Victoria Friedman

Essential reading before takeoff...

You can’t deny this is a magnificent design

The figure on the right is Blessed Justo Takayama Ukon (1552–1615), one of the most remarkable figures in Japanese Christian history and a man currently on the official path to Catholic sainthood. Born into a prominent samurai family, he was baptized as "Justo" at the age of twelve. He grew up to become a highly skilled military commander, a master of the tea ceremony, and a powerful daimyo (feudal lord) who ruled over vast lands and thousands of subjects. When Japan's rulers began to view the foreign religion as a political threat, they issued strict edicts banning Christianity. While some lords renounced their faith to keep their power, Takayama Ukon refused. He relinquished his wealth, his castles, and his high social status to remain loyal to the Church. Unwilling to apostatize, he was ultimately stripped of his rank and exiled from Japan in 1614. He led a group of hundreds of Japanese Christians across the sea to Manila in the Philippines. Weakened by the journey and his long struggles, he died just 40 days after arriving. Because he willingly surrendered his earthly life, wealth, and status for his faith, the Catholic Church recognized him as a martyr. Pope Francis officially beatified him in 2017, giving him the title "Blessed"—the final major milestone before being canonized as a Saint. The existence of Christian samurai is just one chapter in the incredibly dramatic, tragic, and resilient history of the Catholic Church in Japan. Catholicism was introduced to Japan by the Jesuit missionary St. Francis Xavier. The faith resonated deeply, and during the "Christian Century," hundreds of thousands of Japanese were baptized, including peasants, scholars, and powerful warlords. Fearing foreign influence and the unifying power of a faith that answered to a Pope rather than a Shogun, the Tokugawa Shogunate brutally outlawed Christianity. Thousands of Japanese Catholics were tortured and martyred for refusing to step on a fumi-e (a carved image of Christ or the Virgin Mary) to prove they had abandoned their faith. Crushed by famine, extreme taxes, and merciless religious persecution, local peasants and masterless Catholic samurai rose up in rebellion. Led by the 16-year-old Amakusa Shirō (the figure on the left of the meme), they fought under banners bearing the cross and the chalice. The Shogunate eventually massacred the rebels, driving Japanese Christianity entirely underground. For the next 250 years, under the penalty of death, Japanese Catholics maintained their faith in total secrecy. Without a single priest, they baptized their own children, passed down Latin prayers orally, and disguised their devotions by creating statues of the Virgin Mary designed to look like the Buddhist deity Kannon. When Japan finally reopened to the world in the 1860s, French missionaries in Nagasaki were astounded when thousands of these hidden Christians stepped out of the shadows to rejoin the global Church.