Note 8 — Chapter LVIII

Sidoti (or Sidotti) was an Italian priest who came to Manila with Tournon, intending to enter the forbidden land of Japan. In 1709, he succeeded in doing this, by persuading the captain of a Spanish vessel to land him on the Japanese coast; Zúñiga says (Hist. Philipinas, pp. 420, 421) that nothing more had ever been learned regarding him. La Concepción, however, writing somewhat earlier, says (Hist. Philipinas, vi, p. 82) that in 1716 news of Sidoti’s imprisonment and death arrived at Canton—the latter being attributed to his continual fasts and austerities. But Griffis relates (Mikado’s Empire, pp. 262, 263) so much as may now be known about Sidoti’s fate, derived from a book—Sei Yō Ki Bun (“Annals of Western Nations”)—written by the Japanese scholar who examined the priest, which gives the facts of the case, and the judicial proceedings therein. Sidoti “was kept a prisoner, living for several years after his arrival, in Yedo (Tōkiō), and probably died a natural death.”