ABSTRACT
After it had flourished for nearly forty years, gaining close to 200,000 converts who included many important daimyo, in 1587, Emperor Toyotomi Hideyoshi-having successfully united Japan only a few years earlier-issued an edict expelling foreign missionaries and banning Catholicism. But this order was not forcefully implemented. In fact, at around that time, Franciscan friar Pedro Bautista and his three companions were about to establish a mission in Kyoto,1 while Japanese Christianity continued to flourish, especially in Nagasaki.2 But on 5 February 1597, twenty-six Christians were martyred in the Japanese city of Nagasaki: six Franciscan friars (Commissary Pedro Bautista and five confreres); three Japanese Jesuits (Pablo Miki and his two catechists, Juan Goto and Santiago Kisai); and seventeen Japanese converts, including three children.3
