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Biography

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Simon Yempo was a Japanese Catholic of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries who became a member of the Society of Jesus and was put to death for his faith during the persecutions of the Tokugawa period. Prior to his conversion he had lived as a Buddhist monk, a circumstance noted in contemporary missionary accounts. After embracing Christianity he attached himself to the Jesuit mission that had been established in Japan following the arrival of Francis Xavier in the mid-sixteenth century. He was received into the Society of Jesus as a brother and thereafter worked as a catechist, assisting priests in the instruction of converts and in the pastoral care of existing Christian communities at a time when the Church in Japan still enjoyed a measure of tolerance in certain domains.

The political climate changed dramatically after the establishment of Tokugawa rule. Beginning with edicts issued in the 1610s, Christianity was prohibited, missionaries were expelled or forced into hiding, and Japanese Christians were subjected to increasing pressure to apostatize. Simon Yempo remained with the underground mission, accompanying Jesuit priests who traveled in disguise. In 1623 he was arrested in the region of the shogunal capital together with the Italian Jesuit Girolamo de Angelis and the Spanish Franciscan Francisco Gálvez. The three were conveyed to Edo.

On 4 December 1623 they were executed by being burned at the stake. Their deaths formed part of a larger public spectacle of repression, sometimes called the Great Martyrdom of Edo, in which a considerable number of Christians of various ages and states of life were put to death. The method of execution and the choice of the capital were intended to demonstrate the shogunate’s determination to eradicate the forbidden religion.

Simon Yempo was among the large group of Japanese martyrs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who were beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1867. He is therefore honored in the Catholic Church as Blessed Simon Yempo. Surviving documentation of his life is limited; it derives chiefly from Jesuit letters and from later compilations of the acts of the Japanese martyrs. An exact year and place of birth are not securely established in the historical record, and many personal details remain unknown.

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