Yes, must be supported.

The father-in-law expressed great interest in the ongoing Shogunate Movement in Japan, and he further asked Chen Jinki for details of the Tokugawa shogunate's suppression of Catholicism.

Tao Jie and Zhang An added from time to time that after summarizing this information and the memories of his father-in-law's own past life, they generally had a preliminary impression and understanding of the Catholic Church's Downfall Movement.

To put it bluntly, this was a conflict of interests between the shogunate and the Catholic Church, and the final result of the struggle was the closure of the Tokugawa shogunate.

About 30 years ago, before Toyotomi Hideyoshi unified Japan, Juntada Omura, the baptized lord of Hizen Kunimura, donated Nagasaki, which had opened ten years earlier and was developing into the largest trading port in western Japan, to the Jesuits, along with nearby Motegi, to allow the Jesuits to have a base belonging to the church on Japanese territory.

This made it possible for the Western missionaries to carry out missionary work on a large scale in Japan, and they used the power of Omura to use coercive means to first convince the rulers of the prefectures and prefectures, and then to make them issue orders to force all the inhabitants to convert, and harassed the localities.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi was alarmed by the inflated ambitions of Western religious powers, and he proclaimed the Prohibition of Christianity, arrested missionaries and some believers, and recovered Nagasaki and Motegi from the Jesuits. However, Toyotomi's attack on the Jesuits was not thorough enough, and a considerable number of Western missionaries relied on it and hid in various parts of Japan through various means, leaving the problem to the present day, which became a major problem for the Tokugawa Ieyasu shogunate.

Initially the Tokugawa shogunate adopted a more tolerant attitude toward Western religions in order to maintain economic and trade relations with the West, but the shogunate and Catholicism were really opposed, which led to the intensification of contradictions and conflicts between the two sides.

From the shogunate's standpoint, Catholicism was fundamentally opposed to the shogunate's rule in two respects.

First of all, the Catholic doctrine insists that God is the supreme authority and that all people are equal before God, which is completely different from and completely contradicts the shogunate system in which the shogun is the supreme ruler and the status hierarchy is strictly divided.

Second, Catholicism rejects paganism, denies the belief in gods and Buddhas, and believes that God is the master of heaven and earth and should obey God, not parents, masters, and monarchs. This was even more intolerable for Japan, which proclaimed itself the "Kingdom of God," and the Tokugawa rulers, who were revered as the "incarnation of Amaterasu."

Tokugawa Ieyasu was struggling with the growing size of Catholicism, and he was determined to take strong measures to extinguish Catholicism when he thought of the 11-year-long peasant uprising led by the Buddhist Ichijo sect, and feared that the remnants of the Toyotomi clan and anti-Tokugawa forces would use the power of the Catholics to launch a rebellion.

In February of this year, the Tokugawa shogunate officially issued a ban on religion, targeting Shizuoka, Edo, Kyoto, and Nagasaki in the shogunate's direct territories, and three months later banned religion nationwide.

The shogunate's "Book of Teachings" said: "Japan, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Buddhism." Christians preach evil laws, plot coups d'état to seize the country, violate laws, slander gods and Buddhas, and worship sinners, which are doubly harmful and should be strictly prohibited. ”

As soon as the ban on religion was banned, the shogunate army vandalized churches in Kyoto, Fushimi, Otsuki and other places, arrested parishioners, and forcibly converted churches. The Shogunate's various princes also began to suppress the priests and believers. A total of 148 followers, including Takayama Ujin, a well-known Toyotomi Catholic prince in Akashi (near Kobe), refused to convert and were sentenced to exile in Manila.

The Catholic side certainly could not sit there and wait for death, and the measure they took was to mobilize believers to join the side of the Toyotomi clan and continue to set off the downfall movement.

Yan Siqi, as a long-standing hero of the Japanese folk downfall, received an invitation from the Japanese Jesuits at this time, and the two sides agreed to raise troops together to overthrow the shogunate.

However, the overthrow of the shogunate was the common goal and desire of both sides, but the purpose was different. The main body of the Jesuits in Japan was the princes of Japan, and the biggest support force was the Toyotomi clan, so they aimed to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate and re-establish the Toyotomi shogunate. Yan Siqi and other Han forces were determined to take advantage of this great opportunity to establish Han power in Japan in one fell swoop, and then submit to the Ming court to gain the support of the Ming Dynasty.

The establishment of a Han Chinese regime in Japan sounds absurd and unthinkable. But this is by no means the whimsy of Yan Siqi and others, nor is it by no means that they are committed to this, but there are many Japanese who also want to do this.

Because, at present, the mainstream of Japanese thought believes that Japan is a remnant of the pre-Qin Dynasty, a branch of China, and the Japanese people and the Han people in China are of the same species and the same language, and even some people believe that the He people are the Han people, so the establishment of the Han regime in Japan is not rejected by the academic and ideological circles, and even supported.

There are many "intellectuals" in Japan whose biggest dream in life is to come to the Ming Dynasty to receive a study of Confucian classics, and these people can be collectively called "shrewd elements".

There are also many Catholics among Yan Siqi's subordinates, including a considerable number of Catholics under the real Japanese sea overlord Kapitan Li Dan, and the reason why this is so is because they inevitably have to deal with Western forces as they control the sea routes.

Chen Xinji was a devout Catholic, and since Wei Gonggong made an armed intervention in Japan's downfall movement, he was bound to give spiritual and operational support to Yan Siqi and the Japanese downfall forces.

Otherwise, with their strength, they would not be able to fight Tokugawa Ieyasu at all. Although it is impossible for the imperial army to march eastward against Japan at the moment, it is still possible to support Wei Gonggong on a small scale. At the very least, it was necessary to delay the Curtain Fall movement for a longer period of time so that the Imperial Army could formally intervene.

There are two types of support, action and spirit.

First of all, mentally, Father-in-law Wei must cheer Yan Siqi up.

He told Chen that the Ming Empire would not regard the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo as an opponent in the future, but hoped to establish good relations with the new Japanese regime and would engage in trade with the new regime.

My father-in-law did not say what this new regime meant.

This sounds like a simulated foreshadowing, but it gives Chen Xinji the greatest confidence.

"We will draw up an official statement later, and you can bring it back to Japan so that it can be widely disseminated, so that everyone in Japan will know our Ming attitude toward Japan."

If nothing else, this voice will definitely be recorded in the historical documents under the title of "Good Minister's Statement".

A statement alone is definitely not enough, so the father-in-law said that he would play the Son of Heaven, and the imperial court would officially send a messenger to Japan to accept Yan Siqi's recruitment.

If it can't be played, the father-in-law still has to think about it, but the chincha is ready-made. Aren't Hu Guang and Sha Qiandao being trained in the etiquette of the envoys?

As soon as I thought that these two guys gave up halfway for the first time in their lives and made a joke, my father-in-law was angry.

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