A seventeen-year-old Dominican novice martyred at Nagasaki in 1633 during Japan’s most severe anti-Christian persecution.

Saint Matthaeus Kohyōe was a Japanese novice of the Dominican order, martyred at Nishizaka in Nagasaki, Japan, on October 19, 1633, at only seventeen years of age. His death came during the height of the Tokugawa shogunate’s persecution of Christianity, when converts and missionaries alike faced execution for practicing the faith. He was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1987 among a group of martyrs of Japan.

Quick Facts

• Born: Japan, c. 1616
• Died: October 19, 1633, Nishizaka, Nagasaki, Japan (age 17)
• Venerated as: Dominican novice and martyr
• Canonized: 1987 by Pope John Paul II

Who Was Saint Matthaeus Kohyōe?

As a novice of the Order of Preachers, Matthaeus Kohyōe had entered formation for religious life within the underground Japanese Catholic community that persisted after Christianity was outlawed by the shogunate in the early seventeenth century. His youth — he was still a teenager at his death — did not spare him from the execution ground at Nishizaka, the site outside Nagasaki where the shogunate carried out many of its most notorious executions of Christians.

Historical Setting

By the 1630s, Japan’s Tokugawa government had moved from restricting Christianity to actively hunting it down, closing the country to most foreign contact and using torture and execution to force apostasy from converts and to eliminate the remaining missionary clergy and their Japanese collaborators. Nagasaki, long the center of Japanese Catholic life, became the principal site of this persecution, and Nishizaka in particular the recurring scene of its executions.

Why the Church Remembers Saint Matthaeus Kohyōe

The Church remembers Matthaeus Kohyōe as one of many young Japanese Catholics who chose death over apostasy during a persecution notable for its severity and duration. His youth makes his witness especially striking: a novice barely out of boyhood who held to his vocation and his faith under the same threat of torture and execution faced by adult missionaries and lay converts.

Canonization and Feast Day

Matthaeus Kohyōe was beatified in 1981 and canonized in 1987 by Pope John Paul II, together with fifteen other martyrs of Japan, following the customary investigation into their deaths.

What Catholics Can Learn Today

His witness speaks especially to the young: holiness and courage are not reserved for adulthood, and a genuine vocation, once given, can be held firm even against the gravest threats. Catholics can take from his example confidence that youth is no obstacle to real spiritual depth and real courage.

A Prayer to Saint Matthaeus Kohyōe

Saint Matthaeus Kohyōe, you held fast to your vocation and your faith though you were still young in years. Pray for young people finding their own calling today, that they may have courage equal to yours, and that we may all remain faithful under trial. Amen.

Sources

• Vatican.va, biography prepared for the canonization of the Martyrs of Japan (1987)
• Roman Martyrology (Martyrologium Romanum)
• New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia (newadvent.org)