Jonassen

Jonassen, a clerk for the Dutch East India Company stationed on the artificial island of Dejima in Nagasaki Bay, is the author of the only surviving non-Jesuit, non-Japanese account of the final years of the apostate priests Christovao Ferreira and Sebastian Rodrigues. His diary, written in a dry, administrative tone, provides a crucial external perspective on the events that follow Rodrigues's trampling of the fumie, documenting the priests' new lives as collaborators and the regime's unrelenting suspicion of all foreign influence. Jonassen's entries, dated from July 1644 to December 1645, serve as a stark, bureaucratic epilogue to the novel's central spiritual drama, confirming the public reality of the priests' apostasy while inadvertently revealing the persistence of the Christian faith they had outwardly abandoned.

Role and Position at Dejima

Jonassen was a clerk at the Dutch firm on Dejima, a small, fan-shaped island that served as Japan's only window to the West during the period of national seclusion (Sakoku). His duties were primarily commercial and logistical: he recorded the arrival and departure of Chinese junks and Dutch ships, managed cargo manifests of silk, porcelain, and sugar, and settled accounts with Japanese merchants and officials. His position placed him at the intersection of European trade and Japanese state control, making him a direct witness to the regime's security apparatus. The Dutch were tolerated only because they professed a non-Catholic form of Christianity and agreed to strict limitations on their movement and contact with the Japanese population. Jonassen's diary reflects this precarious status, as he was frequently called upon to prove his company's loyalty and to assist in investigations against the Catholic faith.

Witness to the Apostate Priests' Collaboration

Jonassen's diary provides the most concrete evidence of how Ferreira and Rodrigues were used by the Tokugawa regime after their apostasies. On July 9, 1644, he records that both "Padre Sawano Chuan, an apostate, and Padre Rodrigues, another apostate Portuguese, were present at the inquisition" when an image of the Virgin Mary was discovered in a citizen's house. This marks the first time Rodrigues is mentioned in the diary, already identified by his new, collaborative role. Jonassen further notes that Rodrigues, despite his apostasy, "appealed for mercy repeatedly to the Government" on behalf of a family condemned for possessing a coin bearing a saint's image, but his pleas were ignored, and the parents were executed by being hung up by the feet. This detail reveals the limits of the priests' influence and the regime's implacable cruelty, even toward those it had co-opted.

Instrument of the Regime's Anti-Catholic Campaign

The most significant instance of the priests' collaboration, as recorded by Jonassen, occurred in August 1644. On the 2nd of that month, the Clerk of the Governor and his assistants questioned Jonassen for several hours. The reason, he writes, was that "Sawano Chuan, the apostate, who lives in Nagasaki, and Rodrigues, the Portuguese apostate priest, informed them that the decision was made in Macao to send priests to Japan by Dutch vessels from India." This intelligence, which Jonassen implies was fabricated or exaggerated, triggered a formal warning from the Governor. The regime now suspected that Catholic priests might infiltrate Japan disguised as Dutch employees. Jonassen was handed a statement from the Governor detailing Sawano's testimony before the Supreme Authorities in Edo, which claimed that "there are many Roman Catholics among the Dutch and in Holland" and that a plan existed for priests to enter the Dutch firm as workmen or sailors. This episode demonstrates how the apostate priests, particularly Ferreira, were actively used to stoke suspicion against the Dutch, their former European rivals, and to justify the regime's ever-tightening surveillance.

Observer of the Persecution's Continuation

Jonassen's diary also records the ongoing persecution of ordinary Japanese Christians, which continued unabated even after the priests' apostasy. On August 7, 1644, he notes that the two sons of the executed parents, along with another victim, were paraded through the town on lean horses and then beheaded. His entry for November 29, 1644, describes how the Governor showed him a Dutch verse printed under a picture of the Virgin Mary, which had been obtained from a bonze near Shimonoseki. The authorities were puzzled because neither Rodrigues nor Ferreira could identify the language, which was actually Dutch. Jonassen, recognizing it as an "Ave Maria" printed by a Belgian, chose to "keep silent until further inquiries were made," a small act of concealment that hints at his own complex position. These entries confirm that the regime's campaign of eradication was systematic and ongoing, and that the apostate priests were now part of the machinery that enforced it.

A Contrasting Perspective on Faith and Weakness

Jonassen's own assessment of the two priests is recorded in his diary entry for December 5, 1644. He writes that he has "tried to obtain information about the apostate priests ever since I arrived in Japan." He then summarizes what he has learned: "At present there remain alive only two: one is a Portuguese called Chuan who used to be the Provincial of the Society of Jesus here and is blackhearted; the other a priest called Rodrigues from Lisbon, Portugal, who trod on a holy image at the Office of the Governor." This blunt, moralistic judgment—calling Ferreira "blackhearted"—stands in stark contrast to the novel's own complex, sympathetic portrayal of the priests' inner struggles. Jonassen, a Protestant clerk from a rival trading nation, sees only the outward act of betrayal, not the anguished theology that led to it. His diary thus provides a final, ironic layer to the narrative: the priests, who once sought to save souls, are now remembered by a foreign observer as mere villains in a cautionary tale about the fate of Catholicism in Japan.