Japan—the Saudi Arabia of the 19th century?

An article I found the other day on Google, “The Japanese Martyrs,” from Fraser’s Magazine, May 1863, gives an idea of the lengths to which Western or specifically Dutch traders were willing to go in order to trade with Japan. Namely they could not bring any aspect of Christianity into Japan. The article starts by telling how in June 1862 the pope and cardinals canonized the Japanese Christian martyrs of 250 years earlier. Then it recounts the horrible tortures—perhaps the most horrible I’ve ever read about—that the Japanese committed against the 500,000 Christian Japanese leading either to their deaths or their renunciation of Christianity. That terrible story provides the background for understanding the kind of country Japan was when European Christian traders came into contact with it in the 19th century. The article continues:

The Dutch, however, perhaps as a reward for having intercepted the Portuguese letters, were permitted, under very severe restrictions, to establish a Dutch factory at Decima, a small island in the Bay of Nagasaki,* joined to the main land by a stone bridge. The country is now partically opened to foreign traders, evidently much against the wishes of the majority of the nation. That hatred of strangers and Christianity is still intense among the Japanese, is sufficiently proved …

* This fan-shaped Island is not much larger than Trafalgar-square…. It is inhabited solely by the Dutch residents, no Japanese … are allowed to remain there during the night…. The Dutch residents are bound implicitly to obey the instructions of the Japanese authorities, and are striclty prohibited, among other things, to have a Bible or a cross in their possession.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 22, 2007 01:02 PM | Send