The Sixth Commandment: Thou shalt not kill

The Sixth Commandment: Thou shalt not kill is discussed as both a Christian moral prohibition and a political obstacle to Christianity’s spread in Japan. In a conversation with John Blackthorne, the speaker places it beside the Catholic prohibition on divorce as one of the two reasons the Taikō would not embrace the faith, then questions whether Christians themselves take the commandment seriously.

The Commandment as an Obstacle to Conversion

The speaker says the Taikō objected to two Christian teachings: the refusal to permit divorce and the commandment against killing. The exchange follows a defense of Japanese divorce customs, which the speaker presents as more sensible because people change and should not be bound forever to a bad marriage. Against that flexibility, the speaker describes the Christian rule as an inflexible refusal of a concession that might have changed the country’s religious allegiance.

The speaker claims that a Father-Visitor went to Rome to seek a dispensation allowing Japanese divorce, but that the Pope refused. In the speaker’s counterfactual account, approval could have led the Taikō to convert, persuaded the daimyos to follow the faith, and made the land Christian. The commandment thus appears not in isolation but as part of a larger dispute over whether Christian doctrine could accommodate Japanese practice.

The Charge of Christian Inconsistency

The speaker does not merely identify the prohibition on killing as an obstacle; they dismiss its practical force. They argue that killing would have mattered less politically because, in their view, nobody pays attention to the commandment in practice, least of all Christians. The remark turns the commandment into an accusation of hypocrisy: a strict rule may hinder conversion even as its supposed adherents disregard it.

The passage presents this as the speaker’s judgment, not as a neutral account of Christian conduct. Its contrast is pointed: divorce is treated as a rule that could have been relaxed for the sake of conversion, while the prohibition on killing is portrayed as a rule whose nominal severity is undercut by conduct. Blackthorne agrees that divorce seems sensible in Japan, but his response does not settle the religious or political disagreement.