The exiled foreign friars, however, kept secretly returning, apparently desirous of the crown of martyrdom. Hidetada, the shogun, now pronounced sentence of death against any foreign priest found in the country. Iyemitsu, his successor, restricted all foreign commerce to Nagasaki and Hirado; all Japanese were forbidden to leave the country on pain of death; and in 1624 all foreigners, except Dutch and Chinese, were banished from Japan.
The Christians suffered all sorts of persecutions. They were wrapped in straw sacks, piled in heaps of living fuel, and set on fire. All the tortures that barbaric hatred or refined cruelty could invent were used to turn thousands of their fellow-men into carcasses and ashes. Yet few of the natives quailed, or renounced their faith. They calmly let the fire of wood cleft from the crosses before which they once prayed consume them, or walked cheerfully to the blood-pit, or were flung alive into the open grave about to be filled up.
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
