11 - A Layman’s Account of Japanese Christianity (1619)

Summary

Abstract

The merchant and apostolic notary Bernardino de Ávila Girón was present in Japan from 1595 to 1598 and from 1607 to about 1619. He witnessed the martyrdom of six Franciscan missionaries and twenty Japanese Christians, and the 1614–19 Christian uprisings against the ruler Tokugawa Ieyasu. After the 1614 expulsion of the missionaries and the persecution of Christians, Ávila became a witness of clandestine Japanese Christianity. His Relación is unique not only because it is the most extensive and profound analysis of Japan and its peoples written by a layman. Ávila highlights the shared Catholic identity with the Japanese Christians and transcends the explicit distinction between European and Japanese, which had dominated the first part of the work.

Keywords: Manila galleon, Japanese Christianity, hagiography, Nagasaki

After the mention of a land called Zipangu in the book of Marco Polo (1254–1324), Japan became a mythical place in the European imagination. With the 1548 arrival of the Jesuit Francis Xavier (1506–1552) in Japan, the first early modern European impressions seemed to confirm the Iberian desires of evangelization and expansion of cultural hegemony in East Asia. The letters of Francis Xavier depict a society that was sophisticated and open to evangelization, “the best people that has yet been discovered.”1 However, the dream of a Christian Japan was threatened in 1586, when the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598) banned the preaching and practice of Christianity.

In 1596, another event would shake the ambitions to include Japan in the Catholic project. The Manila galleon San Felipe wrecked on the coast of Shikoku on October 19. Several Franciscans, who had arrived in Japan in 1594, attempted to act as intermediaries between the galleon crew and passengers and the Japanese authorities. The insistence of the missionaries on preaching in public, the intention of keeping the valuable booty, and internal political and economic issues prompted Hideyoshi to seize the cargo and punish the nanban, or Southern Barbarians, as the Europeans were called. Twenty Japanese Christians (three of them Jesuit lay brothers) and six Franciscans were put to death by crucifixion. This event ruined the image of Japan as a utopian land for the future of Christianity and provoked harsh accusations between Jesuits and Franciscans.