Japan -- History; Japan -- Politics and government
The prisoner was treated as badly as possible;
and in August, 1795, an order came from his uncle that he and his
servants should rip themselves up. Hidetsoongu paid the last attention
one friend can pay to another in Japan, and cut their heads off after
they had stabbed themselves. He himself repeatedly stabbed himself, and
one of his esquires took his master’s saber and cut off his head, and
then stabbing himself, fell on his body. Father Froes seems to have
been on the spot at the time.
Taikosama, in the whole of this affair, showed a spirit of extreme
cruelty and vindictiveness. He, not satisfied with the life of his
nephew, put to death all his friends, and then, collecting his family,
sent his wives and children, the eldest five years of age, his own
grand nephews and nieces, to execution; with savage atrocity sending
for his nephew’s head that it might be shown to them at the scaffold.
They were all beheaded to the number of thirty-one ladies and three
children, and their bodies thrown into a hole in Sanjio Street, over
which a sort of erection or tomb was built, and on it the inscription,
Tchikushozuka, “The tomb of bitches,” which remains to this day. A
temple has been built close by, and is named Tchikushozuka no dera.
Taikosama had long set his heart upon the hope of prevailing upon
the Emperor of China to send an embassy to Japan, and, to his own
surprise, his ambition was gratified. Don Austin, according to Jesuit
accounts, by working upon the fears of the officers of the Celestial
court, induced them to send two men to Corea, who were ordered to pass
over into Japan. Taikosama made preparations to receive this embassy
with great magnificence, but in the end treated the envoys with marked
insolence and rudeness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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