Hildreth's "Japan as It Was and Is": A Handbook of Old Japan, Volume 1 (of 2)Hildreth, Richard
History
Hildreth's "Japan as It Was and Is": A Handbook of Old Japan, Volume 1 (of 2)
Hildreth, Richard
Japan -- History
See “History of the English Factory at Hirado,” in vol. xxvi. of the
Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, and “Diary of Richard
Cocks,” edited by Mr. N. Murakami, and published in Tōkyō in 1899.—EDR.
[101] He was deified, and is still worshipped under the name of
Gongen-Sama, given to him after his death. It is from him that the
reigning emperors of Japan trace their descent. He is buried at the
temple of Nikkō, three days’ journey from Yedo, of the splendor of
which marvellous stories are told. Caron, who wrote about the time it
was built, speaks as if he had seen it. In 1782, M. Titsingh, then
Dutch director, solicited permission to visit this temple, but was
refused, as there was no precedent for such a favor.
[102] These modified privileges have been printed for the first time by
Rundall.
[103] Lopo de Vega, the poet, who held the office of procurator fiscal
to the apostolic chamber of the archbishopric of Toledo, celebrated the
constancy of the Japanese martyrs, in a pamphlet entitled “Triumpho
de la Fe en los Regnos del Japon, pas los annos de 1614 y 1615,”
published in 1617. “Take away from this work,” says Charlevoix, “the
Latin and Spanish verses, the quotations foreign to the subject, and
the flourish of the style, and there will be nothing left of it.” The
subject was much more satisfactorily treated by Nicholas Trigault,
himself a very distinguished member of the Chinese mission, which
he had joined in 1610. He returned to Europe in 1615, travelling on
foot through Persia, Arabia, and Egypt, to obtain a fresh supply of
laborers. Besides an account of the Jesuit mission to China (from
which, next to Marco Polo’s travels, Europe gathered its first distinct
notions of that empire), and a summary of the Japanese mission from
1609 to 1612, published during this visit to Europe, just before his
departure, in 1618 (taking with him forty-four missionaries, who
had volunteered to follow him to China), he completed four books
concerning the triumphs of the Christians in the late persecution in
Japan, to which, while at Goa, on his way to China, he added a fifth
book, bringing down the narrative to 1616. The whole, derived from
the annual Japanese letters, was printed in 1623, in a small quarto
of five hundred and twenty pages, illustrated by numerous engravings
of martyrdoms, and containing also a short addition, bringing down
the story to the years 1617-1620, and a list of Japanese martyrs, to
the number of two hundred and sixty-eight. There is also added a list
of thirty-eight houses and residences (including two colleges, one at
Arima, the other at Nagasaki) which the Jesuits had been obliged to
abandon; and of five Franciscan, four Dominican, and two Augustinian
convents, from which the inmates had been driven. These works of
Trigault, published originally in Latin, were translated into French
and Spanish. Various other accounts of the same persecution appeared in
Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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