A large number of friars and Jesuits, with native
priests, were forcibly sent from the country, while the siege and
capture of the castle of Ozaka in 1615 ended the career of all the
native friends of the Jesuits, and brought final ruin upon the Christian
cause in Japan.

During the reigns of the succeeding shoguns a violent persecution began.
The Dutch traders, who showed no disposition to interfere in religious
affairs, succeeded in ousting their Portuguese rivals, all foreigners
except Dutch and Chinese being banished from Japan, while foreign trade
was confined to the two ports of Hirado and Nagasaki. This was followed
by a cruel effort to extirpate what was now looked on as a pestilent
foreign faith. Orders were issued that the people should trample on the
cross or on a copper plate engraved with the image of Christ. Those who
refused were exposed to horrible persecutions, being wrapped in sacks of
straw and burnt to death in heaps of fuel, while terrible tortures were
employed to make them renounce their faith. Some were flung alive into
open graves, many burned with the wood of the crosses before which they
had prayed, others flung from the edge of precipices. Yet they bore
tortures and endured death with a fortitude not surpassed by that of
the martyrs of old, clinging with the highest Christian ardor to their
new faith.

In 1637 these excesses of persecution led to an insurrection, the native
Christians rising in thousands, seizing an old castle at Shimabara, and
openly defying their persecutors. Composed as they were of farmers and
peasants, the commanders who marched against them at the head of veteran
armies looked for an easy conquest, but with all their efforts the
insurgents held out against them for two months. The fortress was at
length reduced by the aid of cannon taken from the Dutch traders, and
after the slaughter of great numbers of the garrison. The bloody work
was consummated by the massacre of thirty-seven thousand Christian
prisoners, and the flinging of thousands more from a precipice into the
sea below. Many were banished, and numbers escaped to Formosa, whither
others had formerly made their way. The "evil sect" was formally
prohibited, while edicts were issued declaring that as long as the sun
should shine no foreigner should enter Japan and no native should leave
it. A slight exception was made in favor of the Dutch, of whom a small
number were permitted to reside on the little island of