixed crews of renegade Portuguese sailors and natives that turned to piracy in hopes of escaping poverty. Part II
A monument to St. Francis and the evangelization of Japan.
After the Republic of Lisbon
Macau and outlying outposts
The ruins of St. Paul's, after an earthquake leveled all but the building's facade in the 18th century. The Jesuit emblem is prominent.
Macau, which could be said to halfway between the Republic’s Indian policies and these fortresses, remained mostly as it was. Leased for an indefinite period to the Republic by the Ming, it served as a gateway for European arms and expertise into China, and as the main base of operations for Portuguese trade in the Far East; circumventing Chinese bans of trade with Japan by bringing these goods to Macau first, they amassed great wealth as intermediaries in Far Eastern trade. Unlike elsewhere, missionary activity was low and uneventful. A large amount of Portuguese had in the meantime settled and taken Chinese brides; given Macau’s much smaller population and size, their cultural impact – besides that of Christianity - was far larger, and a distinct, yet small population of ‘Macanese’, neither Chinese nor Portuguese, developed. With the end of the Portuguese Oriental Empire, while the main reason to keep the isolated European outpost was gone, the Ming Emperors chose to ignore it. The Macau Senate, led by the area’s most prominent merchants, was to remain the main administrative body. Macau engaged in small-scale trade with Japan, but, due to increased external trade by Japan, fostered by the Shimazu Shoguns, it never acquired the same level of importance that it enjoyed under the Lisboetas.
Japan
Japanese celebration of Mass.
Japanese celebration of Mass.
With the demise of the Lisboetas, Christianity was hit hard in Japan. At least eighty percent of the clergy was foreign, and one of the main reasons for conversion was access to European aid. With the end of said aid, the Jesuits were forced to change their strategy. Up until now, they had adopted a policy of propagating their religion ‘from the top’; if they managed to convert the leader of a polity, his people would surely follow. With promises of help and the technical skills of the well-educated Jesuits at their disposal, many lords found baptism to be a quite palatable option. As expected, their subjects were also baptized. Unfortunately, with the vast decrease in European trade[1], rulers were increasingly reluctant to give up their faith. The powerless Ashikaga Shogunate was unable to decisively affect Christianity in its time of weakness.
A Christian samurai. Conversions of the bushi continued - albeit a smaller rate - usually to pander to their Christian subjects and to enjoy the Shimazu lords' protection.
Thus, the Company of Jesus changed its means, adopting the tactics used by Dominican and Franciscan friars – who were in far smaller numbers - in Japan. Groups of missionaries flocked to various towns, teaching the people Christian ways, building churches and chapels and even distributing translated Bibles. They held theological discussions with Buddhist monks and intellectuals to increase their faith’s exposure and popularity among the learned classes, and constructed St. Francis Xavier’s Cathedral[2] through donations taken from Nagasaki’s merchants. While having previously relied on foreign priests and a strong Japanese laity – that helped keep the church, say mass and evangelize – a number of seminars were created, and the proportion of native clergy would steadily rise in the following years.
St. Francis Xavier's Cathedral.
Besides donations, the Jesuit order in Japan financed itself through merchant trade, overtaking somewhat the Portuguese as intermediaries in the trade between China and Japan. The wealth generated was used to promote Christianity, and on more than one occasion, to build fortifications in Christian towns, most prominently Nagasaki. The Jesuits’ educated background enabled them to administer the money wisely, although their material wealth was also a source of criticism. A series of corruption scandals lead the Company of Jesus to, under Matteo Ricci – who had settled down in Japan after failures to convert the Chinese – control its economic operations tightly. The Company was seen with increasing distrust even by some Christian Daimyo due to its power, but Ricci’s wise policies mended the Jesuits’ relations, and missionary work progressed. By the end of the 16th Century, the Church could claim some 300,000 faithful in Kyushu alone.
Christianity, in the light of contemporary thought, was becoming an increasingly dangerous tide. Often compared to the Ikko Ikki, a Buddhist egalitarian sect that engaged in several bloody uprisings against samurai rule, the Christians’ refusal – as polished as it could be – to worship the Emperor (although they maintained normal at least nominal vassalage to the Bakufu, and by extension, the Emperor) was seen as a dangerous factor; therefore Christians were held to be of questionable loyalty.
A bronze statue of Mary, disguised as Kannon. Christians were often targets of prosecution when under the governance of non-Christian lords; some chose to hide their creed rather than suffer the punishments reserved for those of their faith.
Other than through conversion, territory under Christian control grew steadily as the Shimazu clan and their allies seized more and more land. Like in the Malabar, a common religion was a unifying factor between kingdoms that otherwise had little in common, and the ‘Christian Bloc’ of alliances - based mainly in Kyushu and western Honshu and Shikoku – which possessed troops well-versed in the use of arquebuses and cannon, as well as a few western-style ‘naus’, which dominated the naval battlefield thanks to the firepower granted by their western artillery. Most of these innovations were due to the technical expertise of the Jesuits.
Japanese bell, marked with the Jesuits' emblem and likely cast in a Jesuit-run foundry. Besides cannon- and musket-making, many Jesuits were also experts in assorted fields of the arts and sciences: painting, architecture, astronomy, engineering, botany, linguistics, among others.
Evangelization and Christian life in Japan continued uneventfully until 1622. Contact with the Holy See was difficult and rare, although an overland mission managed to reach Beijing and reported good progress to the Papacy. The power of the Christian lords, championed by the Shimazu was slowly increasing through San'in and San'yō – the two regions of the ‘peninsula’ that comprises the westernmost part of Honshu - and, outside their lands, large Christian congregations were threatening to destabilize their neighbors’ lands. As tensions ran high, the Shogun, Ashikaga Yoshinari, died. A sickly man, he suffered at one point from what appears to have been a case of adult mumps, which is usually blamed for his incapability to produce offspring. However, infertility as a result of mumps and consequent orchitis is rare, and a number of different reasons are theorized; regardless, Yoshinari died on April 28th 1622, leaving his two brothers to squabble for the Shogunate.
A Japanese crucifix, showing clear influence from Japanese art and culture. Christianity - although other factors, like the Shimazu's increasing power and wealth - was at the crux of the upheavals that would lead to the end of the Sengoku Jidai and the establishing of a new - powerful - central authority.
The junior, Motouji, was raised as a fosterling in the Shimazu clan, in an attempt to diffuse the specter of religious war. He was seemingly open to Christianity, though not necessary an adherent of it, as stated by his opponents. He was an individual of mostly average character, without any really outstanding traits, although his stay in Satsuma was said to have given him an admiration for fishermen and naval thought in general. Although he was unsure of his capabilities to rule the nation – as far as the daimyo would let him – he went about gathering supporters for his cause right away, demonstrating some energy; during the war, however, he would be brushed off as a puppet, and didn’t complain much. He was mostly endorsed by the ‘Christian Bloc’, who feared that his brother’s inclinations could threaten their faith.
The elder, Naohiro, was schooled in the court itself. A calm and stoic man, he had occupied several government titles with good performance; he was expected to succeed his older brother. Eleven years before, an accident occurred: his wife and his one son died in the Great Kyoto Fire of 1611. While his stoicism helped him overcome his grief, he eventually fell into a deep depression, from which he emerged determined to retire from public life and become a monk. Despite his brother and the court’s objections, he refused to abandon his idea and joined a monastery. Seeing him as a pious Buddhist who could help curtail the power of the Christian lords, the traditionalist Daimyo managed to convince him to assume the title of shogun when they relayed their fears of his brother being, secretly, a Christian. He was reportedly shocked, and hurried to Kyoto, to meet his brother.
A (rotated sideways) map of Kyoto, the imperial residence and where the negotiations took place in the Spring of 1622. Repeatedly torn down and rebuilt as the provincial lords fought for control of the Shogunate, since Onin War, the city is a testament to the the violence of the Sengoku Jidai.
Tensions ran high, as negotiations continued for several months. Faced with the problem of the statute of Christians inside the Empire of Japan, the negotiations had negligible results, and the topic of succession was not yet resolved. A year passed and, impatient with the bureaucratic aspect of the negotiations, the supporters of both would-be Shoguns sought a way to bring their candidate into power. A minor disagreement in the city’s market boiled over into a massacre.
According to a later account of the story, a group of buyers accused the Christian merchants of high prices. These replied that the high numbers of soldiers in the city were stretching their supplies; the dispute soon devolved into slurring, at which point someone either stole a bag of rice or one of the merchants called their guards. A violent religious clash began, and continued into the night, earning the name of ‘The Bloody Night’. The veneer of civility disappeared and the negotiators’ retinues clashed. The event’s climax came when a number of soldiers, under Imagawa Ujizane, attacked the quarters where a large part of the Christian delegation was staying. A number of them escaped, but sixteen, including the head of the Shimazu clan, Shimazu Yoshihiro, were beaten and then crucified already dead, as a warning. These would be known as the Martyrs of Kyoto. Just as Kyoto was pillaged and destroyed - much like it had been during the Onin War – the two Shoguns retreated to their supporters’ lands, albeit in disgust for the barbarianism showed on that night.
Thus began the decisive war that would end the Sengoku Jidai. Both sides sharpened their swords and wits, and braced for a conflict that would undeniably result in the annihilation of one party and the other’s supremacy.
A Madonna with Child. Once again, there is clear influence from Japanese aesthetics and sensibilities in the rendering of Christian imagery. This goes beyond art, however. The acceptance of certain syncretisms as inevitable, coupled with Japan's isolation, lead to the appearance of certain idiosyncratic practices, such as the use of sake during mass in the place of wine. This is mainly a difference in ritual, not as much in theology; the Shimazu advocated orthodoxy and views taken as 'heretical' were quickly squashed.
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Notes
[1] European trade was reduced to a shadow of its former grandeur. A few ships departed for the east every few years – mostly of French or Italian origin – crewed by Portuguese navigators who knew the way to their former lands. These were often private enterprises, and European entanglements in their own continent prevent a renewed policy of imperialism in the Orient.
[2] St. Francis Xavier was swiftly canonized after his martyrdom (through crucifixion) in 1550. He stands to this day as the Patron of Japan, and a seminal figure in Catholic missionary activities; his comprehensive efforts to learn the language and the culture – establishing Christianity and God in accordance with the future converts’ conceptions of the world- of those he sought to convert stand as the main reasons of his success. These would be emulated by later Jesuits and missionaries and general.
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Thank you Loki! I thought we were needing some light on what happened after the Lisboetas disappeared from the stage
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