Japan and the Japanese

CHAPTER XVIII.
NEW EDICT FOR THE DEPORTATION OF THE JESUITS. ITS PARTIAL EVASION.
--NEW CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE PHILIPPINES AND JAPAN. TAI-
KO-SASIA'S JUSTIFICATION OF HIS RECENT PROCEEDINGS. NEW DESTRUC-
TION OF CHURCHES IN X1MO. TAIKO-SAMA'S DEATH. HIS PRECEDING
EFFORTS TO SECURE HIS OWN DEIFICATION AND THE SUCCESSION OF HIS
INFANT SON FIDO JORI. REGENCY. GE-JAS ITS HEAD, W1TII THE TITLE
OF DAYSU-SAMA. A. D. 15971599.
EVEN a more serious blow than the execution of the first martyrs,
which seems rather to have warmed than to have cooled the zeai
of the converted Japanese, was an order from the emperor to the
governor of Nagasaki to collect all the missionaries, and to ship
them off to China, except only his interpreter, Rodriguez, and two
or three other Jesuits, who might be permitted to remain at Naga-
saki for the benefit of the Portuguese traders.
There were still in Japan as many as a hundred and twenty-five
members of the Company, of whom forty-six were priests. To
blind the emperor by an apparent submission to his will, it was
agreed that the newly arrived bishop of Japan (the fourth
appointed to this diocese, but the first who had arrived there)
should depart in the same vessel in which he had come, especially
as he might improve his absence to represent to the viceroy of
the Indies the pressing necessities of his diocese. The novitiate,
the college in the island of Amacusa,* and the seminary for young
nobles hitherto kept on foot in Arima, were all given up, and most
of the fathers connected with them set out for Nagasaki. Of the
whole number, however, there remained behind eight in the island
* The fathers resident at this college had been by no means idle. They had
printed there, in 1508, a Japanese grammar, prepared by Father Alvarez, and
in 1595, in a thick quarto of upwards of nine hundred pages, a Portuguese,
Latin and Japanese Lexicon. A vocabulary entirely Japanese was printed
at Nagasaki, 1598. See Appendix A.
11*