Execution to recantion
Initial shogunate policy was to stage public executions which attracted crowds singing xtian prayers & sites became pilgrimage places. Japanese realized martyrdom fetish of Xtians & changed strategy. First they began cremating & scattering everything into ocean so nothing remained of the “martyr” to congregate around. Then someone realized the whole strategy they were pursuing was flawed. Fujihiro’s (in charge of Nagasaki) comments show this shift.
One of the most active persecutors of the Christians was Hasegawa Sahioye Fujihiro, the chief Governor of Nagasaki. In that city he was somewhat restrained by various privileges that had been granted to the Portuguese, by fear of an insurrection, and by the apprehension that he might be blamed if his acts put an end to foreign commerce. He had for a long time desired to be put in possession of Arima. He had already been given some oversight of the apostate Daimyo of that fief and it was partly because of this that the persecutions that had been particularly severe. He now succeeded in getting that daimyo transferred to Hyuga, while he himself obtained the coveted territory. He determined to purge it from the hated religion. For this purpose he made use of a large force of soldiers from Satsuma and Hizen. He is said to have issued the following directions to his subordinates:
“The Christians desire death in order that they may be honored as martyrs. Hence it is not desirable to slay them, but rather to prolong their lives, subjecting them to such severe punishments as will finally overcome their resistance. The most effective trial will be to enslave their woman, sending the most beautiful of them to the houses of prostitution in Kyoto. If the people will renounce the religion of Christ, they shall be exempted from imposts and other obligations, moreover, Chinese ships will be induced to come to their ports for trade, and this will be for the great enrichment of the country.”
Even the Xtians understood this shift - “no pretendia matarlos sino vencerlos” (Portuguese Colonial Cities in the Early Modern World)
High profile apostates
They didn’t need to make everyone apostates individually, when a high up foreign priest like Ferreira apostatized many native sheep would follow of their own accord seeing his example. Ferreira not only recanted, he took a Japanese name Sawano Chuan, a Japanese wife, wrote a book saying Xtianity was a fraud, took part in interrogating other captured padres etc. The care they attached to not killing Xtians needlessly is illustrated by Takenaka who used to have a doctor present while he did enhanced interrogation on Xtians at Unzen hot springs.
Assuming a Japanese name and identity, he married and worked as a translator, remaining in Nagasaki until his death in 1650. His defection offered multiple benefits for the authorities, by discrediting the European priests, and destroying their credibility among the social elites… Ferreira was notorious as a skilled interrogator of Christian captives, and he wrote a polemical tract (in Japanese) against Catholic Christianity. From 1610 to 1630, the main enforcer of anti-Christian policies was Takenaka’s deputy Heizo, a defector from the Christian faith.
The apostasy of the fathers was just a beginning, as far as Inoue was concerned. For after their recantation and their employment by the bakufu, the fathers were supposed to take on a Japanese identity, just as Chu’an had done, and assist in the war on Christianity. The ultimate aim of the elaborate torture to effect apostasies was to create living proofs of God’s impotence in the realm of the shogun, but the ferreting out of Christians remained the main task. For their apostasy, the former priests had been rewarded with money in silver and a monthly stipend. From then on, in Inoue’s eyes, there could never be enough proof of the sincerity of their recantation. On 29 November, ten Japanese women were brought to the jail where the Jesuit group was kept to serve as spouses for the fathers and their followers. The first reaction of the four apostates to this ultimate humiliation and negation of their former selves was to refuse to share their cells with the women. Their Asian converts, however, who had never been ordained as priests, did not have the same qualms. Inoue and his henchmen were not pleased with the stubbornness of the foreigners. The apostates, who had been living in relative comfort during the month of November, were made to feel miserable again.37
In the end, however, three of the fathers yielded to the temptations of the ometsuke. Inoue himself has left a record of this, the Kirishitoki, a document detailing how to deal with Christians, which the ometsuke compiled for his successor on his retirement. According to this document, Alonzo de Arroyo lived only twenty more days after he had been forced to share his cell with a woman.38 In these three weeks he starved himself to death, which must therefore have occurred around 17 or 18 December. Indeed, there is indirect evidence from the Dutch factor’s journal confirming this.
Oh & as is their tradition of learning the good things from foreigners, they went to the Dutch & asked them if they knew of any better enhanced interrogation techniques to get the Xtians to apostatize.
On 18 December, Elserack noted that at two o’clock in the afternoon he had received a visit from Inoue’s “highest collaborator,” probably Okabe lori. The man had a strange request: “He told us how the said papists had been ordered by His Majesty to take and use women. However, even though they said they had apostatized and become Japanese, they could not be forced to touch women. His Majesty and the High Authorities (who daily grow ever more embittered against these bad people) are pondering all the time by what means the apostates could be tortured further while still keeping them alive, so that the principal reason for his visit to the Dutch factor today was to see if there were any Dutch ways of torture, by which one can cause much sorrow but keep the criminals alive.“39
The factor answered that “it was the Dutch custom to punish each criminal according to the degree of his guilt, after they, having been tortured, had confessed the crimes they had committed.” After this pious statement, he added that the Dutch in the Indies were used to “chain their enemies and evil-doers, two by two with heavy irons, forcing them to slave from morning till night at filthy jobs, giving them nothing but bad rice to sustain themselves, making them sleep in jail with their legs chained together, and beating them with the rod as much as we know a man can bear and stay alive.“40
Nothing innovative here. Inoue’s henchman told him that he had heard as much from the prisoners from Nambu, but that he had hoped that Elserack would know of another torture.
Torture techniques
The need for public apostasy shaped the penalties inflicted upon Catholic clergy in Japan. Jesuits in particular were trained to expect persecution and martyrdom, and brave individuals could contemplate the threat of a speedy death, and the crown of martyrdom. Quite different was the treatment they received in the ana-tsurushi, the pit, a favored device of Nagasaki governor Takenaka Uneme:- One grotesque example was the ana-tsurushi, the torment of the pit.
Wrapped in two sacks each, bound in five places, with only the neck sticking out, they looked for all the world like tree-bugs encased in their self-spun houses… [They] were piled on top of each other on the riverbank. From morning until noon their tongues were capable enough to keep blabbing…. “We’ll obtain salvation from Deus and be born in Paraiso…. Quick, let them go ahead and kill us….” The hour of noon passed, two o’clock was approaching. And now one of them spoke up: “Hey, how about all of us falling away (apostatizing) together!… I’m so hungry my eyes are dizzy…. And someone packed in at the bottom of the pile said: “… Can’t hardly breathe. … Come on, let’s fall away.” Different words, same tune. On all sides the rest of them took up the melody. And the entire riverside rocked with howls of laughter (ibid., pp. 357, 359). 3. In a History of the Development of Japanese Thought (Tokyo:
Superiority to other tactics
People who think “kill them all” was viable strategy should also look at post reconquista. It took them nearly 120 yrs after Grenada fell before last Mohammedans were expelled (not killed). Government efforts were stymied in various ways, for e.g. Xtian landlords who relied on Morisco labor consistently tried to oppose gov’t policies to protect their Mohammedan laborers.
Apostates better than martyrs attest the impotence of a religion, especially when those apostates had been apostles of the faith and priests.