Episode 426 – The City on the Edge of Forever, Part 5

February 18, 2022 1 Comment

Our final episode of this miniseries will detail the early decades of the Christian persecutions in Nagasaki. Once the religion was banned, how did the Tokugawa authorities go about rooting it out–and how was that attempt resisted by the city’s Christians and the priests still hiding in the city?

Sources

Hesselink, Reinier. The Dream of Christian Nagasaki: World Trade and the Clash of Cultures, 1560-1640

Screech, Timon. “The English and the Control of Christianity in the Early Edo Period.” Japan Review 24 (2012).

Tronu Montane, Carla. “Sacred Space and Ritual in Early Modern Japan: The Christian Community of Nagasaki.” PhD Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 2012.

Images

The Hondo (main hall) of Seirenzan Honrenji.
A fumi-e (stepping image) of Jesus on the cross. This practice of detecting Christians by forcing them to trample on a sacred icon began in Nagasaki, but was so effective it became common practice around Japan.
A painting of the Sept 10, 1622 martyrdoms in the Gesu Church in Rome. Since this is a Jesuit-affiliated church, this image exaggerates the number and prominence of Jesuit victims.
The site of the former Suzuta Prison, where Christians from the Nagasaki area were detained before being executed.

1 thought on “Episode 426 – The City on the Edge of Forever, Part 5”

  1. I wish you would have talked more about the Kakure Kirishitan, but I guess that would have been off topic since you said yourself that they were more in the countryside.

Comments are closed.