Ninth Year of Enpo

The Ninth Year of Enpo, corresponding to 1681 in the Western calendar, is the year in which Okada San'emon, the former Portuguese Jesuit priest Sebastian Rodrigues, died after more than thirty years of confinement in the Christian Residence in Edo. His death, recorded in meticulous official detail, closes the final chapter of a life that had moved from missionary fervor through capture, apostasy, and a long, ambiguous existence under the Tokugawa regime's watchful eye. The bureaucratic precision of the record—the listing of his age as sixty-four, the inventory of his remaining money, the cremation at Muryoin Temple, the assignment of a posthumous Buddhist name—stands in stark contrast to the spiritual turmoil that had defined his earlier years in Japan.

Life Under Surveillance

After his apostasy in the late 1630s, Rodrigues was given the Japanese name Okada San'emon and placed under the authority of Inoue, the Lord of Chikugo, who had orchestrated his fall. He was eventually moved to the Christian Residence in Edo, a facility designed to house and monitor former missionaries and prominent Japanese Christians who had renounced their faith. There he lived for thirty years, his existence circumscribed by constant guard, periodic interrogations, and the requirement to perform tasks for the magistrate's office, such as identifying forbidden Christian objects brought by foreign traders. The regime's suspicion never relaxed: even in his final years, the authorities compelled him to write a formal disavowal of Christianity, a task he undertook from June to July of the Ninth Year of Enpo at the Mountain Villa, attended by guards.

The Persistence of the Persecution System

The year of Rodrigues' death was also a year in which the Tokugawa apparatus for suppressing Christianity remained fully operational. The system of rewards for informers, codified in the announcement nailed to the main entrance of the Mountain Villa on 24 November of the Ninth Year of Enpo, offered three hundred pieces of silver for information leading to a priest, two hundred for a brother or a "retrovert," and one hundred for a catechist or lay Christian. This same structure had been in place since the height of the persecution, as evidenced by the earlier proclamation that anyone informing on a priest would receive three hundred pieces of silver. The threat of severe punishment extended not only to the informer's target but to the informer's family, relatives, and even the head of the locality and surrounding families, creating a web of mutual surveillance that made concealment nearly impossible.

Death and Official Closure

Okada San'emon died of illness at half past four in the afternoon on 25 July of the Ninth Year of Enpo. The official report, submitted to the Lord by the attending officers, noted that he had fallen ill at the beginning of the month, lost his appetite, and worsened despite medical treatment by the prison doctor Ishio Doteki. His belongings, sealed by the attendants and the Lord's managers, included thirteen ryo and three bu in small coins and five ryo in gold coins, totaling twenty-eight ryo and three bu. The corpse was cremated at Muryoin Temple in Koishikawa, with a priest named Genshu officiating. The posthumous Buddhist name given to him was Myusen Joshin Shinshi. The funeral expenses, including one ryo and two bu for the service and one hundred hiki for the cremation, were paid from the money he had left. The record, signed by a group of officers including Okuda Jiroemon, Ukai Gengoemon, Kawara Jingobe, Kawase Sobe, and Kayo Den'emon, was submitted to the inspectors on 26 July, closing the official account of a life that had once been dedicated to the propagation of a faith the regime had spent decades trying to eradicate.

The Irony of the Swamp

The Ninth Year of Enpo thus marks not only the physical death of Rodrigues but also the symbolic completion of a process Inoue had described years earlier: the swamp of Japan had absorbed the foreign sapling of Christianity, and the roots had been cut. Rodrigues, who had once dreamed of martyrdom and had agonized over the silence of God, ended his days as Okada San'emon, a Japanese name, a Japanese wife, a Japanese death, and a Buddhist funeral. The meticulous official record, with its inventory of coins and its bureaucratic formalities, is the final document of a life that had been stripped of its original meaning and repurposed by the state. Yet the very existence of the record, and the elaborate system of surveillance and punishment it reflects, testifies to the enduring fear that the Christian faith, however suppressed, might still find a way to take root again.