Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2012, vol . 7

Women and Kirishitanban Literature: Translation, Gender, and Theology in Early Modern Haruko Nawata Ward

irishitan women contributed to the religious literature of the Jesuit Kmission in Japan (1549–1650).1 When the Japanese authorities banned Christianity in 1612, they attempted to destroy all evidence of the and their writings, including their women’s writings, dur- ing the following three hundred years of suppression. Thus, historians of this period must rely for the most part on extant sources written by men. One of these sources is the religious literature of Kirishitanban (literally, “Christian edition” but, generally, Christian “publication”), most of which was freely translated from European originals into Japanese. women advised Jesuit translators on the content and style of the Kirishitanban, particularly on gender-specific aspects of the , literary tradition, and culture. As a result, Christianity, having originally arrived in European cultural dress, was translated and trans- formed into a new mode more fitting to Kirishitan women’s spiritual garb. The extant Kirishitanban texts show some traces of these changes. Other sources are the Jesuit records of and references to the Kirishitan women who assisted with the translation and read, wrote, transmitted, and used the Kirishitanban in their own ministries. A careful examination of both sources restores women’s voices from their banished . After introducing Christianity to Japan, the Jesuits noticed that it had a highly literate culture, and many types of written texts proliferated

1 Kirishitan was a term derived from Portuguese cristão to designate Catholic con- verts and their distinctive culture in early modern Japan.

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in the lives of women and men. Immediately they began translating vari- ous Christian materials into Japanese to be used as tools for interreligious dialogue, education, and conversion. Kirishitanban includes some manu- scripts and woodcut prints as well as about sixty titles printed by the Jesuit press using movable type during its operation in Japan between 1590 and 1614.2 My view of Kirishitanban translations as evidence both of trans­ culturation and of women’s contribution to the process is explained in a discussion of the following topics: 1) the gender-conscious choice of script, 2) team translation and audience participation, 3) religious hybridity, and 4) theological transformation. First, Kirishitanban translators chose two types of script that were preferred by the common ordinary readership, especially women. About half of the works are set in roman characters, the Jesuit mission’s inven- tion. The other half are in traditional kanamajiri (かな混じり), a mixture of Japanese and Chinese characters. Both the romanized transliterations and kanamajiri use phonetic symbols for about eighty sounds. Kanamajiri is a type of vernacular writing, in contrast to kanbun (漢文), which then was exclusively used by the male elites. Kanbun consists only of Chinese characters and presumes the readers’ knowledge of a wider range of char- acters and familiarity with the Chinese classics, to which women generally did not have access. In fact, the Kirishitanban translations avoided kanbun altogether. Yet the Kirishitanban texts contained numerous citations from the original Portuguese, Latin, and, to some extent, Spanish languages, requiring the readers, including women, to have some knowledge of them. Thus, the Kirishitanban placed women and men, lay and clergy, native and foreign-born on a level playing field of learning. A good example of women’s knowledge of Portuguese and Latin can be seen in the case of Lady Hosokawa Tama Gracia (細川玉伽羅奢)

2 Visitor Alessandro Valignano imported the movable type press to Japan in 1590. For a list of the published Kirishitanban, see Ernest Mason Satow, The Jesuit Mission Press in Japan, 1591–1610 (Tokyo: Privately printed, 1888); John Laures, Kirishitan Bunko: A Manual of Books and Documents on the Early Christian Mission in Japan . With Special Reference to the Principal Libraries in Japan and More Particularly to the Collection at , Tokyo . With an Appendix of Ancient Maps of the Far East, Especially Japan, Monumenta Nipponica Monographs no. 5, 3rd ed. (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1957).

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(1563–1600).3 The Jesuit reports were consistent about her extraordinary intelligence, appetite for knowledge, and mastery of roman script. From her conversion to her last days, Kirishitanban literature formed her intel- lectual and spiritual life. Young Tama excelled in (禅) meditation, and after her marriage to Lord (細川忠興), she was reputed to be more knowledgeable than her Zen master. In 1582 her father Lord (明智光秀) assassinated the First Unifier (織田信長) and subsequently was killed, whereupon Tadaoki exiled Tama. In 1584 the Second Unifier (豊臣秀吉) pardoned Tama, but Tadaoki permanently secluded her in her quarters in the Hosokawa residence in Osaka (大阪). Intrigued by the new Kirishitan religion, Tama ventured out to visit the Jesuit church in spring 1587 dur- ing one of Tadaoki’s absences in warfare. There she interrupted the sermon and waged a Zen mondō (禅問答) disputation with the Jesuit preacher. When it was time for her to return home, she asked to borrow some of the Kirishitanban books. From then on in her permanent seclusion, she cor- responded with the Jesuits regarding these books via her lady-in-waiting, Kiyohara Ito Maria (清原いとマリヤ ). Because these books were still in man- uscript form and written in roman script with many foreign words, Tama quickly learned the roman alphabet. Soon she desired to be baptized. When Hideyoshi issued the Edict of Expulsion of the Padres (伴天連追放令) in July 1587 and the Jesuits had to go into hiding, they instructed Ito Maria to baptize Tama secretly in her confinement as Gracia. With Ito Maria as an intermediary, Tama Gracia exchanged letters with the Jesuits containing questions and opinions about the books, and as she studied them, she also taught classes on them to the women in her residence. In 1600 she died when her residence was engulfed by a fire set by the enemies of Tadaoki, who was away fighting for the victory of the last unifier (徳川家康) with his supporters. The Jesuits reported that, until her last days, Tama Gracia studied and taught the Kirishitanban literature. They also mentioned her compositions, possibly in Portuguese, but all of her

3 On Hosokawa Tama Gracia, see Haruko Nawata Ward, Women Religious Leaders in Japan’s Christian Century, 1549–1650, Women and Gender in the Early Modern World Series (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009).

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Christian writings, including her correspondence with the Jesuits, were destroyed, except for some Portuguese translations of her letters preserved in the Jesuit records. The second topic concerns the role of translators in the contexts of both early modern Japan and Europe, when translation was most often done by a team rather than by an individual. The Jesuit translation team consisted of both the who were constantly learning Japanese and the male catechists who were fluent in Japanese. The team worked in the Japanese tradition of treating literary texts as ever open for communal revision. The Kirishitanban translators freely edited and commented on the original texts. Then they tested the versions of Japanese translation in docuju (読誦) fashion, that is, a Buddhist liturgical recitation of the scrip- ture to the congregation. The audience responded to these readings and added their own commentaries. The published revisions reflected these verbal exchanges, which allowed for women to contribute their critiques and comments. For example, many years prior to the publication of Sanctos no gosagvueo no vchi nvqigaqi (Excerpts from the Acts of the Saints), the Jesuit team began translating stories of the saints.4 These stories were performed in the traditional style of setsuwa (説話) or “moral ballad” by blind, itinerant biwa hōshi (琵琶法師), guitar-like-instrument-strumming- singer-story-telling former Buddhist monks who had become Jesuit preachers.5 These Japanese Jesuit storytellers often visited and performed for Kirishitan households. The translator-writers took into account the

4 Sanctos no gosagvueo no vchi nvqigaqi, published in roman alphabet by the Jesuit press in Kazusa (加津佐) in 1591, is a hagiographic collection from various original sources. Two copies are preserved, one in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the other in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, of which facsimile is found in Kōso Toshiaki, ed., Sanctos no gosagveo no vchi nvqigaqi, 2 vols. in 1 (Tokyo: Yūshodo, 2006). 5 On the general history of the practice of itinerant story telling by biwa minstrel- priests since the thirteenth century, see Haruo Shirane, ed., Traditional Japanese Literature: An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600, trans. Sonja Arntzen, et al., Translations from the Asian Classics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 9; Also see pp. 1159–60 on the popularity of sermon ballads (sekkyo-bushi 説経節) of the street performers between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. On the records of Christian biwa hōshi, see Juan G. Ruiz de Medina, Iezusu Kaishi to Kirishitan fukyo (イエズス会士とキリシタン布教) (Tokyo: Iwata Shoin, 2003), 131–68.

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preferences, reactions, and comments from the audiences in their pub- lished editions of these stories. In her house Hibiya Monica (日比谷モニカ) (ca. 1549–ca. 1577) participated in the manuscript preparation of the saints’ stories. Monica was the daughter of a wealthy merchant, Hibiya Ryōkei Diogo (日比谷了珪 ディオゴ) of Sakai (堺), who provided generous patronage and safe haven for many Jesuits who were acquainted with his children. While Portuguese Brother Luís de Almeida (1522–1583) was being nursed there during his illness in 1565, Monica, about 16 years old, consulted him about her aspirations of taking a vow of virgindade (perpetual virginity). Almeida reported that Monica owned and studied many books.6 About this time, Portuguese Father Luís Fróis (1533–1597), expelled from , also took refuge at the Hibiya’s residence. While there, Fróis and Japanese Brother Damião (1539–1587) translated several vitae of the saints into Japanese. Monica and her siblings likely heard the Jesuit storytellers and responded to their performances. From Monica the Jesuits would have learned typical expressions used by young women and applied them to their renditions of speeches of young female saints. Almeida compared Monica to St. Agnes and St. Catherine of Alexandria; Monica most likely learned about Christian virgindade from these stories because actual Christian nuns and the Christian hagiographic tradition did not exist in Japan. Thirdly, religious terminology posed major translation challenges and opportunities for transculturation. Borrowings from diverse traditions and neologisms made the Kirishitanban a religious hybrid. As stated earlier, the Kirishitanban kept many terms in Portuguese and a few in Latin and Spanish. Kirishitan women did not seem to express any “sense of distancia- tion or estrangement” with regard to these foreign words because they were not colonial.7 Buddhist nuns were already familiar with vocabulary that originated in Sanskrit and Chinese. More importantly, the Kirishitanban translators made subtle changes to these foreign words by adding Japanese

6 See Ward, Women Religious Leaders, 39–41, on Monica and her books and the Jesuits at work on the stories of saints. 7 See Peter Burke and R. Po-chia Hsia, eds., Cultural Translation in Early Modern Europe, European Science Foundation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 26.

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honorific prefixes such as go (御) to express the tremendous respect felt toward things divine. For example, the Passion of Christ, passiom in Portuguese, was translated as go Passiom. The honorific style of speech was based on social-class distinctions, and women in general tended to use more honorific expressions than men.8 In fact the predominant strategy of the Jesuit translators was not for- eignization but domestication of Christianity through familiar Buddhist and sometimes emerging neo-Confucian expressions. It is beyond the purpose of this paper to study the numerous Buddhist expressions that are interwoven throughout the Kirishitanban texts, but it is rather striking to read such words as guedat (gedatsu) for liberdade (freedom) and Von tasu- quete for Salvador (savior) seamlessly woven in the Christian discussions. The translators again employ gender-inclusive language in translating the religious terms. Buddhist bicuni (nun) parallels the Portuguese virgem (virgin), but xucque for religioso (religious) is used for both genders even though no Catholic women’s orders officially existed in Japan. There are terms that do not exist in Portuguese but are borrowed from , such as jennanxi and jennhonin (good men and good women) to mean lay leaders, devotees, or saints. The word gracia (grace) was gradually replaced by go von using the Confucian concept of von (unmerited gift) again with the honorific go to indicate that the source of this grace is Deus (God). When there were no equivalents, the translators created new Japanese words. For example, there was no word for sacred love, a crucial concept in Christian teaching, and a newly coined term go taixet (precious) meant God’s love and taixet, Christian love. Women’s input is reflected in the crafting of this new interreligious vocabulary, and perhaps that is why women catechists used Kirishitanban texts in their ministries. We have already seen that Hosokawa Tama Gracia learned, taught, and possibly wrote Kirishitanban literature using both the roman alphabet and kanamajiri. Since she exchanged numer- ous letters with the Jesuits on the interpretation of Christian words and

8 See Orie Endo, A Cultural History of Japanese Women’s Language, Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies no. 57 (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, 2006), 26–29.

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lectured on these points to her students, would it not be logical to think that the later publications of Contemptus mundi, her favorite work since she was converted in 1587, was influenced at its manuscript stage by her commentary that drew on her expertise in Zen meditation? The two pub- lished versions of Contemptus mundi (1597 and 1610) contain countless Zen words, expressions, and poems that are compatible with the original’s spirituality of ars moriendi.9 Contemptus mundi remained the most popular work among women catechists, including Kyōgoku Maria (京極マリヤ) (c.1543–1618). She too was a convert from Zen in 1581, after holding her own Zen mondō disputation with the Jesuits. Between 1596 and 1597, while she was confined at Hideyoshi’s court as a mother of one of his concubines, she studied her Contemptus mundi thoroughly. At her request, the Jesuits sent her Christian Doctrine, Guide for Confession, and the Book on Meditations.10 When she was released, Maria worked closely with her assistant women teachers, a Jesuit brother Fucan Fabian (不干はびあん), and another woman catechist Naitō Julia. With Maria, Naitō Julia (内藤ジュリア) (ca. 1566–1627) led mas- sive conversions of men and women in the first decade of the seventeenth century. Before her conversion to Christianity in 1596, Julia, a widow, was a well-known head of a Jōdoshū (浄土宗) nunnery in Kyoto (京都). Around 1600, she founded the Miaco no bicuni (都の比丘尼), a society of women catechists, with the aid of two Jesuit missionaries. Following the Jesuit active apostolate, under Julia’s supervision these women catechists preached, taught Christian Doctrine (catechism), and engaged in interre- ligious disputations. These women understood the doctrinal differences between the twelve schools of Buddhism, , Confucianism, Taoism, and Christianity. Their interreligious discussions most likely provided

9 On Hosokawa Tama Gracia and her books, see Ward, Women Religious Leaders, 203–7. Contemptus mundi is a free translation of The Imitation of Christ, attributed to Thomas à Kempis, but known among the Jesuits and Kirishitans as Gersom (Portuguese spelling of Gerson, referring to medieval scholar and reformer Jean Gerson). Two copies in roman transliteration (1596) and one in kanamajiri (Kyoto, 1610) are extant. 10 On Kyōgoku Maria and her books, see Ward, Women Religious Leaders, 234. The exact titles of the first two are not identifiable, but the Book on Meditations could have been a translation of Granada’s Libro de la oracíon y meditación (1554, rev. 1566).

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materials for Fucan Fabian’s Myōtei mondō (妙貞問答) (1605), which uses a dialogue format between a Kirishitan woman catechist and a widow nun of Jōdoshū, who inquires about diverse religions and eventually agrees to be baptized at the church.11 Fabian must have taken the model from Julia’s catechists, whom he knew well. His preface suggests that he intended Myōtei mondō as a manual for women catechists in their mission with con- fined noblewomen. In 1612 the second Shogun (徳 川秀忠) reissued the Ban of Christianity, reaffirming the criminal status of the Kirishitan population. The authorities in Kyoto arrested and tortured several leaders of the Miaco no bicuni, but none apostatized as Fabian did in 1608. In the Great Expulsion of 1614, Julia and fifteen members of the Miaco no bicuni were expelled from Japan with the Jesuits to , and they became beatas (cloistered nuns). The society perished with the deaths of their last two members in 1656. Finally, I propose that the strongest impact of the Kirishitanban on women readers was its gendered theology of go Passiom. It emphasizes the true humanity of the Incarnate (embodied) Christ in his physical sufferings and humiliation as well as Christ’s identification (union) with the lowliest human beings (i.e., women) and the sufferings of women martyrs, which parallel Christ’s go Passiom. Christ and women share the same human nature and eventually the same divine nature in go Passiom . In a chap- ter entitled “Martyrdom as Excellent Proof of Fides,” the Kirishitanban Fides no dŏxi argues that the “young weak women” (itoiqenacu monoyouaqi nhonin) such as Saints Prisca, Martina, Eulalia, Barbara, and Anastasia are supreme examples of the mystery of faith.12

11 On Myōtei mondō see Ward, Women Religious Leaders, 64 ff. 12 Suzuki Hiroshi 鈴木博, Kirishitanban Hiidesu no doshi (キリシタン版ヒイデ スの導師), facsimile (Osaka: Seibundo, 1985), 289–90, indicated as Fides in the follow- ing. Fides no dŏxi (Teacher of Faith), published in Amakusa (天草) in 1592 in the roman alphabet, is a free translation of Sumario or Quinta parte de la introducción del símbolo de la fe by Fray Luis de Granada (1504–1588), published in Salamanca in 1588. The only extant copy is preserved in the University of Leiden. The English translations from Japanese and Spanish in the following passages are mine.

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These women, despite their physiques, so beautifully dressed that the moon and flowers might envy them, and easily blown away by a rough wind, are not afraid of humiliation, slander, or assaults of torture. Forgetting the affectionate relationship with their fathers and mothers, disregarding others’ tears, even when finally [the torturers] grind their bones and tear their bodies in half by pulling them apart by two wheels, they surely maintain fides.

The translators preserved Granada’s dramatic tone in his original Spanish text, but confidently applied Japanese poetic convention to describe these seemingly fragile young women saints.13 The counter-cultural theology based on 1 Corinthians 1:27, that God chooses to manifest divine power most vigorously in the supposedly weakest beings in human society, i.e., female virgin martyrs just as in the crucified , was present in Granada’s original text, yet it was amplified in Fides no dŏxi. In Chapter 23 of Fides no dŏxi, corresponding to Sumario’s Chapter 25, one finds this section: “Women are naturally weak, and they shake and quiver at a sword’s shadow. Yet, in regard to this fides they run to win the first place, competing with ‘a single horse-riding warrior whose might is worth that of one thousand warriors.’ Thus, no matter the harsh tortures they inflict upon the Virgens, they cannot bend their strong heart (tçuioqi von cocoro).”14 This passage presents the prevalent opinion of women as inherently weak, a view common to the patriarchal cultures of Iberia and Japan. Here the translators inserted a Japanese saying about the war- rior on horseback and transformed the aphorism about male battle valor into the praise of the superior inner strength of the weaponless women martyr saints.15 In this period of gradual unification and restructuring of

13 See Fray Luis de Granada, Sumario de la Introducción del símbolo de la fe y Modo de catequizar, ed. Alvaro Huerga, Obras Completas, vol. 13 (: [Andalucia]: Fundacion Universitaria Espanola; Dominicos de Andalucia, 1997), 173. 14 Hiroshi, Fides, 310–11. 15 Granada, Sumario, 205. Sumario of course does not include this Japanese say- ing and more generally says that “sensitive and delicate young women compete with men in the strength in fight” (doncellas tiernas y delicadas competir [sic] con los hombres en la

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Japan according to Confucian ideology, this image of young women leaving their families and confronting the oppressive powers alone was unnerving to the authorities but was empowering to Kirishitan women. In the years of severe persecution toward the closing of the Christian century, women leaders used the Kirishitanban to encourage the under- ground church. The stories of women martyrs were the most popular. In addition to the published versions, several manuscripts of the stories of saints were secretly circulated.16 The Jesuit records indicate that such women as Hibiya Agata, Monica’s sister-in-law, and Luzia de la Cruz, a member of the Miaco no bicuni, owned or hand-copied the stories of the saints. A Korean native, Ōta Julia, sent a letter from her exile on a deserted island from Ieyasu’s court to the Jesuits in 1612 asking them to send her the Acts of Apostles, Martyrs, and Virgin Saints to help her meditate on the go Passiom. In 1603 Blessed martyr Takeda Inez of Yatsushiro (八代) asked that stories of the saints be read aloud to her from her copy as she and her community prepared for her execution. She entrusted the book to her community after her final reading and was lanced to death on a cross. Likewise Majencia of Kibaru (城原) was an avid reader of Guia do pecador (Guide for Sinners) and read it in preparation for her martyrdom in 1614.17 Many Kirishitan women internalized and lived out the Kirishitanban theology of the go Passiom, the identification of Christ crucified with mar- tyred female saints, and became martyrs themselves. They did not seek out fanatic martyrdom, but when arrested, they did not physically resist or escape. Convinced they would be united with Christ the Human-God in go Passiom and in resurrection in paraiso (paradise), these women endured criminalization, isolation, pain, and humiliation. Masuda-Yahagi Madalena

fortaleza del pelear). I am grateful for the Early Modern Women journal editor’s correction of Luis de Granada’s grammatical error that competir should be compiten. 16 Manuscripts of Vidas gloriosas de algũns Sanctos e Sanctas (Sanctos no gosagvueo) (ca. 1591) and Martyriono kagami (Mirror of martyrdom) (ca. 1596–1614) survive. 17 Guia de pecador: zainin uo jen ni michibicu no gui nari (ぎやどぺかどる) (, 1599) in kanamajiri was a free translation of Fray Luis de Granada, Guía de peccadores (Salamanca, 1557). Four complete copies and several partial volumes are extant.

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(martyred in 1627) was arrested in Shimabara (島原) for hiding the Jesuits, who were executed the previous year. After countless beatings and taunts, the officials dragged Madalena around the village and placed her on a cross naked in full public view.18 Although the underground Kirishitan com- munity no longer was able to recite their Kirishitanban books in public for Madalena as they did for Inez in Yatsushiro in 1603, the martyred bodies of these weak but strong women became an open book of testimony of fides. They demonstrated the paradoxical theology of go Passiom not as a passive victim but as a powerful divine being to be feared by the authori- ties, who executed more than 240 Kirishitan women, young, old, married, single, with children or alone, from noble to plebian classes between 1614 and 1650. The authorities also eliminated all the pictures of them, includ- ing such famous women as Hosokawa Tama Gracia. In conclusion, Kirishitan women were instrumental in the translation and transculturation of Jesuit Christianity into a new potent Kirishitan religion. After three hundred years of thorough and meticulous effort to eradicate all traces of Christianity, the participation of Kirishitan women in its literary development would seem to have been destroyed. However, though we have no surviving examples of Kirishitan women’s literature, their distinct and vital contributions to the development of Kirishitanban can be combed from the existing Jesuit sources.

18 Pedro Morejón, Relación de los mártires del Japón del año 1627 (Mexico, 1631), 235r-41v.

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