northwest coast of Kyushu in 1609, and the English, too, set up a trading post there in 1613. At about the same time Ieyasu reverted to Hideyoshi’s policy of persecuting Christianity, and his successor in 1617 returned to the extreme measure of executing European missionaries and native believers. In the next few years all the missionaries were either killed or forced to leave Japan, and thousands of Japanese Christians either apostatized or else suffered the death of martyrs. A common practice of the time was to order people suspected of being Christians to tread upon a cross or some other sacred symbol, and to kill those who refused to comply.
The persecution of Christianity came to a dramatic conclusion in the years 1637 and 1638, when the long Christianized peasantry of a region near Nagasaki rebelled in desperation over economic and religious oppression. Some 37,000, basing themselves on an old dilapidated castle, withstood for almost three months the assault of the assembled might of the central government, supported by the fire power of certain Dutch vessels. The Christian rebels were eventually slaughtered almost to a man, and with this final catastrophe Christianity ceased to exist as an organized religion in Japan.
Meanwhile, the successors of Ieyasu, with increasing suspicion of all foreigners and a growing zeal to preserve the status quo at all costs, had started to close the doors of Japan to virtually all foreign intercourse. The English had already given up their trading post at Hirado as an unprofitable venture, and all Spaniards were expelled from Japan in 1624. The Portuguese in