When Christian missionaries returned to Japan 250 years later, they found a community of "hidden Catholics" that had survived underground.

[1] On September 29, St. Francis Xavier visited Shimazu Takahisa, the daimyō of Kagoshima, asking for permission to build the first Catholic mission in Japan.

The shogunate and the imperial government at first supported the Catholic mission and the missionaries, thinking that they would reduce the power of the Buddhist monks and help trade with Spain and Portugal.

[3] In the aftermath of the San Felipe incident of 1596,[4] 26 Catholics – four Spaniards, one Mexican, one Portuguese from India (all of whom were Franciscan missionaries), three Japanese Jesuits, and 17 Japanese members of the Third Order of St. Francis, including three young boys who served as altar boys for the missionary priests – were arrested, on the orders of Hideyoshi, in January 1597.

The Church remained without clergy and theological teaching disintegrated until the arrival of Western missionaries in the 19th century.

The Martyrs of Japan were canonized by the Catholic Church on June 8, 1862, by Pope Pius IX,[8] and are listed on the calendar as Sts.