Hidetada, the successor of Iyeyas[)u] in Yedo, who ruled from 1605 to 1622, seeing that his father’s peaceful methods had failed in extirpating the alien politico-religious doctrine, now pronounced sentence of death on every foreigner, priest, or catechist found in the country.  The story of the persecutions and horrible sufferings that ensued is told in the voluminous literature which may be gathered from every country in Europe;[20] though from the Japanese side “The Catholic martyrology of Japan is still an untouched field for a [native] historian."[21] All the church edifices which the last storm had left standing were demolished, and temples and pagodas were erected upon their ruins.  In 1617, foreign commerce was restricted to Hirado and Nagasaki.  In 1621, Japanese were forbidden ever to leave the country.  In 1624, all ships having a capacity of over twenty-five hundred bushels were burned, and no craft, except those of the size of ordinary junks, were allowed to be built.

The Books of the Inferno Opened.

For years, at intervals and in places, the books of the Inferno were opened, and the tortures devised by the native pagans and Buddhists equalled in their horror those which Dante imagines, until finally, in 1636, even Japanese human nature, accustomed for ages to subordination and submission, could stand it no longer.  Then a man named Nirado Shiro raised the banner of the Virgin and called on all Christians and others to follow him.  Probably as many as thirty thousand men, women and children, but without a single foreigner, lay or clerical, among them, gathered from parts of Kiushiu.  After burning Shint[=o] and Buddhist temples, they fortified an old abandoned castle at Shimabara, resolving to die rather than submit.  Against an army of veterans, led by skilled commanders, the fortress held out during four months.  At last, after a bloody assault, it was taken, and men, women and children were slaughtered.[22] Thousands suffered death at the point of the spear and sword; many were thrown into the sea; and others were cast into boiling hot springs, emblems of the eight Buddhist Hells.

All efforts were now put forth to uproot not only Christianity but also everything of foreign planting.  The Portuguese were banished and the death penalty declared against all who should return, The ai no ko, or half-breed children, were collected and shipped by hundreds to Macao.  All persons adopting or harboring Eurasians were to be banished, and their relatives punished.  The Christian cause now became like the doomed city of Babylon or like the site of Nineveh, which, buried in the sand and covered with the desolation and silence of centuries, became lost to the memory of the world, so that even the very record of scripture was the jest of the infidel, until the spade of Layard brought them again to resurrection.  So, Japanese Christianity, having vanished in blood, was supposed to have no existence, thus furnishing Mr. Lecky with arguments to prove the extirpative power of persecution.[23]