.

Sicilian Samurai

circa 1700

He made a startling, militant request
To journey to Japan—strange land long closed
To foreign influence. The Pope’s behest
Asked that authorities be unopposed—
But how to know, if not to make the test?

Giovanni Battista Sidotti, thirty-five,
Saw Africa and India in a year,
Went onward to Manila, where he’d strive
Four years with exiled Japanese to hear
Good counsel that might help his boldness thrive.

He paid to build a boat, “The Trinity,”
And hired some fearful sailors who would leave
Him lone in samurai temerity
At midnight on the shoreline to achieve
A worthy goal for Christianity.

His smile and sword and topknot met the gaze
Of Tobei, from an inland village come,
Who fed and housed the stranger for ten days,
Admired his treasured Virgin of the Thumb,
And marveled at his Mass to give God praise.

Arrested. No endeavor could assuage
Suspicion the officials had of him;
A Dutch translator may have stoked their rage.
Sidotti from that prison interim
Was lugged to Edo in a wicker cage.

Released, his stiffened body could not stand—
But at the Christian Mansion, he was tended
By elderly Chosuke and Haru. Planned
Interrogation soon, they said, intended
To judge his aims in seeking out their land.

Giovanni nodded, Hakuseki bowed
At their momentous meeting duly crowned
With friendship foreordained, by both avowed,
As if a mirror gleamed with light through sound
Of noble converse they exchanged aloud.

They spoke across a long-outdated map,
Discussing science and philosophy;
Love lessened isolation’s knowledge gap,
Convinced the Japanese this embassy
Of epic travel was no hostile trap.

He would have parted with a cherished friend
And freed him, recommending deportation;
New learning in two books he later penned.
The Shogun, though, decreed incarceration
For life heroic holiness would end.

It’s not known when Sidotti saved two souls:
Three fearlessly professed God’s risen Son,
The priest and man and wife in unknown throes
Confirmed their Faith with triple martyrdom,
A tale retold by bones like buried scrolls.

Three centuries had passed when DNA
Almost too old to analyze revealed
The contours and complexion of the stray
Sicilian samurai who once appealed
At Rome to preach around the world halfway.

Why should he ever want to cross the sea?
Who guided him, whom did he influence?
What did he leave Japan as legacy?
How could he exercise benevolence?
Where sails he now in saintly buoyancy?

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Poet’s Note

Giovanni Battista Sidotti was born of noble stock at Palermo in 1668. There and at Rome he received an excellent education in mathematics and physics as well as philosophy and theology needed to become a priest. During the Jubilee Year 1700 he asked to be sent to Japan, closed to foreigners for over a century. In 1703 he rounded the Cape of Good Hope and traveled through India to arrive in the Philippines in 1704. In 1708, attired as a samurai, he landed at Yakushima, an island off southern Japan. Soon arrested, he was detained locally for ten months. A Dutchman who knew Latin, and was in Japan legally for trade, served as interpreter. Moved in 1709 to the seat of national government in Edo, Sidotti was held in an otherwise empty prison for Christians. There he had conversations with Arai Hakuseki, a scholar who described their interaction “as if a mirror filled with light in response to sound.” In 1714 it was discovered that Sidotti had baptized two servants assigned to him. He and the old couple were buried on the grounds of the Christian Mansion.

During construction in Tokyo in 2014, three human skeletons were found, one being that of a European male who died midlife. After further study, the relics were laid to rest in Tokyo’s Catholic cathedral. Since 1983, Yakushima has commemorated Sidotti’s landing with an annual festival. Islanders refer to the Tokara Strait on their south (connecting the Pacific Ocean with the East China Sea) as the “Sea of Sidotti.”

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Margaret Coats lives in California.  She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University.  She has retired from a career of teaching literature, languages, and writing that included considerable wrk in homeschooling for her own family and others.

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36 Responses

  1. LTC Roy E. Peterson

    That is an amazing story of an ancient, committed Christian told with your usual exceptional abilities. It seems miraculous how you continue to find such feats for your fine festival of words.

    Reply
  2. Margaret Coats

    Roy, thank you for your comment. I hope you and others will enter Sidotti’s name in a search for images of him, where you will certainly find good photos of the head statue created by Tokyo’s Museum of Science and History. The DNA I mention in the poem shows the “contours and complexion” of what he actually looked like.

    Reply
  3. Paul Freeman

    I’m a sucker for such adventurous tales. Thanks for one beyond the usual, Margaret.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks, Paul. There were epic difficulties along with epic distances in this story. But to me, the most unusual adventure was the friendship between Sidotti and Arai Hakuseki. We know it only from Hakuseki’s account, but I have called it “love” because the Japanese scholar clearly reveals a strong shared affinity between the two. Their conversations were a congenial yet unexpected adventure to both. The 16th century map of the world over which they talked still exists. I can imagine Sidotti showing his route to his amazed new friend.

      Reply
  4. Cynthia Erlandson

    Comparing the bones to buried scrolls is an ingenious touch, as is imagining him sailing somewhere “in saintly buoyancy”!

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks, Cynthia! Finding human skeletons (at a relatively recent level) is so rare in Japan (where cremation is the norm) that the mayor of Bunkyo ward in Tokyo immediately realized he had an intriguing mystery to be solved. It turned out to be a scroll that got more interesting with every step of investigation, just like unrolling a scroll to read it.

      And everything now known only brings up more questions, which is why I made that final stanza of why, who, whom, what, how, and where. The last question about where Sidotti sails asks about the spirit of the man at present, and I think we can agree his spirit moves where it will, in accord with God’s ineffable designs.

      Reply
  5. Yael

    Fascinating history in an amazing poem! I looked it up on the internet and found all kinds of interesting pictures and articles, thank you very much Margaret. I never knew anything about early Christian missionaries to Japan until today.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks for reading, Yael, and for letting me know about what you’ve learned. I’m glad to introduce Father Sidotti, who had learned from the experience of the first missionary to Japan, Francis Xavier who arrived in 1549. Xavier at first presented himself in evangelical poverty and humility, but this did NOT impress the Japanese. When Xavier changed tactics to “dress for success,” he was able to visit the emperor and win many more converts. That’s why Giovanni Battista Sidotti, arriving in 1708, came dressed in samurai robes with a sword. That was the style corresponding to his family’s noble status. Undoubtedly, the Japanese Christian exiles in the Philippines helped Sidotti to dress this way. He impressed the villagers at Yakushima, and in Edo he was treated as the equal of the scholarly official Arai Hakuseki. It was because of his noble rank that he was given the servants he converted. Thus it did help in his work–and even today, Sidotti is often pictured wearing an impressive sword at his side. It’s become his own special iconography, just like the topknot you see on the monument in the illustration for this post.

      Reply
      • Margaret Coats

        Yes! The home page at the Mission San Xavier del Bac site speaks of tourists and locals praying for the intercession of Saint Francis Xavier, and being answered. A first miracle there attributed to his intercession happened in the early 19th century. As well, an online search for Francis Xavier pilgrimage sites lists the Arizona mission among others.

  6. Phyllis Schabow

    “I have but one life to live. Let me live it as a Catholic!” Laying down one’s life for Christ always brings remarkable results – for years to come. Here we are, over 300 years later, being taught by Margaret that this one life, lived for Christ and shed for Christ, is still bearing fruit for heaven. Viva Christo Rey!

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Y la Virgen de Guadalupe! Or in Padre Sidotti’s case, La Madonna del Dito. Since the discovery of the relics (of all three martyrs) ten years ago, Sidotti and Chosuke and Haru have become a source of wonder (at the very least) to many. May they bear more fruit for heaven, as you say, Phyllis.

      Notice that the monument in the illustration includes (lower left from the portrait of Sidotti with samurai topknot) a picture labeled Our Lady of Yakushima. It is a similar pose to the Italian Virgin of the Thumb, but with praying hands fully uncovered. Looks like she is the patroness of the local church, which regards Sidotti as founder, though he spent only ten days among them. When Sidotti arrived, his luggage was the essentials for celebrating Mass, and a small picture of the Virgin of the Thumb, who must have been his patroness. That is one of three objects I mention in the poem that still exist (the others being the map and the cage).

      Many might consider Sidotti’s life and mission of little value. He died after a very few years, with only two known converts. But I end the poem with a Sicilian quintet of questions, because we know so little of his history, or of its eternal significance.

      Thanks for your inspiring reflection, Phyllis.

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, James. I’m glad you found the story well told. The discovery of the bones can bring history to life, according to a spokesman for the Tokyo museum that re-created Sidotti’s face. Arai Haruseki had been better known to history, because his books on European knowledge, relying on what he learned from Sidotti, began a slow transformation of Japanese thought. Now we have pictures of both men, and can visualize them discussing Newton’s mechanics and optics, among other topics current at their time, and still important to us!

      Reply
  8. Warren Bonham

    I don’t know how you keep coming up with these amazing and inspirational stories but keep them coming. We need stories like Sidotti’s to survive to provide examples of lives well lived. As always, you told this story incredibly well.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Warren. It will be difficult to come up with many others as fascinating and inspirational as this. I do favor telling of lives well lived, and they are often the most interesting because of challenges overcome through determined effort and correspondence with grace.

      Reply
  9. Brian A. Yapko

    This is a particularly wonderful poem, Margaret, both for its careful poetic craftsmanship and for the amazing story that you share with us — a story I think you are introducing to many of us for the very first time. Thank you for that. The character of Sidotti is well-presented — a man of extraordinary faith — a faith which makes compels him to prosletyze even unto martyrdom. The very idea of going to Japan 150 years before Perry is astounding.

    Under other circumstances someone like Sidotti would be made a saint — but his is a story most people don’t even know. This makes one wonder how many other potential saints have quietly, unobtrusively passed under the radar without recognition. Well, God sees everything. I recently watched a remake of James Clavell’s “Shogun” (set 100 years earlier than your poem) told almost entirely from the Japanese point of view and it was riveting in depicting the beauty — and extraordinary danger — of Japan in those days. It was essentially certain death for a Westerner. To volunteer for such an assignment is extraordinary.

    Your narrative pacing is strong and I especially like your sense of time as you go from the 300 year-old story and then fast-forward to the present when you discuss his remains and the DNA results.

    Your poem has become part of the story, Margaret. You rescue this important man from oblivion and then send forth his inspiring history out into the world where you have no idea who you might touch emotionally or whose actions you might affect. Mustard seeds indeed. Can poetry be used for any nobler purpose?

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Brian, these last words in your comment touch me deeply. I will reply to the rest of wonderful reflections later, God willing.

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Brian, thank you again for your response. When you marvel at a Westerner wanting to enter Japan in 1700, so do I in my final stanza’s question, “Why should he ever want to cross the sea?” Much is unattested, but I heard that Sidotti was inspired by the missionary labors of Francis Xavier. More than 150 years earlier, Xavier wrote to well-educated Europeans, begging some to join him in Asia, and accusing them of “having more learning than charity.” Sidotti was one who could feel that sting. As you say, he proved to be a man of great faith, with charity as well for those who were closed off from Christ. Japan may have seemed the least inviting but therefore the most needful place to go. I also think the wonders of the Jubilee in Rome, celebrating 1700 years since the birth of Jesus, may have motivated Sidotti to offer himself as apostle, lest another century go by, and souls be lost unnecessarily.

      You wonder why Sidotti is not recognized as a saint. His story was long unknown, and as you say is little known today. Knowledge and admiration of him are spreading slowly, with Yakushima just now in the process of building a museum. As well, information about the major event of the martyrdom is either lacking or contradictory. All that is certain is that in 1714 the servants Chosuke and Haru were found to be Christian, their religion was blamed on Sidotti, and all three were killed. Probably the two Japanese were required to take a test that involved treading on a flat bronze image of the Madonna and Child. These exist throughout Japan, worn smooth from tens of thousands of feet passing over them. But what happened after Chosuke and Haru refused? When I first read the story, it said they and Sidotti were buried alive. But as I discovered in preparing to write this poem, there is nothing documented. Was Arai Hakuseki out of favor, or had he moved on to another position, not knowing of his friend’s danger? The result is several imaginative but irreconcilable accounts. That’s why, in the poet’s note above, I say only what we do know: they were buried. Sidotti was buried in a casket. Yet even with its protection, the lower bones of one side of his face were missing when discovered. There could have been a brutal beating, with broken jaw, teeth, and cheekbone, before whatever actually killed him. Or he could have been buried then re-buried to cause the loss of bones.

      These are the kinds of things an investigation for canonization wants to know. I have edited the preliminary biography for a canonization process. Every minute detail matters–most especially the emotions shown by the dying man. With Sidotti and Chosuke and Haru, we have only the barest fact that death resulted from the Christianity of the two Japanese becoming known. The process would have to be taken up by a diocese willing to carry it on for more than one enthusiastic person’s lifetime. Maybe that is already begun, by Tokyo or Nagasaki or Manila, where Sidotti is honored for the work he did there as well as for the mission to Japan.

      God sees everything, and there certainly are many in heaven of whom we know little or nothing. It does seem providential that more has become intelligible recently in Sidotti’s case!

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Brian, while I hope that the “noble purpose” of poetry that you notice here may take effect, there is another practical purpose that it already serves. I spoke above about why Sidotti’s formal canonization as a saint is unlikely, but there is another path to sainthood, known in the Church as “popular cult.” My poem, honoring Sidotti and his companions as martyrs, is evidence for popular cult of them as such, which could ultimately become “accepted cult,” when combined with other such evidence of veneration and accepted by Church authority. This, working up from the devotion of the people, could someday allow Sidotti to have a church dedicated to him and the Mass for a martyr to be used in his honor. At that point a proper Mass for him, with texts selected or written for him as a saintly individual, could be composed and authorized for use. That too would be a wonderful growth from mustard seeds!

      Reply
  10. Shamik Banerjee

    I’m impressed by your historical knowledge, Margaret, and am beginning to take more interest in the accounts of such personalities. Your note helped me in the understanding of this piece. The language is academic, the poem is beautifully put together, and I learnt two new words: temerity and topknot. Many thanks for this.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Many thanks in return, Shamik. I very much value your attentive reading and your comment. Poems like this, about an unknown but admirable person, usually need a note. If I had put all the information in the poem rather than in a note, it would have been twice as long, and more troublesome to read. Glad you think it is beautifully put together.

      Reply
  11. Daniel Kemper

    The sword of the spirit, indeed! What an awesome story. I’m going to recommend it to a lifelong army friend and ex-ranger, a Catholic warrior in all the finest ways. Isn’t it mysterious how Christianity advances with the loss or Christian blood, and mundanity retreats with the taking of others’ blood?

    I very much liked that the story did not neglect preparation, nor the ability to find bridges, nor the implication that the Word of God is strong enough by itself without thinking of tactics all the time.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      That’s right, Daniel. I’ve heard the expression that we must set our sails. then row, row, row, until the wind of the Spirit decides to blow and move the boat faster than we could have imagined. Preparation in this story seemed to be delay or distraction at times. In Manila, Sidotti was able to learn much from Japanese in exile, but his assigned task was to establish a seminary which still exists. It has supplied priests for centuries to the largest Christian population in Asia. Still, Japan was in his heart, and after those same centuries of seeming failure, he is at present earning respect for himself in Japan and an ability to influence for Christ the descendants of those who did not hear him.

      Thanks for your response, and still more for recommending the poem to that Catholic warrior friend. Hope he likes it too!

      Reply
  12. Maria

    Dear Margaret, thank you for this awesome poem that has led me to read a Japanese newspaper and reading about facial reconstruction amongst other things.
    It is not the first time either that your poems have led to more historical research and knowledge of other countries. But most of all your poems and your interests on lives well led are beacons of light in what is becoming an increasingly darker world. Thank you for this amazing much needed boost.
    You have taught me to look around me for more positivity and to try to resist the bombardment of negativity we have from the mainstream media. Or at least to try to rise above it more by having more faith. Needed now more than ever.
    Dear Margaret thank you.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Maria, thank you for taking time to read, and being so kind as to find a “beacon of light” here in a life well lived. Let me assure you that recognition from you and others is important, as is the further discussion I am able to have with commentors about the subject. Your encouragement helps me go on. I too look around for positivity and faith in stories like this one, of a man who found a friend in the simple Tobei on a lonely beach at midnight, then another friend of his own rank in the scholar Arai Hakuseki. Both friendships of short duration, but how cheering they must have been, even before Sidotti was able to convey saving faith and sacraments to two others who died with him. His determination is exemplary indeed. Thank you for your faraway friendship, and for showing it in your appreciation for my poems and the poems of other writers here.

      Reply
  13. don Mario Torcivia

    Dear Professor, my name is Don Mario Torcivia, I am a priest from Palermo (Sicily) as well as the Postulator of the Cause of beatification of Sidoti, Chosuke and Haru, which began in 2019 and is based on the recognition of martyrdom. I’m currently writing the Positio. I stumbled upon your poem by chance and would like to thank you. Can I ask you to kindly write to me about how your interest in Sidoti began? Thank you. D. Mario Torcivia

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, reverend father, for your attention, and for the great work you have done in gathering material on these highly significant and inspirational martyrdoms. I am very glad to hear that the process for canonization has begun. I will write to you when the moderator for the Society of Classical Poets gives me the address you used to post this comment. I have told him of your request. Meanwhile I can say that my interest in these Servants of God began when I lived in Kyoto for four and a half years, at different periods beginning in 1982. I was a parishioner at the cathedral and later at Saint Viateur (Viator in Latin) near Kyoto University.

      Reply
  14. don Mario Torcivia

    Dear Professor, I am writing again because I have read the readers’ comments and your responses and I would like to give you some clarifications. The Cause is promoted, in concert with the Archdiocese of Tokyo and with the approval of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, by the Archdiocese of Palermo. Regarding the news on Sidoti, on his trip to Japan, on the period spent in the Philippines, on the relationship with Arai, on his death and on the many sources that speak about him, I would like to refer you to Sidoti’s biography written by me in 2017 and translated in Japanese in 2019. D. Mario Torcivia

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you again, for telling me of the biography you wrote! I am sure it has much more information than I have found. If it is available to the public, I would like to read it in Italian, and hope the title can be shown here. I have recently received your address from our moderator, and will contact you soon.

      Reply
      • don Mario Torcivia

        Mario Torcivia, Giovanni Battista Sidoti. Missionario e martire in Giappone, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli 2017.

  15. Tom Rimer

    Margaret, as I wrote to you privately a few days ago, you produced a really strong and accomplished narrative poem that not only leads the reader through the extraordinary events of Sidotti’s life while creating at the same time strong impressions both of his character and his spirituality. And as I indicated, his story is so rich in overtones, both historical and psychological, that I can imagine other sorts of poems about him as well, among them an artistic imagining of how he responded to the sights and sounds of the Japan he found, and after such an extended effort to get there. How grand it would be to have a whole series of poems about this fascinating figure.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Tom, thank you! I agree about the fascination of the subject. In fact, that’s one reason why I ended the poem with an array of questions. Your suggestion already has me thinking, and maybe I can put further thought into poetic form. I’ll let you know if I do. As well, there is the book cited above by Don Mario Torcivia, with far more information than I had while composing my poem posted here. And unlike a biography required for a canonization process, his is openly published as a work of general interest. I’m sure it includes a great deal more that could inspire poetry in several languages, whether from the historical or the spiritual point of view. There must have been some in Japanese during the ten years since God and circumstances brought Sidotti into more distinct light.

      Reply

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