Sent as a boy from Japan to Rome in 1582 with three companions, he came back a Jesuit. After Christianity was banned he lived twenty years in hiding, moving from house to house, and in the last years he was so worn out that he had to be carried from one place to another. He died at Nagasaki, hung over a pit, at sixty-six.
In their own words
I am Father Julian, the one who went to Rome.
Words at his execution, 1633, in Léon Pagès, Histoire de la religion chrétienne au Japon depuis 1598 jusqu'à 1651, Charles Douniol, Paris, 1869, vol. I, p. 795, note; French by Léon Pagès (d. 1886) from the seventeenth-century Jesuit accounts, English by the Manna team
Look, all of you, at this astonishing sight, for the greater glory of God.
Words spoken on reaching the pit, 1633, in Léon Pagès, Histoire de la religion chrétienne au Japon depuis 1598 jusqu'à 1651, Charles Douniol, Paris, 1869, vol. I, p. 795, note; French by Léon Pagès (d. 1886), English by the Manna team