The Enclosed Guardhouse

The Enclosed Guardhouse was the prison facility within the Christian Residence in Edo where Sebastian Rodrigues, now bearing the Japanese name Okada San'emon, spent the final three decades of his life under constant watch. It was a place where the Tokugawa Shogunate's system of surveillance, interrogation, and punishment operated at its most intimate and relentless, targeting not only the apostate priest but also the Japanese Christians who came into contact with him.

Location and Function

The Enclosed Guardhouse was part of the Christian Residence, a compound in Edo where apostate missionaries were kept under house arrest. It was a space of confinement that combined the functions of a prison, a guard post, and a site of official investigation. The authorities maintained a rotating roster of guards and inspectors who monitored the residents' every move. The facility was designed to prevent any contact between the apostate priests and the outside Christian community, yet it paradoxically became a nexus where the authorities could observe and entrap those who sought out the priests.

Key Incidents and Inhabitants

In the Fourth Year of Enpo (Fire-Senior-Dragon), Kichijiro, who had followed Rodrigues to Edo and served as his attendant, was sent to the Enclosed Guardhouse because of his suspicious behavior. During a search of his pocket, guards found an amulet-case containing a Christian image with St. Paul and St. Peter on one side and Xavier and an angel on the other. This discovery triggered a wide-ranging investigation. Kichijiro was summoned from the guardhouse and questioned about his native place and relatives; he was from Goto and fifty-four years old that year. The authorities also suspected Hitotsubashi Matabe, who had been on familiar terms with Kichijiro, and kept him in prison until Kichijiro explained himself. When questioned about the image, Kichijiro claimed an attendant named Saizaburo had dropped it three years earlier and that Tokuemon, the gatekeeper, had witnessed the scene. He explicitly denied receiving the image from Okada San'emon, stating there was no chance to get anything from San'emon because he was always attended by a couple of guards on duty.

The System of Surveillance and Torture

The Enclosed Guardhouse was the operational center for the magistrate's campaign to root out hidden Christians. On 17th September of the same year, Lord Totominokami came personally to the Mountain Villa and summoned three attendants to the Study to examine whether they were Christians. Kichijiro and Tokuemon were later summoned and cross-examined. The authorities commanded that all the tenements of the guards be closely searched, including the three Official Residences and the Lodges. Even wives and children were told to undo their sashes and loincloth in front of the officer. Buddhist images were examined. In the dwelling of Sugiyama Shichirobe, a note of Christian words—Father, Archbishop, Bishop, Pope—was discovered among old scraps of paper. Hitotsubashi Matabe was hung within the gaol on the same day and later tortured several times, including on the wooden horse alongside his wife. The guardhouse was also where the authorities posted the announcement board concerning informers of Christians, offering rewards of three hundred pieces of silver for informing on a father, two hundred for a brother or retrovert, and one hundred for a catechist or lay Christian.

Rodrigues' Final Years

Rodrigues, as Okada San'emon, lived in the Christian Residence under the constant supervision of the Enclosed Guardhouse's staff. He was granted the ration of ten persons, while other residents like Bokui, Juan, Nanho, and Jikan received rations of seven persons each. He was periodically commanded to write disavowals of his religion, spending weeks in the Study of the Mountain Villa engaged in this task. When he died of illness at the age of sixty-four in the Ninth Year of Enpo (Gold-Junior-Cock), the guardhouse officers immediately reported to the Lord and sealed his belongings. His corpse was sent to Muryoin Temple at Koishikawa, where it was cremated and given the posthumous Buddhist name Myusen Joshin Shinshi. The Enclosed Guardhouse thus served as the final, silent container for a life that had once burned with missionary zeal, reduced to a carefully monitored existence within the swamp of Japan.