(LifeSiteNews) — Among the dozens of executive orders signed by President Donald Trump so far, “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias” is the most spiritually far-reaching. Trump issued the order “to protect the religious freedoms of Americans and end the anti-Christian weaponization of government” on February 6.
That happened to be the feast day of St. Paul Miki and Companions, the Twenty-Six Martyrs of Japan who were crucified in Nagasaki in 1597. Their martyrdom marked the decisive turn from tolerance and even support for Christianity on the part of the country’s military rulers to persecution and the eventual outlawing of the faith.
The abrupt shift regarding religion under Trump is unfolding in the opposite direction.
President Joe Biden called himself a devout Catholic but aggressively promoted abortion, homosexuality, and transgenderism at home and abroad. His FBI pushed to investigate traditional Catholics but ignored hundreds of attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers and Catholic churches. Peaceful pro-life advocates were dragged from their homes at gunpoint and sentenced to long prison terms.
Kamala Harris as president would have been even worse, judging by her track record of anti-Catholicism. Christians find themselves suddenly in favor with the reelection of Trump, whose Republican administration is well-stocked with Catholics in top posts.
A single presidential election, however, will not halt the ongoing de-Christianization of the United States. The Democratic Party will eventually regain power, and Catholics will again face government pressure not to practice their faith in its fullness.
That’s when the example of another Japanese martyr, Blessed Takayama Ukon, will be most needed.
The powerful “Christian samurai” renounced all worldly riches and honor in 1587 instead of denying his faith. A pillar of the Church in Japan, Takayama influenced the conversion of tens of thousands of Japanese Catholics until he was exiled to the Philippines, where he died of a “tropical ailment” on February 3, 1615.
Takayama was beatified during a Mass in Osaka, Japan, in 2017. Pope Francis declared Takayama to be a martyr the previous year because his death soon after arriving in Manila was caused by the mistreatment he suffered in his homeland, and he had renounced everything for Jesus Christ. Takayama thus skipped the “venerable” stage of the canonization process and is now one step away from full sainthood.
It was reported in 2023 that the Vatican is investigating miracles associated with the intercession of Blessed Takayama Ukon and one may be confirmed “within the next year or two.”
The history below is taken mainly from “A Filipino Movement for the Canonization of Blessed Justo Takayama Ukon,” the website of the Manila-based Lord Takayama Jubilee Foundation.
Takayama was born in a village near Osaka in 1552 during Japan’s Warring States period, marked by social upheaval and political instability. St. Francis Xavier had brought Christianity to Japan in 1549 and left the country in 1551, dying on an island off the coast of China the same year Takayama was born.
Takayama’s father was a fervent Buddhist and feudal lord, or daimyo, with limited wealth but good political connections. He was converted to Catholicism along with his family after an encounter with a half-blind former biwahosi, or traveling storyteller, who had been baptized by Xavier himself.
Eldest son Takayama Ukon was baptized by an Italian Jesuit at age 12, and he would retain strong ties to the Jesuits for the rest of his life. His baptismal name of Justo means just or fair in Portuguese.
Takayama survived an assassination attempt against him and his father in 1573. An expert in sword combat like all samurai, Takayama inflicted a mortal blow on the primary aggressor but was seriously wounded himself. The incident deepened Takayama’s Christian faith and put him in control of the fief of Takatsuki as a 21-year-old daimyo.
Takayama proceeded to promote Christianity in Takatsuki and other domains whenever possible. He hosted Jesuit missionaries, built some 20 churches and oratories, and helped found the seminary where St. Paul Miki studied. Around 18,000 of Takatsuki’s 25,000 residents became Christians, even as Takayama earned a reputation as an exceptional battlefield strategist in the service of Japan’s military regime. He also became known as a master of the tea ceremony.
Christians continued to increase in number and influence across much of the country, eventually leading top general Toyotomi Hideyoshi to view the religion as a foreign-directed political threat. After serving as a member of Toyotomi’s personal guard during the ruler’s successful invasion of Kyushu, Takayama was presented with a stark choice in 1587: either renounce his Catholic faith or forfeit all his possessions and status within Japanese society.
Takayama, then 35 and a husband and father, chose his faith. He devoted the next several years to prayer and apostolic activity in Osaka and Kyoto, with sympathetic daimyo providing for his family’s basic needs.
When local Christians were rounded up by authorities in January 1597, prior to being forcibly marched to Nagasaki for crucifixion, Takayama headed the initial list of believers to be executed. He was spared that fate thanks to highly placed allies who wanted to avoid public violence against the former feudal lord, still one of Japan’s best-known Christians.
The Tokugawa shogunate formally outlawed Christianity in 1614, ordering the expulsion of foreign missionaries and the destruction of churches. Some 300 Christians were exiled to the Spanish colony of the Philippines that November. Among the beleaguered group were more than 100 Japanese nobles, including Takayama and his wife, daughter, and five grandsons aged eight to sixteen.
The voyage took 44 days to reach Manila, four times the normal duration, due to the ship’s poor condition and storms, including a typhoon that snapped its main mast off the coast of Bataan. The Spanish governor-general’s warship was sent out to tow the exiles’ ship into port a few days before Christmas. The passengers were sick and starving, and a Portuguese Jesuit priest had died at sea.
Takayama was welcomed as a hero and treated as a VIP by the Spanish civil and religious leaders. Having been mentioned in nearly a dozen Jesuit books about the Japanese missions, he was recognized as a courageous defender of Catholicism and for his personal holiness rooted in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Pope Sixtus V had even written a letter to Takayama in 1590 after he had been stripped of his wealth and position, encouraging him to persevere in the faith.
Takayama fell ill six weeks after his arrival in Manila, received Last Rites, and died surrounded by his family on February 3, 1615. He was 63 and had spent nearly half his life under religious persecution. His final words were an exhortation to his grandchildren to remain steadfast Christians.
The governor-general of the Philippines accorded Takayama a state funeral with full military honors. Next came nine days of Requiem Masses in the churches of various religious orders in Intramuros, the walled portion of Manila that was the center of Spanish colonial power. His body was then interred near the high altar of Santa Ana Church in Intramuros, alongside prominent Jesuit fathers superior.
The Archbishop of Manila presented a petition for the canonization of Takayama to the Vatican in 1630, a mere 15 years after he was “born to heaven.” But the cause could not be pursued because Japan sealed itself off from the outside world from 1633 to 1853, a policy intended to permanently eradicate Christianity. That made the collection of needed documentation impossible.
The current push for Takayama’s sainthood stems from the submission by the Japanese bishops’ conference in 2013 of a 400-page application to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. It is the first time in Japanese Church history for a cause to be considered individually. Japan’s 42 saints and other 394 blesseds have been processed by the Vatican as group martyrs in four batches, beginning with the beatification of the Twenty-Six Martyrs in 1627.
On February 7, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba visited the White House and gave President Trump a golden samurai helmet as a gift, due to the popularity of the “Shogun” television series. There was no mention of Blessed Takayama Ukon, although Ishiba is among the one percent of Japanese who are Christians today.
The example of Japan’s would-be samurai saint, and his intercession, will be required when government hostility toward Christianity inevitably returns.
Robert Jenkins is a pseudonym for a Catholic writer living in Sacramento, California.