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The Kakure Kirishitan Tradition

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The Kakure Kirishitan Tradition THE KAKURE KIRISHITAN TRADITION MIYAZAKI Kentaro "Underground" and "Hidden" Christians Towards the end of the Edo period, in 1865, underground Kirishitan of Urakami met at the Oura church of Nagasaki with missionaries of the Societe des Missions Etrangeres de Paris. The government of the Meiji Restoration continued to consider the religion of the Kirishitan to be an evil religion and upheld its prohibition. However, in order to win a revision of the unequal treaties the Tokugawa shogunate had concluded with foreign countries, the government, in 1873, could not do otherwise but remove the notice boards announcing the prohibition of that religion. Under these circumstances, many underground Christians returned to the Catholic Church under the guidance of the priests of the Societe des Missions Etrangeres. Although there was no need to hide anymore, there were also numerous faithful who continued to uphold the faith in the form they had adhered to during the time when they were underground. Contrary to the underground Kirishitan of the Edo period for whom it was necessary to fulfill their religious duties in the same manner as the Buddhist and Shinto believers in order to survive, there was no longer any need to hide the Kirishitan belief after 1873 (Meiji 6). Nevertheless, there were those who did not return to the Catholic Church. They continued to keep their faith in the form they had kept it during the time of hiding without rejoining the Church. They were distinguished from the others and called by the name Kakure Kirishitan, Hidden Christians. 1 Faith in the Time of the Underground Kirishitan In 1623, under the third shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu, the various institutions of the bakufu government were firmly established. Iemitsu strengthened the bakufu regime by thoroughly prohibiting the Christian religion and promot­ ing a policy of national isolation. Iemitsu's crackdown on the Kirishitan was 20 MIYAZAKI KENTARO severe. The various institutions he had created in order to eradicate the Christian religion, such as the system to remunerate those who accused others (of being Christians), the five-family neighborhood groups, thefumie, the written declaration that one has renounced the faith, and the system of certifi­ cation by a temple, all these intruments of oppression had an eminent effect. The institutions did continue to be in force until the end of the bakufu govern­ ment; they functioned not only as a check on the Kirishitan but also as a means to control the common people. The roughly hundred years from the time Francis Xavier landed in Japan until 1644 when the last missionary was martyred are called the Kirishitan century. During this time organizations of fellow believers, called confraria, were instituted under the guidance of the priests. A group called misericordia that was founded in Yamaguchi in 1554 as a charitable organization marked the beginning of this trend and was then followed by many confraternities like the "Santa Maria group," the "sacramento group," the "rosario group," the "marchirio group" and others. They all had a clear system of offices and regulations where such group elders as chokata (the keeper of the books) and jiiyaku (elder) held the highest offices. At this stage of development the confraria served the function of strength­ ening the organization of believers in order to support their reciprocal assistance and foster their faith, but during the time of underground existence, when there were no longer any missionaries, it became an indispensible means for the transmission of doctrine and rituals. With the group elders at its center the confraria transmitted the belief until the end of the bakufu. During the time of their underground existence the faithful invented numerous means to avoid the attentive eye of the officials, and yet several times incidents of large wholesale roundups and punishment, called kuzure (crumblings) occured. When the so-called Kori kuzure broke out in 1657, 608 underground Kirishitan were rounded up in the village of Kori in the fief of the Omura clan. Four hundred and eleven of them were beheaded, 78 died in prison, 20 were sentenced to life in prison, and 90 were pardoned. In the Bungo kuzure that lasted from 1660 to 1682, 220 persons were apprehended, and in the Bino kuzure of 1661 a total of996 persons were beheaded. The people of the Omura fief, the domain of Japan's first Kirishitan daimyo, Omura Sumitada, had practically all converted to Christianity. Omura had donated Nagasaki to the Jesuits and this city became the center for Kirishitan mission in Japan. The storm of persecution raged over the whole country, but it was particularly severe in the Omura domain after the son of Sumitada, Yoshiaki, had renounced the faith. In the aftermath of the .
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