Saint Michael Kozaki

The 26 Martyrs of Japan (Japanese: 日本二十六聖人, Hepburn: Nihon Nijūroku Seijin) were a group of Catholics who were executed by crucifixion on 5 February 1597, in Nagasaki, Japan. Their martyrdom is especially significant in the history of the Catholic Church in Japan. A promising beginning to Catholic missions in Japan – with perhaps as many as 300,000 Catholics by the end of the 16th century – met complications from competition between the missionary groups, political difficulty between Portugal and Spain and factions within the government of Japan. Christianity was suppressed and it was during this time that the twenty-six martyrs were executed. By 1630, Catholicism had been driven underground. When Christian missionaries returned to Japan 250 years later, they found a community of "hidden Catholics" that had survived underground. On 15 August 1549, the Jesuit fathers Francis Xavier (later canonized by Gregory XV in 1622), Cosme de Torres, and Juan Fernández arrived in Kagoshima, Japan, from Portugal with hopes of bringing Catholicism to Japan. On 29 September, St. Francis Xavier visited Shimazu Takahisa, the daimyō of Kagoshima, asking for permission to build the first Catholic mission in Japan. The daimyō agreed in hopes of creating a trade relationship with Europe. The shogunate and the imperial government at first supported the Catholic mission and the missionaries, thinking that they would reduce the power of the Buddhist monks and help trade with Spain and Portugal. By the late 1500s, the government had begun to grow wary of foreign influence; the shogunate was also concerned about colonialism. In 1587, Toyotomi Hideyoshi ordered all Christians expelled from Japan on the grounds that foreigners threatened the Japanese state and that Christianity was hostile to Buddhism.