February 5, 1597 Japan:** Twenty-six Christians are crucified at Nagasaki's Tateyama ("Hill of Wheat") as Japan begins to close itself against western interference.
February 5, 1597 Japan:** Twenty-six Christians are crucified at Nagasaki's Tateyama ("Hill of Wheat") as Japan begins to close itself against western interference. The 26 martyrs: five Europeans of Spanish extraction, one from Portuguese India; and 20 local converts, had been marched hundreds of kilometers over a period of weeks as a warning to the populace, before they were raised up on crosses and lanced to death. They could have had their liberty at the price of renouncing Catholicism . . . . Martyrs always cut heroic figures. The backdrop of these deaths, however, was a struggle over power and resources in Europe's colonial age that was far from black-and-white. European missionaries began their contact with Japan in the waning stages of Japan's protracted civil wars. They did not scruple to interfere, winning converts with plum trade concessions like saltpeter. At the same time, Spanish and Portuguese interests were contending with one another for oversea...