![]() Christianity has been banned, and if there are any priests left on the island, they are hiding and practicing their religious incantations underground. Now we flash forward to the 17th century and the beginning of this novel. ![]() The Japanese were obviously receptive to the white man’s God. They were glorious martyrs, some secretly hoping they would even be remembered as saints.Īt the peak, there were estimated to be 400,000 converts. Christians were suspended on crosses to be speared to death or drowned slowly with the rising of the ocean. There was an overabundance of martyrs, as heads were separated from bodies. They made it against the law to be a Christian. The Japanese, at different times over the following century, rounded up the priests and their most fervent converts and shipped them off the island. These men of God were the first assault team of the invading West. The Pope was called to intercede at different times, granting the Portuguese exclusive rights to Japan or later allowing the Spaniards to compete with the Portuguese. Whoever won the war of religious conversation also won the trade war. The governments they represented, on the other hand, were not worried about saving souls but about making a fortune on trade. Later, the Protestants from the Netherlands also wanted their share of souls in Japan, or was it something else they wanted? For the priests and ministers who went to Japan, I’m sure their objective was saving the souls of the Japanese because anyone not embracing the “true religion” was going to hell. ![]() The Spanish Franciscans and Dominicans, not wanting to be left out of this mass conversion opportunity, sent their own priests to compete with Xavier. The Japanese were Buddhist, not “heathens” without a proper religion. The Jesuit priest Francis Xavier born in SPAIN, but representing PORTUGAL arrived in Japan in 1543 to save souls. Japanese Painting by an unknown artist of the Christian Martyrs of Nagasaki. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind.” “Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be it is not to steal and tell lies.
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