Japan and the Japanese

180 JAPAN. A. D. 1C13 1C21.
are told of the martyrs, many of them, it is said, distinctly pro-
after their heads were cut
nouncing the name of Jesus and Mary
off, the persecution continued to rage with unabated fury.
While the persecution of the Catholics was thus fiercely pur-
sued in Japan, the Dutch, not in those islands only, but throughout
the eastern seas, were zealously pushing their mercantile enter-
prises; and in Japan, as elsewhere, they got decidedly the
advantage of the English, their companions and rivals, in these
inroads upon the Portuguese and Spaniards.
The English at Firando bought junks and attempted a trade with
Siam, where they already had a factory, one of their first establishments
in the East ; and with Cochin China and Corea ; but
without much advantage. In 161G, two small vessels arrived
from England, one of which was employed in trading between
Japan and Java. The operations of the Dutch were on a much
larger scale. Not content with driving the Spaniards from the
Moluccas, they threatened the Philippines, and sent to blockade
Manilla a fleet, which had several engagements with the Spaniards.
Five great Dutch ships arrived at Firando in 1616, of
which one of nine hundred tons sailed for Bantam, fully laden
with raw silk and other rich China stuffs ; and another, of eight
hundred tons, for the Moluccas, with money and provisions
Several others remained on the coast to watch the Spanish and
Portuguese traders, and to carry on a piratical war against the
Chinese junks, of which they captured, in 1616, according to Cocks'
letters, not less than twenty or thirty, pretending to be English ves-
sels, and thus greatly damaging the English name and the chance
of a trade with China.*
On a visit to Miako, in 1620, Cocks, as appears by his let-
ters, saw fifty-five Japanese martyred, because they would not
renounce the Christian faith ; among them little children of five
or six years old, burned in their mothers' arms, and crying to
Jesus to receive their souls. Sixteen others had been put to death
for the same cause at Nagasaki, five of whom were burned, and the
rest beheaded, cut in pieces, and cast into the sea in sacks ; but the
* Such was the charge of the English. The Dutch narratives, however,
abound with similar charges against the English. Both probably were true
enough, as both nations captured all the Chinese junks they met.