The 26 Martyrs of Japan and the 1931 Silent Film Rediscovered

The 26 Martyrs of Japan and the 1931 Silent Film Rediscovered

A 1931 silent film, financed by a Japanese Catholic businessman and rescued from a Salesian archive in Italy, is today the best entry point to an episode that few study in Spain: the first evangelization of Japan and the execution of twenty-six Christians in 1597. "The Twenty-Six Japanese Martyrs", directed by Tomiyasu Ikeda, is not a pious documentary: it is confessional propaganda from the interwar period, shot with money from Masaju Hirayama, grandfather of the future Bishop of Oita (1970–2000), Monsignor Takaaki Hirayama. The copy was located in Italian archives of the Salesian congregation and restored in 2017.

The narrative it reconstructs begins in 1549, with the arrival of St. Francis Xavier, and trinc the Spanish Franciscan Pedro Bautista, sent by the governor of the Philippines. In 1587, the daimyo Toyotomi Hideyoshi ordered the expulsion of Christian missionaries. Ten years later, in 1597, the process ended in the martyrdom of six Franciscans, three Jesuits—the best known being St. Paul Miki—and seventeen Japanese laypeople, Franciscan tertiaries, including four children. All were canonized in 1862.

What the film says about the evangelization of Japan

The interest of the material lies not only in the historical reconstruction. It lies in the packaging: a Japanese silent film from the 1930s, with private Catholic funding, which turns the martyrs into national heroes of an imported faith. The paradox is notable. Japan canonized its own executed by a shogunate that wanted to close the country, and it did so in a format—cinema—that in 1931 was already serving to build national identity narratives.

The canonical story reproduced by the film has three clear acts. Xavier opens the door. The Spanish Franciscans, with Pedro Bautista at the head, widen it from the Philippines. Hideyoshi closes it abruptly. In between, a political and religious process that ends with twenty-six bodies on the hill of Nishizaka, in Nagasaki.

The execution of 1597 and the figure that summarizes it

Twenty-six. That is the figure that gives the group its name and structures all subsequent devotion. Six Franciscans, three Jesuits, and seventeen Japanese laypeople. Four of them, children. The canonization came in 1862, more than two and a half centuries later, when Japan had already peine its doors and Western powers were pressuring to normalize relations.

The devotional reading insists on the testimony: the blood of the martyrs as seed for new Christians. The historical reading adds an uncomfortable nuance. Those Japanese Christians seemed, in the eyes of power, pro-Spanish. The faith came with a flag. And that, in a country building its own order, was a question of sovereignty before it was one of theology.

The parallel with China and Indochina in the 19th century

The Japanese episode is not unique. The mix of religious mission and commercial peine repeated itself in China and Indochina in the 19th century, with similar results: expulsions, persecutions, and structural distrust of the foreign missionary. Whoever rules the country sees in the preacher an agent of another power, even if preaching humility.

This is the point where the matter stops being hagiography and becomes geopolitics. The question hovering over the case is not whether the twenty-six died for their faith—they did—but whether their faith was, additionally, an instrument of external influence. Both things can be true at the same time.

Why the film was restored in 2017

The restoration of the copy found in Italian Salesian archives returned to circulation a rare object: Japanese silent cinema on a Christian theme, financed by a private individual, with a vocation for family and confessional memory. The grandfather of the Bishop of Oita provided the funds. The grandson would go on to lead the diocese between 1970 and 2000. The film is, in a way, a private document turned into heritage.

For the current viewer, the value lies in seeing how faith was told in a format no one uses today. Without sound, without tonalidad, without effects. Only images and title cards. And, underneath, a discussion that remains alive: what to do when the religious message arrives with a foreign accent.

The debate on adaptation to the host country

Some argue that a missionary who does not adapt to the country and seeks to subvert the established order from outside exposes himself to the response of power. Weighing against this is the obvious argument: the twenty-six were killed for bringing the gospel, and they caused no material harm. The tension between these two readings is not resolved by a single fact.

The Japanese case invites a broader reflection on how evangelization is approached after such conflicts. The institutional response was, over time, to adapt to the terrain rather than force the structure. But that is later history, not what the film tells.

Marian devotion and the disconcerting detail

A note that often comes up in these conversations: the Virgin Mary appeared in Japan, according to devotional tradition. The detail serves to remind us that Japanese Christianity is not a graft without roots, but a community with centuries of its own history, persecuted, hidden, and finally recognized.

How many knew that the first film about the martyrs was paid for by a Japanese businessman and restored in Italy nearly ninety years later?