Note (return) — Chapter XI · - A CENTURY OF ROMAN CHRISTIANITY

For years, at intervals and in places, the books of the Inferno were opened, and the tortures devised by the native pagans and Buddhists equalled in their horror those which Dante imagines, until finally, in 1636, even Japanese human nature, accustomed for ages to subordination and submission, could stand it no longer. Then a man named Nirado Shiro raised the banner of the Virgin and called on all Christians and others to follow him. Probably as many as thirty thousand men, women and children, but without a single foreigner, lay or clerical, among them, gathered from parts of Kiushiu. After burning Shintō and Buddhist temples, they fortified an old abandoned castle at Shimabara, resolving to die rather than submit. Against an army of veterans, led by skilled commanders, the fortress held out during four months. At last, after a bloody assault, it was taken, and men, women and children were slaughtered.22 Thousands suffered death at the point of the spear and sword; many were thrown into the sea; and others were cast into boiling hot springs, emblems of the eight Buddhist Hells.