Japan and the Japanese

CHAPTER XXIII.
ECCLESIASTICAL RETROSPECT. NEW PERSECUTION. EDICT OP BANISHMEN1
AGAINST THE MISSIONAP.IE3. CIVIL WAR BETWEEN FIDE JORI AND OGO-
SHO-SAMA. TRIUMPH OF OGOSHO- SAMA. HIS DEATH. PERSECUTION
MORE VIOLENT THAN EVER. MUTUAL RANCOR OF THE JESUITS AND THE
FRIARS. PROGRESS OF MARTYRDOM. THE ENGLISH AND DUTCH. A. D.
1613-1620.
BETWEEN the edict of Tuiko-Sama against the Catholics, and those
the issue of which is by Ogosho-Sama briefly alluded to in the pre-
the whole of
ceding chapter, sixteen years had elapsed, during
which time the missionaries and the Catholic Japanese had been
kept in a state of painful uncertainty.
It is true that the new emperor had greatly relaxed from the
hostility of his predecessor, and seemed at times decidedly favor-
able. In many parts of Japan the Catholic worship was carried
on as openly as ever. Many new laborers, both Jesuits and others,
had come into the field, and conversions still continued to be made
among persons of the highest rank. There was scarcely any part
of the empire in which converts were not to be found, and the mis-
sionaries occasionally penetrated into the most remote provinces.
The general of the Jesuits had been encouraged to raise Japan to
the dignity of a province, of which China and the neighboring
regions had been made a part, and of which Father Valentine Carvilho
was made provincial. Japan had also a resident bishop, or
at least coadjutor, in the person of Father Louis Serqueyra, him-
self taken from the order of the Jesuits ; and under the bishop, as
we have seen, were a few secular clergy. By a brief of Pope
Paul V., just published in Japan, that empire had been opened to
the members of all the religious orders of the church, with liberty
to proceed thither by way of Manilla as well as of Macao.
Yet, during these sixteen years, the Catholics of che different
subordinate kingdoms had been more or less exposed to persecution