The Messiah came.

He came to a backwater nation — Japan; to a backwater part of Japan — Kyushu; to a backwater part of Kyushu — the Shimabara Peninsula. The year by the Christian calendar was 1637. It was a week before Christmas.

The Messiah came. He walked on water. He healed the sick. He rallied the troops. Troops? Peasants mostly, oppressed, half-starved, “rabble” in the eyes of real warriors — but here were those same real warriors stymied by that same “rabble” — such was the zeal inspired in them by the 15-year-old boy thought to be, if not the Son of God, the “heavenly child,” “heaven’s messenger.” Posterity knows him as Amakusa Shiro, from his birthplace, an islet in the Amakusa Sea off the Shimabara coast.

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