[post of
Wednesday 15th of August 2012]
We wake up
in Kozue’s house with the feeling of having had the best sleep in our lives. Today
a day full of ruins, relics, and cemeteries, awaits us; a short stage, one in
which we’ll cover just 35 km including go and come back.
After a
full, and very Japanese, breakfast in her house, Kozue brings us to a cemetery
nearby, where there is the grave of a Japanese Christian who died here in 1610,
just two years after the beginning of the persecution of Christians in this
region. In Spain, Lope de Vega [Spanish playwright of the Spanish Golden Century
Baroque, *1562 – †1635] wrote about the martyrs of Arima, Kuchinotsu, and Arie, all towns
that we will visit today. An old man, a merchant who lives nearby the cemetery,
volunteers to guide us up to the grave, where he asks if he can take a picture
with us… with a film camera that he suddenly produces from a sleeve of his
dress!
We say
goodbye to Kozue and her mother, with the hope of seeing them again in the
future, so that we would have a chance to repay them with the same nice
treatment that they kindly gave us. Then, we head back to the main road, and
take some time to observe the environment where the Jesuits decided to build
their college in Arima, which was destroyed 400 hundred years ago, and the Hara
Castle. European books describe the rebellion of Shimabara although it did not
happen in today’s Shimabara, or in its castle (which has been re-built). In reality,
that rebellion took place in the Hara Castle, just beside the Minamishimabara. In
1636, the entire population rebelled against the local “daimio” [Japanese for “lord”]
and, therefore, against the “Shogun” [ Japanese for the daimio’s superior, appointed by the Emperor]. Feed up
with the fact that his town had to pay the increased taxes and keep the
never-ending corvettes of labour, a youngster buried a hoe in the head of his
lord. His townsmen celebrated him because he freed them, and entrenched
themselves in the Hara Castle. The Shogun’s forces failed to take the castle
and called the Dutch for help. The Dutch came with their cannons, burnt up, and
destroyed the castle. Despite the beginning of the persecution against the
Christians, the majority of the inhabitants of this region were still Christians.
After the destruction of the Hara Castle, the Japanese central government thought
this rebellion could have been caused by the Christian foreigners still living
in the Minamishimabara region. Therefore, the battle of the Hara Castle was
among the reasons that brought to the decision to close down Japan to the
exterior world from 1638 and up to 1868.
For the
rest of the day, we continued our stage cycling through more places linked to
the history of the Kirishitan, until
we got to the grave of another Christian martyr in Sahara. Far from being a
desert, Sahara looks more like heaven. A km later, we find an area for camping
free of charge, just beside the beach… finally we got a chance to enjoy a swim
in the Japanese Sea! Afterwards we assembled the tent and prepared the camp,
and had dinner while looking at the O-Bon, the Japanese Festival of the Dead.
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