THE YOUNG FOLKS.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 2715, 30 January 1892, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE YOUNG FOLKS.

CHRISTIAN CONVERTS CAST INTO BOILING SULPHUR SPRINGS. A correspondent of the Timesvrrites :—“Every visitor to the beautiful harbour of Nagasaki, in the south of the Japanese peninsula, is shown, as the steamer moves slowly up to the anchorage beneath the foreign settlement, the lofty rock of Pappenberg, near tho entrance, with one enormous cliff descending sheer for some hundreds of feet into deep water, and in external appearance not unlike the huge cliff known as Gallantry Bower, near Clove Hy. From the top of this cliff, the traveller is told in every book referring to the subject, thousands of Christian converts were cast into the sea or dashed to pieces in the fall during the bloody persecutions about the middle of the seventeenth century, and the place has therefore acquired a gloomy notoriety all over the world. It appears now, however, that Pappenberg had nothing to do with this tragedy. Dr. Riess, a professor in the University of Tokio, has recently investigated the course of the Christian rebellion in Shimbara in Southern Japan in 1637-8, one of the most interesting episodes in the history of European relations with Japan. It was after the 'suppression of this rebellion that the executions at Pappenberg are alleged to have taken place. In a paper read before the German Asiatic Society of Japan, Dr. Riess shows that the rock was not used for the purpose; no mention of it is made in any of the contemporary records, and, seeing what the course of the rebellion was, it would have been absurd to have dragged the prisoners there. What happened, however, was far worse, though tbe scene was different. Shiinabara is a_ peninsula near Nagasaki, the interior of which is occupied by a volcanic mountain-mass called Onsen, which is said to have one of the largest craters in the world, and which is about4,3ooft. high. Its slopes and base are full of boiling sulphur springs in a constant state of effervescence. The frightful persecutions of the Christians in the peninsula, which led to the rebellion are referred to by Dr. Riess: 44 * The new Lord of Shimabara,’ he says, 4 Matsukura Shigemasu, and Matsukura Shigetsugu, who succeeded him in 1630, are held up in the reports of Christian eye-witnesses as exceptionally cruel persecutors of their Christian subjects. Tho peninsula became the scene of an organised inquisition; with the noblest of martyrs lor its ever-persiatent confessors of faith. Pages .has carefully reproduced the pathetic martyrologies _ of these heroes from the reports of the fugitives who gave evidence before the Commission _of Missionaries established at Macao and Manila. I have selected but one, the most noteworthy, of these torturings, and that which exacted the greatest number of victims, as an example. In this case the zealous Christians were led to Onsen, one of the massive rock barriers that precipitously overhang the ever-seething sulphur springs, and from thence were hurled into the boiling depths below. Japanese sources coincide with the missionary reports that this was a form of execution most commonly employed, and that it remained in use a long period. The irony suggested by the name, in that those who awaited heaven should be cast into depths known as the “nethermost hell” (Oii-go-ku—literally, greatest hell), gave thi9 method of inflicting punishment a special charm in the eyes of the persecutors.”