Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/149

 at six hundred thousand, and from Sendai in the north to Kagoshima in the south its propagandists preached openly and its adherents worshipped in their own churches. The time had come to choose between final toleration or resolute extirpation.

Iyeyasu chose the latter. On January the twenty-seventh, 1614, he issued a proclamation ordering the banishment of the propagandists and leaders of Christianity, the destruction of their churches, and the compulsory recantation of their doctrines. "The Christians," his edict said, "have come to Japan not only to carry on commerce with their ships, but also to propagate an evil creed and subvert the true doctrine, to the end that they may effect a change of government in the country and thus usurp possession of it. This seed will produce a harvest of unhappiness. It must be eradicated." That Iyeyasu was fully persuaded of the truth of these words, there can be little question. It only remains to inquire the proximate causes by which he was led to exchange his previous attitude of negative disapproval for one of positive extermination.

Several reasons present themselves. The first is the issue of a Bull, in 1608, granting to all orders of Christianity free access to Japan. From the point of view of Rome the step was natural. Japan had hitherto been a papally forbidden land to all save the Jesuits. Paul the Fifth simply