Statue commemorating Takayama Justo
Ping!
Ping!
For some perspective, this is/was the end period of the Ashikaga shogunate, an era of relative weak central power. Local lords (daimyo) and their retainers had more power but by this timeframe that brought more internecine war. The introduction of guns (arquebuses) & impetus for Christianity, by the Portuguese and other non-Japanese, threatened major societal upset in Japan. Some families, like the Takayama Clan, favored or adopted Christianity while others reviled it for upsetting Buddhist & Shinto traditions.
The latter ‘won’ and the results was a closed Japan until the 1800s with the final opening made famous by the US naval expedition of Commodore Matthew Perry in 1852-4 which led to the end of the feudal period and the Meiji Revolution.
This ‘period’ of Japanese history was brought to ‘recent’ prominence in the 1980s by author James Clavell’s book “Shogun” and the subsequent video adaptation.
What an inspiring story. The Japanese nation can be very proud.