Yokoseura

Yokoseura (横瀬浦) is a port located at the northern tip of the Nishisonogi Peninsula on the Japanese island of Kyushu, administratively under Saikai city, Nagasaki Prefecture.

[4] The daimyō of Hirado, Matsura Takanobu, was initially accommodative to the missionaries due to their association with the Portuguese traders,[5] but turned hostile once he felt they overdid their evangelization by burning books and destroying Buddhist images.

In addition, he would let the Jesuits build a church there, make Yokoseura exempt from taxes for ten years, and forbid non-Christians to stay there.

He adorned himself in Christian symbols in place of his traditional familial emblem, razed Buddhist temples, and burned the spirit tablet of his adoptive father Sumisaki.

Having lost the military backing of Sumitada, the situation in Yokoseura became insecure, and the Japanese merchants decided to leave the town on the morning of August 18.

[17] To make that point clear, they abducted the sickly Cosme de Torres and Luís Fróis and tried to use the priests to blackmail the Portuguese into trading in Bungo.

Matsura Takanobu, the daimyō of Hirado, sent a fleet to destroy this new anchorage to protect his own mercantile interests, but it was repelled by the Portuguese in the battle of Fukuda Bay.

[20] The former inhabitants of Yokoseura were moved to Nagasaki,[21] and from 1571 onward the Portuguese traders focused their activities there, turning it into the hub of Japan's foreign trade and its window to the West until the 19th century.

The Yokoseura Historical Park (横瀬浦史跡公園) was completed in 2003, with structures within it built according to Alessandro Valignano's principles for building churches in Japan.