Title: Why Did Most Jesuits Survive the Martyrdom of 1597?: The Diplomatic Policy of the Toyotomi Administration and the Martyrdom of the "26 Martyrs of Japan"
Abstract: Introduction: Why Did the Number of Franciscan and Jesuit Martyrs Differ?The Twenty-Six Martyrs of Japan were crucified in Nagasaki by the Toyotomi administration on February 5, 1597. 1 As is well known, Christianity was banned in early modern Japan, and about four thousand people were martyred during this period.This was the first martyrdom in Japan enacted by a unified political power.Many reasons have been put forward for the martyrdom.However, the most common explanation is that the Franciscans were viewed with particular suspicion by the Japanese authorities due to their failure to comply with the Order on the Exile of Priests (Bateren Tsuihou Rei バテレン追放令) (1587), with this negative perception being further heightened by the San Felipe incident of 1596, which led the administration to believe that Spain was trying to conquer Japan with the Franciscan missionaries as a pioneering force. 2 In reality, however, there is no clear historical evidence the incident was a direct cause of the martyrdom.This paper focuses on the fact that most of the Twenty-Six Martyrs of Japan were Franciscans or their associates.Two questions arise from this, the first of which is why the Franciscans were treated differently from the Jesuits.As explained later in the paper, according to what was pronounced on the kosatsu 高札-the official bulletin board set up at the time of their martyrdom-only Franciscans and their associates were to be executed.Kiichi Matsuda has revealed the names and biographies of the martyrs, twenty-one of whom were associated with the Franciscan order.One of the other martyrs, Matías, was captured after being mistaken for a Franciscan. 3 From the contents of the kosatsu, there is no doubt they were executed as part of the administration's persecution of Christianity in Japan.But, if that was indeed the case, why was the Franciscan order-which only had eleven members in Japan-the target of punishment rather than the Jesuit order, which had 135 members in Japan and three hundred thousand followers? 4From the administration's perspective, the main difference between the 1.The author would like to thank PaperTrue (www.papertrue.com) for the English-language review of the paper as well as Pallavi Bhatte (Kyoto University) and Aishwarya Sugandhi (Kyoto University of Foreign Studies) for the English-language review of the proposals and slides for the international symposium.Unless otherwise noted, the Gregorian calendar is used instead of