February 5: The new Japanese government in 1597 ordered the murder of Japanese Christians because they considered it a threat to Japanese society.

                 St. Paul Miki & his companions, Martyrs (+ 1597) - Memorial

The term "Kurisuchan" comes from Portuguese cristão, because the Portuguese wehere who introduced Christianity to Japan. Portuguese missionaries were called "bateren" or "fathers" and sometimes called them "Iruman" in Portuguese "irmão".

A EUROPEAN ENGRAVING OF 26 MARTYRS who were crucified in Nagasaki, Japan in 1597.

The Portuguese ships began arriving in Japan in 1543 with the mission to indoctrinate the Japanese and induce the Catholic religion in order to stop them being brutal and heartless heretics. The first missionaries were the Franciscans and the Dominicans. Then came the Spanish Jesuit Francisco Xavier (Pattern Xaverian) who came with Cosme de Torres and Father Juan Fernández, who arrived at the port of Kogoshima, with a mission to indoctrinate Japanese.

The Christian martyrs of Nagasaki . 16-17th-century Japanese painting.

The Jesuits, under the leadership of Francisco Xavier, managed to indoctrinate over 300,000 Japanese with Christian dogmas.

The reasons for persecution of Christians in Japan are complex, but the government feared that missionaries and converts were stalking horses for European conquerors to subjugate Japan. The first victims, six Franciscan friars and 20 converts, were crucified in Nagasaki in 1597; by 1630 Christians were driven underground, yet they persisted in the faith for centuries until contact was reestablished.

1597 A group of Japanese Christians were killed by the new government for being seen as a threat to Japanese society: The Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan.


The first Martyrs of Japan were canonized in 1862. They are commemorated on February 5 when, on that date in 1597, twenty-six missionaries and converts were killed by crucifixion. Two hundred and fifty years later, when Christian missionaries returned to Japan, they found a community of Japanese Christians that had survived underground.