Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 426, The City on the Edge of Forever, Part 5.

Some of you may have noticed some very hedged language from me at the end of last week's

episode. There was a lot of, it seemed like all the missionaries had been expelled, and so far as

anyone knew, the priests were all gone and stuff like that,

and you may have drawn some conclusions from that language.

I am here to tell you now that said conclusions are, in fact, 100% correct.

Well, ostensibly, all Christian priests had been expelled from Japan on pain of death by November 1614.

In practice, quite a few were still around, particularly in the Nagasaki area.

In part, this was due to some rather lax security during the expulsions by the city's governor, Hasegawa Sahoy.

Lacks precautions that have led some,

like Rainier Heselink, to suggest that Hasegawa took a bribe to look the other way.

We don't actually know he did for a fact, but he certainly wouldn't be the first official in human history to play both ends against the middle.

But it wasn't just Hasegawa's, let's call it, ethical flexibility that allowed this. There was also a conspiracy

on the part of the Christian community to protect a small group of missionaries centered primarily

on Kyushu, far into way the most Christianized part of the whole country.

Now, despite being a conspiracy, this plot was not what I would call well-organized.

Each of the various missionary orders of the Catholic Church, the Jesuits, Augustinians,

Dominicans, and so on, set up their own plans for who would remain behind, rather than trying to coordinate

with each other.

However, the loosely coordinated nature of the plan was probably wise on the whole.

As a sort of operational security, it protected one group from compromising the others should

its members be captured.

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