ts and catechists,
were arrested, sent to Nagasaki, and thence shipped like bundles of
combustibles to Macao.

Yet, as many of the foreign and native Christian teachers hid themselves
in the country and as others who had been banished returned secretly and
continued the work of propaganda, the crisis had not yet come. Some of
the Jesuit priests, even, were still hoping that Hideyori would mount to
power; but in 1615, Iyeyas[)u], finding a pretext for war,[19] called
out a powerful army and laid siege to the great castle of Osaka, the
most imposing fortress in the country. In the brief war which ensued, it
is said by the Jesuit fathers, that one hundred thousand men perished.
On June 9, 1615, the castle was captured and the citadel burned. After
thousands of Hideyori's followers had committed _hara-kiri_, and his own
body had been burned into ashes, the Christian cause was irretrievably
ruined.

Hidetada, the successor of Iyeyas[)u] in Yedo, who ruled from 1605 to
1622, seeing that his father's peaceful methods had failed in
extirpating the alien politico-religious doctrine, now pronounced
sentence of death on every foreigner, priest, or catechist found in the
country. The story of the persecutions and horrible sufferings that
ensued is told in the voluminous literature which may be gathered from
every country in Europe;[20] though from the Japanese side "The Catholic
martyrology of Japan is still an untouched field for a [native]
historian."[21] All the church edifices which the last storm had left
standing were demolished, and temples and pagodas were erected upon
their ruins. In 1617, foreign commerce was restricted to Hirado and
Nagasaki. In 1621, Japanese were forbidden ever to leave the country. In
1624, all ships having a capacity of over twenty-five hundred bushels
were burned, and no craft, except those of the size of ordinary junks,
were allowed to be built.

The Books of the Inferno Opened.

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