Joaquim Magalhães de Castro
Much of the knowledge of the Ainu people and their traditions is due to the writings of Jesuit missionaries in the early 17th century, with official credit of the “first European” to visit the island being given to the Sicilian Jesuit Jerónimo de Angelis.
He arrived there in 1618 – that is, almost half a century after the passing of João da Gama and his men – and during his ten days of stay he drew up an interesting map of the region, which we will talk about later.
After the usual route – Lisbon, Goa, Malacca – in Macau, Angelis studied for twelve months, then, in 1602, he went to Japan where he stayed for eight years, in the mission in Fushimi, south of Kyoto, being then in charge of a new mission in Sumpu (now Shizuoka), together with Edo (Tokyo), the operational center of the Tokugawa Hidetada shogunate.
In 1614 the fierce persecution of the Christians in Japan began; in the next ten years, the evangelizing work of decades will crumble and will force the disbandment of the majority of the missionaries. There were those who chose to stay, clandestinely, like Jerónimo de Angelis. In 1615 we will see him in northern Japan, where Christianity was still tolerated, participating in the Tohoku mission led by Franciscan Luis Sotelo. In times of persecution, and in the name of a common goal, the religious orders put aside the usual rivalries…
The Spanish Friar, after four years of learning Japanese in Manila, had left for the Land of the Rising Sun and there he had fallen into the good graces of the feudal lord Date Masamune, who tolerated proselytism and allowed his subjects to adopt a new faith should they will. He even expressed this tolerance in a decree applicable to the entire Sendai region, where his domains extended. Needless to say, the conversions were a success, although it was not long before the anti-Christian edict spread northwards, sending the priests underground.
Hard were the conditions of life; the paths were terrible, there were many robbers in the mountains, the geography was rugged, but the missionaries never refused requests for assistance from these isolated Christendoms, whether they came from mountain neophytes or from miners established in the deep valleys.
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