1The arrival of the Jesuit mission and Portuguese trade in the mid-sixteenth century accelerated the ongoing decline of women’s status in Japan. By 1600, the mission (founded in 1549) registered about 300,000 converts, whom the Japanese called Kirishitan, a derivation of cristão. The Jesuits also engaged in the Portuguese slave trade, triggering anger from the Japanese authorities. By the 1640s, the Tokugawa shogunate (founded in 1603) entirely rejected Christianity and the Iberian trade. It also solidified patriarchal class structures, binding the servant-class women in enslaving conditions. In addition to the heavy social oppression, Kirishitan women servants suffered severe persecution. This essay examines how these global and national changes impacted Kirishitan women servants at a local level. In what follows, this essay inspects the Jesuit accounts of persecution in Shimabara between 1625 and 1630 by focusing on three women’s cases to first find the various kinds of servitude the Jesuits observed in these women. Second, it highlights how they described the women’s expressions in harsh torture. Finally, it attempts to uncover women’s understanding of the Kirishitan religion, which they regarded as worth dying for. It argues that the women resisted the multivalent systems of oppression using their Kirishitan identity as the only weapon. The first case is Yamada Úrsula, who became a temporary slave (escrava) to support her ailing husband in poverty. She died during torture in 1628. Madalena of Arima was a captive maid (criada cativa) in a wealthy merchant’s household. After enduring numerous torture sessions, she succumbed to apostasy in 1627. Isabel was a war captive Korean native (de Corea da naçaõ), who refused to follow her Japanese husband’s apostasy but was forced to recant in 1629.
2Kirishitan women in enslavement is a new topic of research. The essays in Women in the Portuguese Colonial Empire begin to fill the lacuna in Portuguese historiography through the “collective insight” into the “marginalized and destitute” women, including the enslaved, within the colonial places of Portuguese empire between the sixteenth century and the twentieth century (Sarmento 2008a, xi, xix). Because the Portuguese empire never colonized Japan, but its influence significantly shifted the Japanese trajectory, the enslaved Kirishitan women of this essay, who lived in the liminal space between patriarchal powers under the overlapping shadows, require different sets of lenses. Clara Sarmento’s (2008b) essay poses methodological questions of reading Xavier’s mentions of women in non-European contexts, inviting further reading of the writings by the Jesuits, who succeeded Xavier and resided in Japan long after his cursory travels through Asia.
- 1 See Sousa (2019, 441, 464) on the Japanese women in Mexico City (Catalina de Bastidos, freed from s (...)
3While previous studies have addressed various aspects of the Christian century (1549-1650), two recent works open the vista of this inquiry into new directions. First is the examination of the enslavement of women within Japan. Lúcio de Sousa (2019) demonstrates the scope of the Portuguese mercantile, legal, and missionary systems impacting the Japanese slave trade. Discussing the end phase of Portuguese trade in Japan, he connects the women’s rapid downfall within Japan with their religious confession. Referring to examples of Kirishitan women from the greater Nagasaki region sold to the brothels between 1614 and 1632, he notes that after the 1614 shogunal ban on Christianity emerged a “new type of victim, quite different from that witnessed in previous decades: that is, Japanese forced into slavery because they were Christians” (Sousa 2019, 198). This essay shows that although women’s enslavement due to their Kirishitan identity happened earlier, in the 1620s, the severity of persecution targeting Kirishitan enslaved women, such as Úrsula and Madalena, intensified. The second aspect is enslaved women sold outside their native countries. Sousa (2019) mines inquisitional archives widely and identifies numerous East Asians, including Kirishitan women, acquired by the European merchants and sold in the central slave markets in Goa and from there to Macao, Malacca, Manila, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and Europe throughout “the Hapsburg Empire”.1 This perspective sheds light on the last case of Isabel as a diasporic Korean woman in Tokugawa Japan.
- 2 For a comparison of the brutality of the Asian slave ships and the Middle Passage, see Nelson (2004 (...)
4Another significant contribution to the hither-to-understudied global Japanese slave trade and the Jesuits’ role is a dissertation by Rômulo da Silva Ehalt (2018).2 Ehalt provides the most comprehensive historiographical survey of the critical literature on Japanese slavery in European, Brazilian, and Japanese scholarship, some of which this essay introduces. He shows the development of the moral theological debates in the Salamanca school in Europe and the Catholic missions in Asia, laws issued by the Portuguese, Papal, and Japanese authorities, and the Jesuit initiative and eventual abandonment of the Japanese slave trade. Ehalt (2018) utilizes the perspectives of gender and women’s studies of enslavement of women, and his examination of the diverse Portuguese, Latin, and Japanese terminologies and concepts for male and female slaves, often mutually untranslatable to each other, is very helpful for this study in understanding the realities of servitude for the Kirishitan women.
- 3 For example, Cieslik (1974) cites Visitor Manuel Diaz’s letter to Muzio Vitelleschi from Macao, dat (...)
5As in other historical studies, there is little information about women from the lowest strata of society. With the lack of Japanese records, we depend on the Jesuit annual letters preserved in the Jesuit archives in Rome. This essay examines the annual letters of 1627, 1628, and 1629/30 of Cristóvão Ferreira (c.1580-1650) and of 1627 Joao Rodriguez Giram (1559-1629). For the reasons stated in section 3, we consider that Giram’s edition, compiled in Macao, most likely reiterated Ferreira’s now-lost report of 1626, sent from Japan. Ferreira was a credible eyewitness to the ongoings in Shimabara during these years. Entering Japan in 1609, his first station was at the Arima Seminary. Staying underground after 1614, when the shogunate ordered the expulsion of all missionaries, Ferreira performed various high-level administrative duties over the years in the struggling mission. He became the Provincial in 1632, apostatized during the torture in 1633, and would become the notorious apostate padre Sawano Chūan. Nevertheless, throughout his career as a Jesuit pastor and confessor, Ferreira interacted closely with the Kirishitan, including noblewomen, who sheltered him (Cieslik 1974, 7, 24).3 His reports contain valuable details on individual Kirishitan enslaved women. We may assume that he knew Úrsula, Madalena, and Isabel or knew of them as he often cited evidence from the written communications from other underground church members.
6To contextualize these women’s cases, a further acquaintance with the intersecting systems of oppression against women is beneficial. Section 1 reviews the history and the early modern changes of enslavement of women within Japan. Female slaves existed throughout the medieval period, and the late medieval civil wars increased women’s chances of being sold into slavery. In the mid-sixteenth century, the Portuguese mercantile system globalized the Japanese slave trade. In the early seventeenth century, the shogunate stratified the class system (mibun-seido) and enforced the feudal household system (ie-seido) to confine enslaved women in their inescapable social place. Section 2 studies the Jesuit involvement in the internationalization of the Japanese slave trade. To finance their mission, the Jesuits devised the “ballot” licensing system for Portuguese slave merchants in the 1560s. Despite King Sebastião’s (r. 1557-1578) prohibition of the Portuguese slave trade in Japan in 1570, the theological justification and practice of licensing persisted even after Unifier Hideyoshi’s ban on the Portuguese slave trade and expulsion order of the Jesuits in 1587, with the influx of captive slaves during Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea (1592-1598). In 1598, the Bishop of Japan abolished the ballot system. However, the Portuguese-Japanese slave trade lasted until 1640, when the shogunate closed the nation to all Iberian contacts.
7Finally, section 3 places the three women’s stories in the context of the final years of the Jesuit mission and Portuguese trade and the shogunate’s consolidation of socio-economic, gender, and religious systems. It tells the local history and development of the Kirishitan communities in the Arima region. The Jesuit texts described the experiences of Úrsula, Madalena, and Isabel in the extreme interrogation and torture by Daimyo Matsukura in response to the above-described national and global pressures. The concluding section explores why these enslaved women in Shimabara in the 1620s clung to their Kirishitan identity. It suggests that one of the keys to understanding the Kirishitan enslaved women servants was their intuition that their experiences as the criminalized social outcaste were closer to that of Christ the Suffering Servant than anybody else.
8The increased causes for women’s sudden poverty lie behind the demise of Úrsula, Madalena, and Isabel. In the militant patriarchal feudal medieval regimes, all women lived in perilous situations. The human trafficking networks of enslaved Japanese and Asians since ancient times expanded rapidly from the mid-eleventh century as the pillaging and looting of farming villages became widespread. “Harvesting” and selling women and children provided a substantial income for the lower rank foot soldiers and seasonally recruited mercenaries of serf peasants (Fujiki 2005). Pirates raided and kidnapped women from coastal villages. Due also to natural disasters, many farming villagers experienced famine while their landlords of the divided nation continued to demand taxes and rents from them. These villagers resorted to selling their girls to canvassers, broker merchants, or human traders (hitoakibito), who gained large profits by reselling them as various types of enslaved workers. During the Sengoku period (1467-1615), when warlords of the sixty-six domains fought to expand their territories, frequent battles subjected women to physical harm and loss of their homes.
- 4 Fróis completed his Historia de Japam around 1593, and it remained an unpublished manuscript until (...)
9The Jesuits and the Portuguese merchants reached Japan as the unifiers gained control of most of the territories. As the volatile Japanese economy increased the poor population, Japanese and Portuguese hitoakibito easily scooped up poor women for internal and international slave markets. According to Hisashi Fujiki (2005, 32, 36, 243), a historian of medieval Japan, the average price of a medieval slave was very affordable at two kanmon (2,000 mon), about half of the daily wage of a day laborer. During the Sengoku period, when there were numerous harvested captives, the price dropped as low as 20 mon. In addition to the various Japanese sources, Fujiki (2005, 4-5) points to accounts of the Jesuit Luís Fróis (1532-1597), who depicted a scene of women and children of Bungo captured by the Shimazu forces and sold in Shimabara for only three mon a pair in 1588 (Fróis 1983, vol. 4, 296; vol. 5, 41-42).4 While Fróis presented these important observations, also noting the Kirishitan women’s contributions to the Jesuit rescue mission of enslaved women from merchant ships and poor relief for the rescued, he did not report Jesuits’ direct involvement in the slave trade (Ward 2009, 317-320). As section 2 discusses further, in 1587, the second unifier, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598), banned the Portuguese sale of Japanese slaves overseas and issued the decree of expulsion of the Jesuits. He again forbade missionary proselytization in 1591. Nevertheless, the Jesuits remained, and mendicant orders from Spanish Manila, critical of the Jesuits, entered in the 1590s. In 1597, Hideyoshi executed six Franciscans and twenty Kirishitan men. The danger of sudden poverty extended to women in Korea as Hideyoshi invaded Korea toward China between 1592 and 1598 and brought them to Japan.
10As soon as Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616) established the shogunate in 1603, he adopted Confucian principles to stratify the class mibun-seido system, which was closely tied to the patriarchal households in the ie-seido system. These systems drastically reduced women’s property ownership, freedom of movement and association, participation in public discourse, and means to earn a living. The mibun hierarchy ranked persons according to the status of the aristocrats, warriors and farmers, artisans-craftsmen, and merchants. In the ie system, these classes were householders. Non-householders consisted of artists/entertainers and the outcast groups such as senmin. The wealthier householders regularly maintained servants (hōkōnin). The early Tokugawa employment laws banned human trade. However, in reality, only a thin layer existed between slavery and hōkōnin servanthood for women, although there was various terminology for different degrees of servitude in Japanese systems.
11How did a woman become a bonded servant in early modern Japan? Haruko Wakita (2006), a prominent historian of women in Japan, explains the unguaranteed privileged status in the mibun hierarchy for women. While the primary duty of the householder women was to bear male progeny, they exercised some autonomy in sustaining household management. Wives of warriors and landed farmers were “domestic heads” and supervised the labor of “male and female servants” (Wakita 2006, 12). Nobility did not necessarily mean wealth, but women in the householder classes enjoyed stability as long as they did not drop out of their status. In addition to the losses due to battles, warrior-class women would lose their standing if their feudal lords ordered their male kins’ demotion, expulsion, or honor suicide. Legal male polygamy and concubinage allowed men to dismiss unwanted women at will while seeking pleasure from entertainers or simply raping their maids. Householder women experienced other gender obstacles. Merchant women ran their shops, and vendors such as fishmongers sold items, only under male householders’ names. Widows were rarely permitted to inherit the title of their husbands’ businesses. Women also worked in cottage industries, such as textiles, without the male privilege of apprenticeship and possible advancement to become independent householders. Whether born into poverty or becoming suddenly impoverished, women who lost their householder status joined other poor women of the “shifting population”, seeking economic survival.
- 5 Female children born out of the union between householders and their female servants remained in fu (...)
12One of the two job markets open to women was hōkōnin in the household services as “attendants, maids, hostesses, seamstresses, wet nurses and cooks” (Yokota 1999, 160). The Tokugawa female hōkōnin developed from the medieval slave classes of gejo and nubi, customarily sold and bought, and legally registered to the ie as householder’s property (Tanno 2011, 58).5 There were four types of hōkōnin: permanent (hereditary) fudai, ransom, pawn, and most commonly practiced nenki bōkō. Nenki bōkō entailed temporary indentured servitude with an annual or seasonal contract, with the assurance of freedom after the designated period was completed. These contracts specified the amount of pre-hire payment as a debt, and the debtor’s (hōkōnin’s) promise to give up the collateral for fudai service if the debt was unpaid. The authorities severely punished the servants who breached the contracts but were lenient toward the employers who did not relieve the servants even after they fulfilled all debts. Thus, while the Tokugawa repeatedly forbade internal slave trade, its hōkōnin regulations allowed de facto peonage of poor servants in nenki bōkō. While some women servants, such as Úrsula of our first case, received freedom after nenki bōkō, numerous others, frequently unable to repay their debts, ended in fudai, as seen in the case of Madalena.
13The alternative occupation for women was entertainers with various sectors of prostitution (Yokota 1999, 159). Economic historian Hiromi Sone (1999, 183) argues that the authorities considered the many female hōkōnin in perpetual debt similar to the prostitutes whose bodies were mere commodities in “commercial transaction based on a contract”, drawn to bring the largest financial rewards to the employers and guarantors, who were often women’s relatives. The medieval asobime were regarded as legitimate hospitality workers and professional performing artists, providing sexual pleasure on the side (Sone 1999, 171; Wakita 2006, 92-93, 158; Tsuji 2019, 131-135). The profession was passed down in matrilineal bloodline, and the matriarchs owned their brothels. Drastic changes occurred in 1589 when Hideyoshi consolidated local brothels under male masters’ control in a walled district in Kyoto (Imanishi 2007, 34-41). Soon, the Tokugawa established large-scale public pleasure quarters in major cities. The shogunate licensed these brothel masters and received tax revenues from them while isolating and surveilling women with rigid regulations.
14As the Tokugawa hōkōnin regulations prohibited hiring outcast groups, criminals, illegal migrants from other domains, and outlaw Kirishitan, chances for Kirishitan women laborers to find legitimate employment became slim to none. Private brothels mushroomed next to the walled districts for outcasts and the public execution sites where Kirishitan executions took place (Imanishi 2007, 71, 164). The authorities often threatened to send Kirishitan women to the brothels to induce recantation and did so if women did not renounce the Kirishitan confession. In these unregulated brothels, thousands died of venereal disease and physical violence from their masters and clients. Sone (1999, 176, 184) criticizes Tokugawa’s cruel treatment of the prostitutes, stating that such a society “made cheap and naked sex a commodity, even among the lowest class of commoners” without public welfare, medical provision, or concept of human rights of the poor.
- 6 On the Japan Jesuits’ silk and silver trade in Southeast Asia, see Oka (2010) and Vu Thanh (2021).
- 7 See Ehalt (2018) on the Valignanian party’s politico-theological defense of the Jesuits as regulato (...)
15The Jesuit Japan mission, founded in 1549, initially belonged to the Province of India under the Portuguese padroado and became entangled in its global slave trade. With no previous existence of Christianity nor Europeans in Japan and lacking funds, the missionaries exercised political maneuvers and entered financial negotiations with the competing powers among the unifiers, daimyos, local warriors, merchants, and the Shinto-Buddhist institutions. They also needed backing from the Portuguese royals and traders, their Superior General, theologians, jurists, and the church hierarchy in India and Rome. Until 1598, in the absence of official Portuguese representation in Japan, the Jesuits functioned as the overseer of the Portuguese slave trade.6 The Superior Cosme de Torres (off. 1551-1570) devised the “ballot” system, allowing the Portuguese head captains and merchants from Macao to sell slaves acquired in Japan overseas. The Jesuits collected fees for their certificates, assuring that these slaves were “legally” obtained. Under the direction of Visitor Alessandro Valignano (in Japan 1579-1583, 1590-1592, and 1598-1603), the Jesuits continued to justify their position that the Japanese “custom” of limited years of bonded service (nenki bōkō) as more tolerable than perpetual slavery and that the Portuguese “Christian” enslavement of the legally purchased Japanese and baptizing them was a suitable method of proselytization.7
- 8 Fujiki (2005, 41-57) sees this Edict in the context of Hideyoshi’s unification laws.
16Meanwhile, the high demands of the Portuguese traders further fueled the “kidnapping” of the Japanese and alarmed Hideyoshi. Over the years, he issued bans on human trade and ordered war captives to be returned to their homes, and in 1587 published the expulsion decree. In two consecutive documents, he banned missionary proselytization and demanded that the Portuguese stop the mass purchasing, shipping, and selling of Japanese slaves in China, Korea, and Portuguese colonial posts in East and Southeast Asia and that they return them to Japan. In examining questions of Japanese slavery in the light of shifting moral theology toward Probabilism among European Catholic thinkers, Ehalt (2018, 315-363) delivers a thorough analysis of the dynamic interactions between Hideyoshi and Superior Gaspar Coelho (off. 1581-1590) and his reasoning for this 1587 prohibition.8 Thenceforward, the Japanese ban on Christianity proceeded hand in hand with its embargo on the Iberian slave trade.
- 9 See Ruiz de Medina (1991) on Ōta Julia, Pak Marina, and other freed Korean Kirishitan women. See a (...)
17The second pivotal moment of the globalization of Japanese slavery came when the Korean captives from Hideyoshi’s Imjin War (1592-1598) flooded the Portuguese slave markets. Having unified most of Japan in 1590, Hideyoshi attempted various reforms, including stabilization of the farming population and diverting fighters’ energy from looting to urban infrastructure projects. He ordered daimyos to construct castles and large-scale religious symbols such as the Daibutsu and hire former mercenaries as laborers (Fujiki 2005, 228-246). In 1592, he commanded daimyos to take their army, navy, mercenaries, and foot soldiers to Korea. Fujiki (2005, 58-67) argues that even while Hideyoshi forbade slave capture within Japan, he allowed the Japanese troops to engage in wild ransacking and mass stealing in Korea. As a result, close to 44,000 Korean captives were forced into servitude in Japan or sold to the Iberian overseas markets (Sousa 2019, 93-94). The sale of these Korean hostages in Nagasaki and Hirado became globally known (Fujiki 2005, 66). The Jesuits left accounts of several Korean women captives, including Isabel, who became Kirishitan and obtained freedom from their ladies and masters but met Kirishitan persecution.9
- 10 Pope Paul III’s Sublimus Dei (1537) forbade all human enslavement and trade. See Ehalt (2018, 190-2 (...)
18There had been criticisms against slavery from within the church. In 1570-1571, the Portuguese King Sebastião issued two charters forbidding his subjects from obtaining and exporting the Japanese as it contradicted Christian teachings.10 Yet, they did not affect the situation of the Portuguese-Japanese slave trade. Sousa (2019, 493-544) chronicles the long process and multiple obstacles toward its legal abolition, finally taking effect in 1603, but still without ending the practice. Ehalt (2018, 190-223) reevaluates the original intentions of the royal charters as not a simple declaration of abolition but support of the Japan Jesuits’ control of the abused system. The church in Japan became a bishopric in 1588. Only in reaction to Hideyoshi’s punishment of slave merchants in 1592 did the Jesuits reverse their positions on slavery. They sent a procurator to inquire the Superior General in Rome, who withdrew the earlier support of Valignano’s position. The Jesuit Fifth Congregation (1593-1594) forbade its members anywhere from participating in any political, military, or commercial activities. Appointed in 1592, Bishop Pedro Martins (1541-1598) arrived in Japan in 1596 and witnessed the appalling conditions of the slaves from Korea. In 1598, he disallowed the Jesuit licensing system and announced the excommunication of Iberian merchants engaged in the slave trade. His sudden death halted these directives.
19Though no part of Japan ever became a Portuguese colony, its perceived coloniality caused the Tokugawa to reject Iberian influences vehemently. After Hideyoshi died in 1598, Tokugawa Ieyasu continued the prohibition of the Portuguese exporting of slaves from Japan. The next Bishop Luís de Cerqueira (1552-1614) affirmed that enslavement and human trade were against Christian morality. Ehalt (2018, 492-505), De Luca (2021, 70-72), and Sousa (2019, 478-538) show how Cerqueira dedicated his tenure in Japan (1598-1614) to abolishing the Portuguese sales of enslaved Japanese and Koreans. He reinforced Martins’ excommunication order, stopped the ballot system entirely, and made efforts to liberate the slaves while appealing to the Iberian and Goan authorities, including King Philip II of Portugal (r. 1598-1621), to enforce the abolition. Finally, in 1606, the fifth Provincial Council in Goa declared the illegitimacy of the Portuguese-Japanese slave trade. Ehalt (2018, 493-505) explains the many theological and other arguments for keeping the practice in Portuguese Goa among viceroys, municipal courts, councils, bishops, merchants, and head captains refusing the release of the Japanese slaves there even after 1606.
- 11 See Ward (2009) on Naitō Julia and her society of religious women, exiled with 38 Jesuits to Manila (...)
- 12 See Nelson (2004, 36, note 7) on the Dutch East India Company (VOC) contracts with their Japanese s (...)
- 13 On the Jesuit casas and residencias, see O’Malley (1993, 356-359).
20The second Shogun Hidetada (r. 1605-1623) issued the ban on Christianity in shogunal domains such as Edo and Kyoto and destroyed churches in 1612, and in 1614, extended the ban nationwide and deported missionaries and prominent Kirishitan.11 Hidetada also reissued the ban on the Iberian slave trade in 1617 and 1621 and prohibited that of the English and Dutch East India Companies (operating in Hirado, 1613-1623 and 1609-1641, respectively).12 By the 1640s, the third Shogun Iemitsu (r. 1623-1651) closed Japan to any Iberian interference (Sakoku), enclosing the factor of the VOC (Dutch East India Company) and Chinese merchants in Nagasaki for restricted commerce of goods under the strict surveillance not to practice Christianity while thoroughly eradicating the Kirishitan presence in Japan. Ironically, until their expulsion in 1614, the missionaries as householders, including Cerqueira (who died before the expulsion), continued to rely on the “free” labor of their house servants in nenki bōkō (Ehalt 2018, 505-510; Sousa 2019, 334-360).13 However, after 1614, in the post-Iberian slave trading Catholic mission under persecution in Japan, the small number of wanted underground mendicants and Jesuits, including Cristóvão Ferreira, relied on their faithful associates, who, even under the penalty of death, provided them shelter and supplied them news updates. In hiding, Ferreira described how the impoverished Kirishitan women servants in various bondage continued to confess their faith openly in Shimabara in the 1620s.
- 14 On Valignano’s fortification of the port of Nagasaki and Daimyo Ōmura’s Portuguese taxation to fina (...)
- 15 On the Matsukuras, see Nihon Kirisutokyō rekishi daijiten (1988, 1323-1324).
- 16 On Mizuno’s and Takenaka’s anti-Kirishitan measures, see Shimizu (1981, 144-148). On the Matsukura- (...)
21The Shimabara Peninsula of the domain of Hizen, where many final battles of unification took place, contained the largest centers of the Jesuit Japan mission and international trade. The Arima mission was founded in 1563. Baptized in the same year, Daimyo Ōmura Sumitada Bartolomeu (r. 1550-1587) opened his port Yokoseura for Portuguese traders and, in 1580, entrusted the port of Nagasaki to the charge of the Jesuits.14 Even after Hideyoshi confiscated Nagasaki as his domain in 1587, the region maintained various slave markets and a sizable Kirishitan population survived in Ōmura until 1658, decades after the apostasy of Sumitada’s son Yoshiaki Sancho (1658-1616) in 1606 and ensuing persecution. Under the protection of Daimyo Arima Harunobu Protásio (or João) (r. 1576-1612), most of his subjects became Kirishitan. However, his fall in 1612 led to the shogunal ban of Christianity. While the persecution spread nationwide, it struck the Arima Kirishitan communities in the Takaku region of Shimabara most harshly. The next daimyo Matsukura Shigemasa (r. 1616-1630) and his son Katsuie (r. 1630-1638) demanded extra corvée-like labor and heavy taxation from their subjects to construct their new Shimabara fortress.15 During the 1620s, the Matsukuras devised severe means of torture against the Kirishitan. Working with the Nagasaki magistrate and inquisitor Mizuno Morinobu (off. 1626-1629) and his successor Takenaka Uneme Shigetsugu (off. 1629-1634), they delivered many Jesuits, other clerical leaders, and Kirishitan leaders for execution in Nagasaki.16 Daimyo Matsukura took Úrsula from Ōmura, Madalena from Arima, and Isabel from Nagasaki to Shimabara for torture.
- 17 See Cristóvão Ferreira, Annua de Japão do anno de 628, Primeira via, to Muzio Vitelleschi, [Japan], (...)
- 18 ARSI, JapSin 61, f. 170v.
- 19 See Ehalt (2018, 291-314) for examination of various Jesuit dictionaries and their translations of (...)
- 20 ARSI, JapSin 61, f. 170v.
22Úrsula was born in Suzuta, Ōmura (ca. 1589-1628), and at age 17, married Yamada Magosuque João (c.1582-1628) of Urakami in Nagasaki. The Yamadas were possibly from the householder class as their last name was known, but Ferreira said that “fate placed” the couple in such dire poverty that they went without food for days.17 Their poverty was exasperated by Magosuque João’s prolonged illness, which made him unable to work. Úrsula worked as a slave (escrava) for nine years to pay for his medicine, which cost about 7 to 8 cruzados.18 This case fits the pattern of hungry families selling their women; however, it is not clear what kind of enslaving conditions Úrsula was in or who enslaved her. According to the Jesuit composition Vocabulario da Lingoa de Japam (1603-1604), the Jesuit used the term escravo sparingly to indicate either the 1) lowest class of laborers or 2) the temporarily “very degraded situation” of an individual (Ehalt 2018, 310-311).19 Úrsula’s case was likely the latter as Ferreira noted her eventual liberation from her “voluntary slavery”:20
In the 8th year [of the nine years], João was healed but was so poor that he could barely stand on his feet. To rescue his companion, he had to borrow half a crusado. God our Lord gave him blessings, and God’s servant’s industry increased so that he could sustain himself that year and rescue his wife. It was because the same Lord hurried to liberate her from captivity, to place her in the possession of the kingdom of heaven.
- 21 Referring to João Rodrigues Tçuzzu, Boxer (1951, 490, note 28) estimates that one cruzado (i.e., 40 (...)
- 22 See “The Story of the Boy Who Sold Himself to Support his Mother” in Shasekishū (1283), cited in Ne (...)
23Although Ferreira did not elaborate, it seems that initially Úrsula signed a one-year contract for nenki bōkō and subsequently renewed it for eight years. Her debt would have amounted to at least 64 cruzados in a rough calculation. Magosuque João gained that much money in the ninth year and borrowed some to redeem Úrsula. Without a standard for international wages of the period, we can only speculate that her debt was low enough to be recovered quickly.21 Ferreira praised her spousal love beyond what her husband or her neighbors could have expected. She hid her hunger, giving her husband her gruel, taking one thing after another to the pawnshop, but finally, to afford his medicine, she remained in bondage for nine long years. Such voluntary sale of self for filial piety had also long been praised in Japan and accepted as a common reason for slavery by the Portuguese.22 Ferreira understood Úrsula’s “martyrdom” as the culmination of her daily virtues of a cheerful spirit, joy, and patience and believed that her “sacrifice” would be fully compensated in her martyrdom with heavenly gain.
- 23 ARSI, JapSin 61, f. 170v.
24Soon after her release, the news of the Nagasaki magistrate’s decision to summon the Kirishitan in Ōmura reached Magosuque João, who was determined to face the interrogation. But he dissuaded Úrsula from accompanying him, saying that “since she was a woman” it would be better for her to stay away as long as possible for the fear that she might easily give up her faith. While Ferreira called both servants (servos) of God, he apparently appreciated Úrsula’s fortitude as superior to Magosuque’s, who still saw her as the weaker sex. He recorded Úrsula talk back in an independent voice: “Úrsula, who was not inferior to him in fervor and constancy in faith, responded that under no circumstances would she absent herself” because “by the grace of the Lord, she was not tethered by the credentials or power of the persons [interrogators]”. He added “and she would be resolute for the confession of faith, in whatever way death may come, from starvation and abandonment in these mountains or torture elsewhere. She would remain his companion in life and death”.23
- 24 ARSI, JapSin 61, f. 169v.
25The couple roamed the mountains in Ōmura for a year, where other Kirishitan refugees were also fleeing. Despite inhumane conditions and extreme poverty, they lived with singular patience and joy, Ferreira said, until the officials arrested and took them to Shimabara. The officials tortured them in various ways: leaving them on the beach on a stormy night without shelter, waterboarding, and beating them with bamboo canes “until their bones were crushed”.24 Ferreira stated that many gave up their faith due to the pain and officials’ false promises. He said that he was obliged to record the truth, for even though such apostasy saddened the entire church, he believed that those who apostatized because of weakness would be tested again and would return to faith. He was convinced that those who chose to suffer and freely give their life to Christ would live with the “author of life” eternally. And he wrote a chapter dedicated to “The Glorious Death of Úrsula”, “who fought valiantly and won gloriously”, and whose patience, valor, and constancy stood out.
- 25 ARSI, JapSin 61, f. 170.
26The first case study of Úrsula showed an example of the Jesuit regarding a servant in the long-term nenki bokō as a slave. Úrsula, a former escrava who endured the sufferings of unfree labor and torture without compromising her religious identity, became the first martyr in this group at age 39. On 21 August 1628, during her last torture session, while exposed to the harsh summer sun, with the “holiest name of Jesus Maria on her lips”, she “gave up her spirit to the same Jesus” and “achieved her crown of martyrdom”. 25The officials left her body there for another four days. Magosuque João stayed with “his companion in life”, venerating her as the “true martyr saint” (Santa), Ferreira said, until when fearing that more Kirishitan would come to take the body, the officials burned it and scattered the ashes in the sea. Magosuque João was taken back to prison in Shimabara. On 8 September, officials began the torture of Magosuque João and six other Kirishitan men with boiling water at Mount Unzen. Three men renounced their faith while Magosuque João died during torture on 2 October.
- 26 See João Rodrigues Giram, Annua do Japão do mesmo ano de 627, to Muzio Vitelleschi, Macao, 28 March (...)
27More complicated stories of Madalena of Arima (n.d.-c.1627) appear in separate martyr accounts of two noblewomen. The first text in João Rodrigues Giram’s annual report of 1626 identified Madalena as a young maid (moça) of Onizuka Monica (c.1602-m. 1626) and a maidservant (criada) of Monica’s husband Onizuka Naijen João (1602-m. 1626). Onizuka João was one of the community leaders of Ariye village (current Minami Shimabara City). He was the patriarch of a wealthy merchant household of many relatives and servants, and Madalena seems to have been the head of at least five criadas. During the persecution, João once wavered in his faith. When he repented and got ready to go back to the officials, he summoned the members of his household. He offered Madalena his first saccazuqui (a ceremonial cup of the sake of farewell) and the second to Madalena’s “companion” (companheira) Agata, and told everyone to “imitate these two”, especially Madalena, who had already endured harsh torture and sustained her faith.26 Since offering such a cup was a gesture of respect and honor, the Onizukas must have greatly valued these maidservants.
- 27 ARSI, JapSin 61, ff. 145-45v.
28At the Onizukas’ interrogation, the officials first tested Monica’s five maidservants. In the chapter entitled Dos tormentos q dexao as criadas em presence de Monica sua Senhora [On the torture which the maidservants suffered in the presence of their mistress Monica], Giram said that when the officials falsely informed these maidservants that João had apostatized, one of them, “whose valor and constancy was as advanced as her Lady (ama) Monica’s”, said that even if that were the case, she would not do anything that might risk her salvation.27 Stripping them of their clothing, the officials persuaded each to leave the Kirishitan teachings and accept one of the Japanese religions. Being unsuccessful, they then twisted the maids’ fingers with iron tongs. Seeing still the signs of faith in “these weak women in the condition of servanthood (as fracas molheres, e de condicao de servis)” and “low-class captive women (cativas baixas molheres)”, the governor became enraged. From these descriptions, these five maidservants were most likely impoverished girls, captured or kidnapped by canvassers and sold to the Onizukas for life-long service. However, the Jesuits did not disclose how the Onizukas acquired them. If Úrsula’s temporary status of escrava related to her individual degradation in nenki bōkō, Madalena’s was closer to chattel slavery, or fudai.
- 28 ARSI, JapSin 61, f. 137v.
29The governor singled out Madalena, who had always been more cheerful than the others, to torture “in Monica’s place” (em seu lugar).28 As nothing “stirred this young woman”, he knocked her down to the ground twisting the tongs with such force. He demanded that she renounce her faith, but the “valiant woman” (a valerosa molher), with “the aid of divine grace”, responded that she would not do so, even to death. He remarked that he lost hope of winning such a “competitor”, and that these women were “incurable”. As a last resort, he ordered her to be “undressed” – a euphemism for rape – as they had been already stripped. A soldier came near Madalena and told her to renounce her faith before they did this “inhumane affront”. Madalena, “who was helped by the Lord of the Universe”, replied that she would “suffer all the offenses and disgraces of the world before leaving the faith in which she hoped to be saved”. Hearing such spirited words of the “Servant of God”, the governor ordered the officials to proceed.
- 29 ARSI, JapSin 61, f. 145v.
- 30 ARSI, JapSin 61, f. 146.
- 31 ARSI, JapSin 61, f. 146.
30After that, the officials tied Madalena to a ladder, turned it upside down, and poured water from her waist down to her face. The governor himself, “who wants to be the executioner of all Kirishitan”, Giram retorted, poured a tremendous amount of water into her eyes, nostrils, and mouth as he demanded that she denounce the Kirishitan teachings.29 The “brave Kirishitan” only said that she would persevere in faith until death and “invoked the holy name of Jesus Maria who gave her strength to endure such cruel torture”.30 When she tried to turn her head to breathe, the “inhumane idolater” commanded the officials to hold her down. The penetrating water caused her “deadly pains”, yet “with the grace of God”, Giram stated, she persevered. The officials became tired and left Madalena, “so rare in fortitude”. Later, they tied her to a gatepost of the house, still naked, with a loose cloth for a cover. Giram again remarked where Madalena’s strength came from: “The Servant of the Lord among all the women easily met these affronts, injuries, and verbal abuses by despising the perverse heathen (gentio) with much encouragement of that Lord who was the first to suffer such for our example”.31 Here, Giram’s image of Madalena mirrored that of the crucified Christ.
- 32 ARSI, JapSin 61, f. 146.
31Finally, the officials called in some “noble servants (criados nobres) of the Tono (daimyo)”, who strongly urged Madalena to give up her “obstinacy” or she would be sent back to torture.32 Madalena responded that they could torment her as many times as they wished, but that she would never quit her professed faith. Other male servants brought a large crucifix and told other maidservants to step on it. However, as the women did not commit such an “abnormal sacrilege”, these “mad heathens” forced them against their will to step on the “image of the Lord”, declaring that they had renounced their faith. Thus, Madalena, a captive maid, through the battery, sexual assaults, waterboarding, and other torture, led the resistance of other maidservants with exemplary valiance and constancy. At the conclusion of this chapter, Giram suggested that the officials tortured the servant Madalena to avoid torturing the householder’s wife, Monica. Yet, Lady Monica did not escape imprisonment, torture, and execution, as we see below.
- 33 ARSI, JapSin 61, f. 147v.
32In the new chapter, “How Monica, the wife of Naijen Joao, was imprisoned and what went on until departing for her martyrdom”, Giram continued to note exemplary Madalena. The officials, or “enemies of God’s teaching”, put Monica with her young daughters, seven-year-old Maria and two-year-old Clara, on torture.33 Giram called out these officials’ cruelty, maliciousness, and inhumanity in describing the scenes in detail. They placed Monica on the ladder and poured water into her nostrils and mouth. “Like Madalena”, Giram reminded, Monica showed no sign of fear or recantation. Then, thinking that “seeing the pain of those whom she gave birth to”, the mother would surrender, they drenched Maria with water and told her to recant. When Maria said no, they grabbed her head and feet to lift her off the ground and poured water over her, telling her to recant. The “innocent” girl managed to say that as the water covered her mouth, she could not speak. They repeated the torture until Maria told them that she would obey them. They also threw water on Clara, shouting to the crowd that she had recanted.
- 34 ARSI, JapSin 61, f. 147v. On Araki Susana, including threats to send her to the brothel, see ARSI, (...)
- 35 On 12 July 1626 in Nagasaki, on the charges of sheltering the Jesuits, Onizuka Monica was beheaded (...)
33At the end of the chapter, Giram again underscored that Madalena, the criada, set an example for her mistress (ama) so that Monica would not succumb. After her waterboarding, the officials took Madalena back to prison and pushed her stomach until she painfully expelled all the water. Separately, they tortured “the holy valiant” noblewoman Araki Susana.34 They placed Susana, Madalena, and Monica, the “three strong women (tres valerosas mulheres)”, in the same cell. They again became outraged when they saw how her prison mates venerated Madalena, a “captive servant” (criada cativa). They “stripped” Madalena, whom “all the soldiers still could not render” to recant. As Madalena was already naked, this “stripping” was a euphemism for gang rape, as Giram said: “The brave woman suffered all these reproaches (vituperios) with much fortitude, patience, and courage for the love of Christ Our Lord”. After this chapter, Giram focused on the passion narratives of Monica, Susana, and others but no longer mentioned Madalena and did not say if she had been taken to Nagasaki with the Onizukas for their execution.35 Nevertheless, Giram’s account, with the details most likely supplied by the informants of Ferreira as seen in the following, preserved the voice of the Kirishitan community of Arima, which celebrated the lower-class maidservant as a resilient spiritual leader.
- 36 See Cristóvão Ferreira, Relaçam da perseguiçcao contra nossa sancta fee, que de novo se levantou no (...)
- 37 ARSI, JapSin 63, f. 177v.
- 38 ARSI, JapSin 63, f. 179. Ferreira extensively quoted Dojuku Damião’s letters on the “valiant resist (...)
- 39 ARSI, JapSin 63, f. 179v.
- 40 ARSI, JapSin 63, ff. 192v-93. On Ferreira’s account of Masuda Leonardo, his alleged betrayal of Jov (...)
34Madalena resurfaced the following year in Ferreira’s account of the “valiant resistance of Kirishitan women in Ariye and especially the martyrdom of Masuda Yahagi Magdalena” (n.d.-m. 1627).36 In 1627, targeting women whose male kin had already apostatized in the previous year, Daimyo Matsukura ordered the village officials (xoyas and otonas) in Ariye to threaten these women, many of whom still “regarded God’s laws higher than the Shogun’s”.37 “Falsely imagining” that women were weak, Ferreira said, the officials tried to force their hands to sign the oath of apostasy.38 Freeing her hand, Masuda Magdalena shouted that “she would not obey the orders of the devil’s slaves (escravos de diabo)”.39 Her defiance alarmed the officials, who gave her a tremendous beating. On 21 March, Magdalena was imprisoned in Shimabara. Ferreira quoted a letter from Magdalena’s fellow prisoner, Furuye Sugiyemon Luis (c. 1593-m. 1627), who witnessed how the guards denuded Magdalena and tied her outstretched arms as if on a cross to the cell bars (in a similar way in which they exposed Madalena earlier). Meanwhile, the officials threatened Leonardo, Magdalena’s husband, jailed in the next cell, that they would send Magdalena to the stable hands (moços e escravos de estrebaria) for gang rape.40 Magdalena spent all hours in her cell in prayers.
- 41 ARSI, JapSin 63, f. 180v.
- 42 ARSI, JapSin 63, f. 181.
35Then, there was a surprise appearance of our Madalena, the maidservant of our story; on 26 March, the officials tortured Magdalena, Agata, widow of Uchibori Sakuemon Paulo (martyred in Unzen on 28 February 1627), and “Madalena of Onizuka Naijen João”.41 Ferreira identified her, saying, “The other Madalena … is one of the maidservants (umam moças de serviço) of the Holy Martyr Naijen João”, still identifying her as belonging to the Onizukas even after their execution in Nagasaki on 12 July 1626.42 Ferreira’s remarks suggest that Giram’s version of the 1626 martyrdom of the Onizukas and the torture of Madalena were based on Ferreira’s report, even though we do not have his original. Ferreira explains what happened to Madalena after her torture in 1626: “After these sufferings, she went to Nagasaki, but Bungodono [Daimyo Matsukura] ordered her to come [to Shimabara] to make her deny the faith or die for that cause” once again. According to Ferreira, Madalena went to Nagasaki, perhaps separately from the Onizukas, but was called back by Bungodono, who never had forgotten his defeat by the low-class criada.
- 43 ARSI, JapSin 63, f. 181.
- 44 ARSI, JapSin 63, ff. 181v-182.
36The ministers of justice accompanied the procession of Masuda Magdalena, Uchibori Agata, and “the other Madalena of Naijen with her hands lifted upwards”, all their eyes focused on heaven praying in a high voice, from the prison to the sea.43 The officials put Magdalena and Madalena on boats, tied a stone around each of their necks, and threw them into the ocean to frighten Agata. First, they tied Magdalena’s arms and feet with cords and plunged her from the boat. So as not to kill her quickly, they dipped her little by little until her whole body was submerged before pulling her back up. After the first dipping, the officials asked Magdalena mockingly to recant, but she replied, “I do not want to leave the teaching of God, and I will not throw myself to the ocean either. Do whatever you wish”. Magdalena endured a second dipping invoking the holiest name of the Lord, “who gave her strength”.44 At the third, she sang Laudate Dominum omnes gentes. Ferreira said that while the heavens surely heard this psalm, the officials thought that she was crying and laughed at her. They tied a big stone on her chest for the fourth and final dipping and told her to recant again. As she was saying she did not wish to recant, they sank her to the bottom of the ocean as “her blessed soul rose to enjoy the Lord, in whose faith she constantly confessed until her death”.
- 45 ARSI, JapSin 63, f. 182.
- 46 ARSI, JapSin 63, f. 182v.
37In contrast to this heroic martyrdom of Masuda Magdalena, Ferreira’s account of Madalena the maidservant was disheartening: “But the other Madalena of Naijen João had a much different story”.45 She, too, endured dipping twice, showing her constancy in faith “no matter how much they tried to persuade her to apostatize”. Yet, when they tied the big rock to her chest, “she surrendered in weakness”. “This”, Ferreira said, “is a matter of much emotion and grief as she was already almost at the gate of heaven since she had valiantly confessed her faith and suffered so many torments and injuries for this cause”,46 recalling her torture for her lady Onizuka Monica the previous year. Ferreira said that Madalena soon repented because even after such a great offense, “God the Father of Mercy took pity on her by giving her knowledge and pain of her sin”. Thus, Madalena “recanted and in the protest said that she was a Kirishitan and had done wrong in denying her faith” and “persevered in this repentance” to the date of his writing. That was the last entry on Madalena, the bonded maidservant of the Onizuka’s household.
- 47 See Cristóvão Ferreira, Relaçam da perseguiçam que nos annos de 1629, e 630 se levantou em Jappão c (...)
38The last case is a non-Japanese hostage, Isabel (n.d.-c.1629). In 1629, Shogun Iemitsu appointed Takenaka Uneme as the new magistrate of Nagasaki. His cruelty became famous in Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence and its film adaptation by Martin Scorsese. Although these were works of fiction, evidence shows that Takenaka eagerly adopted methods of torture invented by Daimyo Matsukura, including scalding waters at Mt. Unzen to force Kirishitan recantation. On 3 August, they began transporting the Nagasaki Kirishitan to Unzen. Only a few kept their confession to the end. Here again, Ferreira supplied the details of the ordeal. A group of women who saw their husbands surrender recanted without further persuasion except for Isabel, “of the nation of Korea”, who “deserves praise for being a strong and valiant woman”.47 Ferreira did not explain why Isabel lived in Nagasaki; however, we can assume that she was captured in Korea during the Imjin War (1592-1598), sold as a slave, and subsequently forced to marry a Japanese man who gave up his faith during torture. Knowing that Isabel was a foreigner, the officials specifically told her, “According to the custom and laws of Japan, a woman follows her husband in everything”. She replied: “Though in other matters the wife follows her husband in everything, in what concerns salvation, she does not depend on him”. Then, Ferreira made Isabel speak in the first person: “I have another spouse, who is in heaven, whom I follow. Furthermore, as that one, whom you claim [to be my husband], left the faith, no way would I follow him in anything”. Isabel’s remarks demonstrated her firm rejection of the Tokugawa proscription against wifely freedom.
- 48 ARSI, JapSin 62, f. 4v.
- 49 ARSI, JapSin 62, f. 5.
39More than twenty officials took Isabel to the edge of the volcanic spring, but supernatural phenomena, including apparitions of a mysterious boy, kept interrupting the torture. They stood her on a small rock, placed a big stone on her head, stuffed her mouth with pebbles, and told her that if the stone fell into the water, they would take it as a sign of her recantation. She denounced their illogical argument.48 Even after they threw hot water on her naked skin for hours and waged “the war of diabolical advice”, pleas, threats, reproaches, insults, and deceptions, without giving her any rest. When they warned her that they would keep torturing her for 10 or 20 years until she denied her faith, Isabel responded: “Ten and twenty, … one hundred or more is nothing”. She declared, “If my life should last, I will endure all the torments you inflict on me. Even if you kill me …, I will not deny the teaching which I profess”.49
40Without achieving their aim, the officials sent Isabel back to Nagasaki. She endured the 13-day journey through the mountains without sleep, food, or drink, for which the officials “confessed that they had never seen such spirit and courage in a woman”. They carried her, “weak from the wounds from the torture”, to the Nagasaki magistrate’s court and forced her hand on the oath of apostasy. Ferreira, who continuously admired Isabel as “the valiant woman”, was adamant in denying her apostasy as he said that “while she resisted as much as she could”, they took her hand by “pure force” to make it seem “as if she signed it herself” and “not allowing anyone to say a word about it, sent her home”. Most likely, Isabel died shortly afterward, but Ferreira offered no further information and instead turned his attention to the martyr story of Francisco, a Singhalese ex-slave.
41The early modern Portuguese-Japanese slave trade and Jesuit support of it accelerated the Tokugawa subjugation of women to the systems of mibun and ie, and the enslavement of the lowest-class women. With the total ban on Christianity, Kirishitan women servants suffered from worsening degradation due to their religious identity. The Jesuits observed different forms of bondage in the local specific cases of Úrsula, Madalena, and Isabel and illustrated the authorities’ torture to induce their apostasy. They did not proclaim that the women achieved official martyrdom. However, in their minutely detailed records of these obscure Japanese and Korean enslaved Kirishitan women servants, their respect for women’s sanctity appears genuine. Using the literary convention, the Jesuits described the surprising strength of the “weak” women who went through such brutal treatment. The Jesuits attributed divine grace as the source of women’s fortitude. Despite their demonstrated physical endurance, the women’s mibun rendered them powerless in society. Nevertheless, women consistently resisted patriarchal restraints on expressing their spiritual desires. Yamada Úrsula, who had voluntarily sold herself to limited-time bondage to aid her husband, did not listen to his order for her to hide from the interrogation. Madalena, the captive maid, faced the interrogators of her own will without orders from their master and mistress. Instead, they followed her example in their torture. Korean war captive Isabel denounced her Japanese husband’s apostasy and refused the Japanese authorities’ demands for her wifely obedience. All women attributed the reasons for such defiance against these binding systems to their Kirishitan identity.
- 50 See the Kirishitanban story of St. Catherine of Alexandria as the “gejo [maidservant] of Jesus Chri (...)
42Modern readers strive to understand the thoughts of the enslaved Kirishitan women servants who risked everything they had in their stubborn open confession. As with other early modern clergy, the Jesuits accepted and taught contradictory religious ideas of the divinely sanctioned universal patriarchal hierarchy reflected in the New Testament household codes [such as 1 Peter 2:11ff] and the eschatological glimpses of the egalitarian human society [Galatians 3:28]. The Jesuit portrayals suggest that women understood Kirishitan religion to offer systems alternative to mibun-seido and ie-seido in the household and family of God, in which members share mutual love, loyalty, and service to one another. When the Tokugawa systems deprived the enslaved Kirishitan women servants of human dignity and their birth identity, they claimed their Kirishitan identity, which the Kirishitan community and the Jesuit witnesses remembered. To them, women embodied the imitation of Christ the Suffering Servant, criminalized, humiliated, denuded, mocked, dishonored, tortured, crucified, and executed by the state because they aspired to be the true Iesu Christo no gejo (bonded maiden of Jesus Christ).50
43The Jesuit accounts also reveal the definite fear of the Japanese authorities of not being in control of the voices of these impoverished and abused enslaved Kirishitan women servants in Shimabara who demanded their spiritual freedom and resisted them. This essay offers further evidence to argue that the Kirishitan women’s “rebellion” in the 1620s would mount to the Shimabara-Amakusa uprising (1636-1637) as several historians have alluded (Ebisawa 1981; Nishimura 2002, 39-40; Ōhashi 2008, 58-64; Gonoi 2014, 121). The uprising became the watershed event toward the final closing of Japan’s borders and the intensified policing measures against those who violated the class, gender, and politico-religious codes within Japan. The Tokugawa needed to eliminate Kirishitan women who challenged and denounced the ruling systems loudly even from the most marginal places. Under Tokugawa’s Sakoku policy, Kirishitan women who had previously associated freely with foreign missionaries lost such opportunities. After 1640, the only female contacts with Westerners occurred between the shogunate-designated prostitutes from the Maruyama brothels and the VOC personnel (Miyamoto 1984; Imanishi 2007), who gained a commercial monopoly in exchange for its full compliance to the prohibition of Christianity and were strictly restricted to Dejima outside Nagasaki, which was artificially created to enclose – or bound them physically and spiritually for two centuries.
