26 Martyrs of Japan

The 26 Martyrs of Japan are a group of Roman Catholic martyrs who were executed in Nagasaki on February 5, 1597, under the orders of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the chief imperial minister of Japan. Their deaths marked the beginning of centuries of severe persecution against Christians in the country. Twenty members of the group were Japanese; the group included Franciscans and Jesuits as well as several laymen and young boys. The martyrs were collectively beatified by Pope Urban VIII in 1627 and canonized (formally declared saints) by Pope Pius IX in 1862. Venerated as the patron saints of Japan, the martyrs have been memorialized in famous works of art, literature, and film. Their feast day is February 6.

Introduction of Christianity to Japan

St. Francis Xavier, a Jesuit missionary born in Spain, arrived in Japan in 1549, only a few years after the first European traders had reached there. By the time he left the country in 1551, he had made about 2,000 Japanese converts. In the decades that followed, many Jesuits, predominantly Portuguese, were sent on missions to Japan. Within 30 years an estimated 200,000 more converts were made in such cities as Ōsaka, Yamaguchi, Kyōto, and Sakai and on the island of Kyushu. Nagasaki especially had a significant Christian population, which earned it the nickname “the Rome of Japan.”

Christianity was tolerated under Oda Nobunaga, a warlord who overthrew the Ashikaga shogunate in 1573 and waged a successful campaign to conquer much of Japan. Particularly in Kyōto he extended his protection to the Jesuit missionaries and assisted them in building a church there and a seminary in Azuchi. Although Nobunaga was interested in European culture, he was a nonbeliever whose attitude toward Christianity was political and strategic. He regarded the encouragement of Christianity as a means of curbing the influence of the Buddhist temples, which were important strongholds of political and military power.

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Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the persecution of Christians

By the time of Nobunaga’s death in 1582, there were some 600,000 Christian converts in Japan. Nobunaga’s protégé Toyotomi Hideyoshi embarked on completing his predecessor’s work of unifying the country. Hideyoshi formed a key alliance with the powerful daimyo (feudal baron) Tokugawa Ieyasu, and in 1585 he was appointed kampaku (chancellor to the emperor), later becoming dajō-daijin (chief minister).

Feeling threatened by the new faith that had become entrenched in Japan (and perhaps yielding to the influence of the Buddhist monasteries), Hideyoshi issued the first anti-Christian edict in 1587, ordering all “foreign religious teachers” to leave Japan within 20 days under penalty of death. However, his order was not rigorously enforced, and many Jesuits remained in the country. Complicating matters were the rivalries between the Portuguese and Spanish crowns and between different Catholic religious orders. Indeed, the same year that Hideyoshi came to power, Pope Gregory XIII gave the Portuguese Jesuits exclusive charge of the Japanese missions. This display of favoritism, at least in the eyes of Spain, led the governor of the Philippines (then under Spanish control) to send an embassy to Hideyoshi in 1593 to seek trade with Japan. Accompanying the embassy was a group of Franciscans, who established missions in Kyōto and Nagasaki. Hideyoshi initially tolerated them, and they made some inroads in preaching the gospel and making converts.

A turning point came in 1596, when the Spanish galleon the San Felipe became stranded off the coast of the island of Shikoku. The discovery of cannons on the ship and a careless boast by the captain led Hideyoshi to believe that the king of Spain had sent the Franciscans as part of a plan to invade Japan. Convinced that the country was under threat, Hideyoshi ordered the arrest and execution of all the Franciscans and their associates.

The crucifixion of the 26 martyrs and their names

Initially, 24 Christians were arrested, although not all of these were among the Franciscans who had arrived in 1593; several Jesuits and laypeople, many of them catechists (religious teachers), were included. Among the trades and castes represented by the arrested laymen were samurai, former Buddhist monks, carpenters, monastery gatekeepers, hospital managers, cooks, a silk maker, a swordsmith, a bow-and-arrow maker, and a pharmacist. The majority were Japanese-born Christians, or Kirishitan (from Portuguese cristão, “Christian”). There was also one case of mistaken identity. A man named Matthias was mistaken for a cook with the same name who worked at the Franciscan monastery in Kyōto; he volunteered to go with the condemned men even after the mistake was discovered. Another volunteer was a carpenter living in Kyōto named Francis Kichi. Their participation brought the number of martyrs to 26.

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The group’s martyrdom began in January 1597 with a series of tortures, including having their left ears cut off, which was a method of branding them as condemned criminals and increasing their public humiliation. They were then forced to march from Kyōto to Nagasaki, a journey of 600 miles. The condemned endured their suffering by praying and singing hymns during their journey.

When the group reached Nagasaki, they were executed by crucifixion on crosses arranged in a row on Nishizaka Hill. While dying on his cross, Paul Miki, who was a few months short of his ordination as a priest, is said to have preached a sermon in which he affirmed his Japanese birth and affiliation with the Jesuits and said he was happy to die for his faith. As on their march, many of the martyrs sang hymns during their final moments. They were finally killed by being lanced with spears. The names of the 26 martyrs are:

In the succeeding centuries there were other waves of persecutions, including mass executions. Many Christians (or those suspected of being Christian) were made to publicly renounce their beliefs by stepping on a fumi-e, an image of Christ or the Virgin Mary. Those who refused were tortured in methods that included being suspended upside down over a pit filled with excrement. Japanese Christians who went into hiding or practiced their faith in secret became known as the Kakure Kirishitan (Japanese: “Hidden Christians”). The ban on Christianity in Japan was lifted in 1873.

Memorials in art, literature, and film

In Nagasaki the Oura Cathedral, or the Basilica of the Twenty-six Holy Martyrs of Japan, was erected in 1864, two years after the martyrs were officially declared saints by the Vatican. Another notable memorial is a monument by Japanese sculptor Yasutake Funakoshi that was installed at the martyrs’ crucifixion site in 1962 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of their canonization. Funakoshi’s monument, which faces Oura Cathedral, features a bronze panel depicting life-size representations of the martyrs. The artist began crafting the series in 1958 following his conversion to Catholicism in 1950 shortly after the death of his infant son. Near the monument is a museum about the martyrs and the history of Christianity in Nagasaki.

In 1966 Japanese author Endō Shūsaku published Chinmoku (Silence), a profoundly moving novel about the persecution of Christian converts and Portuguese missionaries in 17th-century Japan. Endō had converted to Catholicism as a child and often referred to his Christian baptism as like “an arranged marriage.” He wrote many other novels and nonfiction works, including Iesu no shogai (1973; A Life of Jesus), but Silence is regarded as his masterpiece. It was adapted to film several times: first in 1971 as Chinmoku by Japanese director Shinoda Masahiro, then in 1996 as Os Olhos da Ásia by Portuguese director João Mário Grilo, and again in 2016 as Silence by Martin Scorsese.

In 2018 many of the Kakure Kirishitan communities were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site under the name “Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region.”

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