Biography
Michael Kurobioye
About Michael Kurobioye
Michael Kurobioye was a Japanese catechist who worked alongside the Dominican priest James Kyushei Tomonaga.
His story includes a painful failure under torture. In her account of Japanese saints, Meg Hunter-Kilmer describes how Michael was arrested while the Christian mission was forbidden. His companion James had returned to Japan after living abroad and was working among Japanese Christians. When the authorities tortured Michael, he disclosed the priest’s hiding place. James was then captured, and the two companions faced death together. The disclosure belongs to the story of coercion and suffering; it should not be replaced by an imagined account of an entirely unbroken resistance.
Michael repented and died professing his Christian faith.
He was killed at Nagasaki on August 17, 1633. John Paul II’s canonization decree places his death alongside that of James and identifies the punishment as hanging over a pit. The decree names him among the martyrs canonized on October 18, 1987.
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