MatPat's estranged husband

In the video "Game Theory: Why Final Fantasy Is Anti-Religion", Gaijin Goombah makes a point about how people from Japan interpret and practice religion differently from how Westerners do. And while making that point, he says these two sentences (09:01-09:09):

Also, just to clarify: the timing of the video's subtitles are off, so it looks like Goombah is talking about the emperor while showing a picture of Hideyoshi. He's not; when he talks about the emperor, he does show a picture of an emperor. Not the emperor at the time, but an emperor nonetheless. Anyway, back to the quote:

"First of all, to make a very long story short, in 1857, Shogun Hideyoshi outlawed Christianity. After all, how can you serve the emperor if you put God first?"

"in 1857" - As far as I can tell, that's just straight up the wrong date. Toyotomi Hideyoshi passed away in 1598 (Berry 1, 68, 235, 245), over 258 years before 1857. The event Mr. Goombah seems to be referring to here occurred in 1587, so my guess is there was a typo in this video's script that the writers missed.

"Shogun Hideyoshi" - Hideyoshi was never a shogun. In fact, he apparently went out of his way to not use the title. (Berry 6, 187)

"Hideyoshi outlawed Christianity" - I admit I'm out of my depth here, and I'm going to risk getting controversial for the sake of nitpicking, so don't quote me on this. To my knowledge, Hideyoshi was tolerant of Christianity in Japan for a time (Boxer 139). But then in 1587, he suddenly issued two edicts: one with the goal of limiting the propagation of Christianity, the other with the goal of getting Christian missionaries out of the country (Lu 196-197). In the edict about limiting propagation, one of the lines is translated as saying, "Whether one desires to become a follower of the padre is up to that person's own conscience" (Lu 196). I'm pretty sure "follower of the padre" here just means "Christian" (Lu 221). Immediately following these edicts, the missionary ban was barely enforced (Berry 92, 133, 225) (Boxer 149). And according to Berry, the edict seemed to only refer to disorderly evangelical missionaries (92). It wasn't until later that 26 Christians were executed in Nagasaki in 1597 (Berry 166) and stricter bans were enacted on Christian stuff in 1612 and 1614 (Paramore 56). Yes, Japan would go on to enforce stricter bans later. However, should what Hideyoshi did at this particular point in time that Goombah is referring to here (1587) be described as an explicit outlawing of the religion? Not only was this "outlawing [of] Christianity" not enforced very well at the time, but to me, it sounds like it didn't apply to all Christians in the first place. From what little I've read, the outlawing of Christianity seems to have been a more gradual process. And as such, it probably would've been more appropriate for Goombah to either pick a date later than 1587 (but not as late as 1857, obviously), or to simply describe it as a gradual process rather than a pinpoint event. But to be fair, he did preface this part with "to make a very long story short", so this could very well be me nitpicking what was intended to be a simplification all along. If there are any experts in Japanese history reading this, please feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken anywhere.

"After all, how can you serve the emperor if you put God first?" - I am once again not very confident with my point here, but I'm gonna try and explain myself anyway. At first, the way I interpreted this sentence was: "Hideyoshi banned Christianity because he thought people couldn't serve the emperor if they put God first." Granted, this could be also interpreted as Goombah explaining his own understanding of the decision, rather than trying to explain Hideyoshi's true reasoning for it. However, I'm going to assume the first interpretation is what he meant. If that is the case, that would be wrong because the reason for Hideyoshi's decision to issue those 1587 edicts is up for debate (Boscaro). Apparently, his change of heart towards Christians happened literally over the course of a night (Boxer 145). But again, it's up to interpretation, and I could just be being a little bitch about this right now, so like I said, grain of salt.

OK, I think that's about everything I wanted to say. This is the extent of my knowledge on this topic. I'm not Japanese, I don't speak Japanese, and I know basically nothing else about this field; so again, if anyone reading this knows of a way to get this to a Japanese history expert who'd be willing to answer these questions for me, I'd greatly appreciate that.

To conclude, I would like to acknowledge that this one part being wrong does not detract from the point Goombah was getting at. This is likely just a bunch of nitpicking on my part. But as someone who has only ever wanted to see this show be the best it can possibly be, I think it's important that no stone go unturned, and that every detail be double-checked. And if someone is able to learn something from this bitchy post, then I think it was worth it.

Works Cited:

Berry, Mary Elizabeth. Hideyoshi. Council On East Asian Studies, Harvard Univ, 1989. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.

Boscaro, Adriana. “Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the 1587 Edicts Against Christianity.” Oriens Extremus, vol. 20, no. 2, 1973, pp. 219–41. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44001284. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.

Boxer, C. R. The Christian Century in Japan 1549-1640 [2nd ed.]. University Of California Press, 1967. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.

Lu, David J. Japan: A Documentary History. Volume I, the Dawn of History to the Late Tokugawa Period. Routledge, 2015. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.

Paramore, Kiri. Ideology and Christianity in Japan. Routledge, 2009. Accessed 12 Apr. 2025.