Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/150

 rescinded the veto. But from the point of view of Iyeyasu the incident assumed a very different aspect. The Taikō had issued an interdict ordering the withdrawal of all Christian propagandists from Japan. The Shōgun had repeated the interdict. The Pope of Rome ignored both vetoes and authoritatively threw Japan open to Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, anybody and everybody wearing a cowl or carrying a Testament.

The second reason is that Iyeyasu found in Christianity a formidable obstacle to the realisation of his own political projects. After the battle of Sekigahara there remained only one source of possible peril to the peace which it was the Tokugawa leader's highest ambition to secure for his country. That source was Hideyori, the Taikō's son. He and his supporters intrigued to effect the overthrow of the Tokugawa, and the Jesuit Fathers threw in their lot with them, as did also a multitude of Christians. The castle at Osaka, with its stupendous battlements and almost impregnable defences, became a resort for persecuted or discontented Christians from all parts of the Empire. The Padres cannot be reproached for the part they chose at that crisis. Scarcely a faint hope remained that their faith would ever be sanctioned by the Tokugawa, whereas, with the Taikō's son at the head of the administration and owing his elevation in a large degree to Christian aid, there might have dawned for the Fathers and their flock an era not merely of State