ath-blow to the church in the empire. No further efforts were made,
either by the daimyos of provinces or by the heads of the church, to make
open headway against the determined efforts of the government. Whatever
was done was in secret, and every means was tried on the part of those who
still clung to the Christian belief, and especially of those who were
still daring enough to try to minister to them, to conceal their locality
and their identity.(223)

The history of Christianity in Japan from this time downward was that of a
scattered and dismembered remnant struggling for existence. A long line of
edicts reaching to modern times was directed against "the corrupt sect,"
repeating again and again the directions for its suppression. The
_kirishitan bugyo_, or Christian inquisitor, had his office in Yedo, and
under him was a numerous and active corps of assistants. Inouye
Chikugo-no-Kami for a long time held this position. A place is still
pointed out called _Karishitan Zaka_, or Christian Valley, where once
stood the house in which were confined a number of the foreign priests.
Here may be seen the grave of Father Chiara, who had under torture abjured
his faith, and remained a prisoner for forty years, dying 1685.(224)
Professor Dixon says that "there are two bamboo tubes inserted in sockets
in front of the tomb, which I have never found empty, but always full of
flowers in bloom. No one knows who offer these flowers, but they must be
descendants of the Doshin Christians, or believers in Christianity, or
worshippers of Koshin." Here also was confined Father Baptiste Sidotti, a
Sicilian Jesuit who ventured to enter Japan in 1707 with the purpose of
resuming the work of the Jesuits which the persecution had interrupted.

And yet with all this vigilance and severity on the part of the
government, what was the amazement of the Christian world to learn that
the old faith still survived! In the villages around Nagasaki there were
discovered in 1865,(225) not only words and symbols which had been
preserved in the language, but even communities where had been kept alive
for more than two centuries the worship bequeathed to them by their
ancestors. We shall have occasion hereafter to refer to this interesting
memento of the Christianity of the seventeenth century.

CHAPTER XII. FEUDALISM IN JAPAN.

Ieyasu was not only a general of eminent abilities, who had from his youth
been accustomed to the responsibility and ma