Igor’s Reviews > Christ's Samurai: The True Story of the Shimabara Rebellion > Status Update

"Pederasty was common among samurai of the period, although drifting slowly out of fashion by the seventeenth century. It was a subject of great annoyance to the missionaries, and had been cited by both Francis Xavier and Alessandro Valignano as a major problem among both monks and warriors in Japan."

"Mutilations, brandings, burnings and crushings then ensued, which the martyrs ‘endured with so much Patience that the very Executioners were tired with torturing them."

"When Tokugawa Ieyasu became Shōgun, initiating the Tokugawa era in Japanese history, he froze ranks, positions and alliances. From that moment on, nobody would change residence, or allegiance, or religion without his order."

"The very idea that a mere peasant could be trained to wield a personal mini-cannon in a matter of weeks threatened to undermine a noble tradition of hand-to-hand combat that had dominated the Japanese military for centuries."