February 6 is the feast of Sts. Paul Miki and his twenty-five companions, the first martyrs of the Far East, crucified at Nagasaki on February 5, 1597. Paul Miki was a Japanese Jesuit brother, born of a noble family, who had preached in the region of Kyoto; with him died two other Japanese Jesuits, six Franciscan friars from the Philippines, and seventeen Japanese lay Franciscans, including the young catechist Thomas Kozaki and his father.
The martyrdom was ordered by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the imperial regent, who had begun the persecution of the foreign missionaries in 1587. The twenty-six were arrested in Kyoto and Osaka, marched to Nagasaki through the winter, and crucified on the hill called Nishizaka, with their bodies left on the crosses for months as a warning. The site of the martyrdom is now the monument of the Twenty-Six Holy Martyrs, a museum and church built in 1962, on the hill above Nagasaki Bay.
The twenty-six were canonized in 1862 by Pope Pius IX, the first canonization of Asian saints. Their feast on February 6 is kept by the universal Church. From Nagasaki, where they died and are venerated, to the countless Japanese "hidden Christians" (kakure kirishitan) who kept the faith for two centuries without priests, the February 6 feast is the foundation of the Japanese Church.
