Kirishitan

Netsuke depicting Christ, 17th century, Japan.

Kirishitan (吉利支丹, 切支丹, キリシタン, Kirishitan^?), from Portuguese cristão, meant Christian(s) in Japanese and is today used as a historiographic term for Christians in Japan in the 16th and 17th centuries. This article overviews Christianity in Japan at the time.

Catholic missionary activities in Japan began in 1549, exclusively performed by Portuguese-sponsored Jesuits until Spanish-sponsored mendicant orders, such as the Franciscans and Dominicans, gained access to Japan. Francisco Xavier (a Catholic Saint)^[1][2], Cosme de Torres (a Jesuit priest), and Father John Fernandez were the first, who arrived to Kagoshima with hopes to bring Christianity and Catholicism to Japan. Catholicism was subsequently repressed in several parts of the country and ceased to exist publicly in the 17th century.

However, there are some historians who state that there is enough archaeological evidence to suggest that Nestorian (Assyrian Church) missionaries first landed in Japan in 199 AD. It is believed that they traveled through India, China and Korea before the Tang dynasty. And it has been estimated that the first churches were fully established by the end of the 4th century especially at Nara in central Japan.^[3]

The line of demarcations between Spain and Portugal

The missionary activities of the Catholic orders were initially sponsored by the Iberian kingdoms of Portugal and Spain. Religion was an integral part of the state and evangelization was seen as having both secular and spiritual benefits. Wherever these powers attempted to expand their territories or influence, missionaries would soon follow. By the Treaty of Tordesillas, the two powers divided the world between them into exclusive spheres of influence, trade and colonization. Although at the time of the demarcation, neither nation had any direct contact with Japan, that nation fell into the sphere of the Portuguese.

A Japanese votive altar, Nanban style. End of 16th century. Guimet Museum.

Portugal and Spain disputed about the attribution of Japan. Since neither could colonize it, the exclusive right to propagate Christianity in Japan meant the exclusive right to trade with Japan. Portuguese-sponsored Jesuits took the lead in proselytizing in Japan over the objection of the Spaniards. The fait accompli was approved in Pope Gregory XIII's papal bull of 1575, which decided that Japan belonged to the Portuguese diocese of Macao. In 1588, the diocese of Funai (Nagasaki) was founded under Portuguese protection.

In rivalry with the Jesuits, Spanish-sponsored mendicant orders snuck into Japan via Manila. While criticizing Jesuit activities, they actively lobbied the Pope. Their campaigns resulted in Pope Clement VIII's decree of 1600, which allowed Spanish friars to enter Japan via the Portuguese Indies, and Pope Paul V's decree of 1608, which abolished the restrictions on the route. The Portuguese accused Spanish Jesuits of working for their homeland instead of their patron. The power struggle between Jesuits and mendicant orders caused a schism within the diocese of Funai. Furthermore, mendicant orders tried in vain to establish a diocese on the Tohoku region that was to be independent from the Portuguese one.

The Roman Catholic world order was challenged by the Netherlands and England. Theoretically, it was repudiated by Grotius's Mare Liberum. In the early 17th century, Japan built trade relations with the Netherlands and England. Although England withdrew from the operations in ten years under James I due to lack of profitability, the Netherlands continued to trade with Japan and became the only European country that maintained trade relations with Japan until the 19th century. As trade competitors, the Protestant countries engaged in a negative campaign against Catholicism, and it subsequently affected shogunate policies toward the Iberian kingdoms.

Portugal's and Spain's colonial policies were also challenged by the Roman Catholic Church itself. The Vatican founded the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide in 1622 and attempted to separate the churches from the influence of the Iberian kingdoms. But it was too late for Japan. The organization failed to establish staging points in Japan.

Propagation strategy

The martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, 1590-1600 tempera painting, Japan.

The Jesuits believed that it was very effective to seek to influence people in power and to pass the religion downward to the commoners. At least they needed to gain permission from local rulers to propagate Catholicism within their domains. It is confirmed that as feudal lords converted to Catholicism, the number of believers in their territories was drastically increased. Thus historians presume that Catholicism was spread by forced conversion although Christians would claim that massive conversion resulted from the influence of their lords' exemplary behavior, not from forced conversion. Although some Jesuits focused the spotlight on exceptional rulers like Takayama Ukon and many martyrs, the vast majority of superficial Christians abandoned Catholicism after persecution.

Economic activities

The Jesuits in Japan had to maintain economic self-sufficiency because they could not expect stable and sufficient payment from their patron, the King of Portugal. Alternatively, the king allowed the Jesuits to engage in Portuguese trade with Japan. Such economic activity can be found in the work of Francis Xavier, the pioneer of Catholic missions in Japan. He covered the cost of missionary work by selling pepper obtained in Malacca. From the 1550s to the 1570s, The Jesuits covered all necessary expenses with trade profits and bought land in India.

Their officially recognized commercial activity was a fixed-amount entry into the Portuguese silk trade between Macau and Nagasaki. They financed to a certain amount the trade association in Macau, which purchased raw silk in Canton and sold it in Nagasaki. They did not confine their commercial activity to the official silk market but expanded into unauthorized markets. For the Macau-Nagasaki trade, they dealt in silk fabrics, gold, musk and other goods. Sometimes, they even got involved in Spanish trade, which was prohibited by the kings of Spain and Portugal and which antagonized Portuguese traders.

It was mainly procurators who brokered Portuguese trade. They resided in Macau and Nagasaki, and accepted purchase commitments by Japanese customers, such as the shogunate, daimyo and wealthy merchants. By brokerage, the Jesuits could expect not only rebates but also favorable treatment from the authorities. For this reason, the office of procurator became an important post amongst the Jesuits in Japan. Although trade activities by the Jesuits ate into Portuguese trade interests, procurators continued their brokerage utilizing the authority of the Catholic Church. At the same time, Portuguese merchants required the assistance of procurators who were familiar with Japanese customs, since they established no permanent trading post in Japan. Probably the most notable procurator was Joao Rodrigues, who approached Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu and even participated in the administration of Nagasaki.

Such commercial activities were contrary to the idea of honorable poverty that the priests held. But some Jesuits at this time placed the expansion of the society's influence before this ideal.

Mendicant orders fiercely accused the Jesuits of being corrupt and even considered their activity as the primary reason for Japan's ban on Catholicism. Mendicant orders themselves were not necessarily uninvolved in commercial activities, although due to the lack of primary sources it is difficult to uncover their economic situation.

Military activities

Japanese-Portugese Bell Inscribed 1570

Missionaries were not reluctant to take military action if they considered it an effective way to Christianize Japan.

They often associated military action against Japan with the conquest of China. They thought that well-trained Japanese soldiers who had experienced long civil wars would help their countries conquer China. For example, Alessandro Valignano said to the Philippine Governor that it was impossible to conquer Japan because the Japanese were very brave and always received military training but that Japan would benefit them when they would conquer China. Francisco Cabral also reported to the King of Spain that priests were able to send to China two or three thousand Japanese Christian soldiers who were brave and were expected to serve the king with little pay.

The Jesuits provided various kinds of support including military support to Kirishitan daimyo when they were threatened by non-Kirishitan daimyo. Most notable was their support of Omura Sumitada and Arima Harunobu, who fought against the anti-Catholic Ryuzoji clan. In the 1580s, Valignano believed in the effectiveness of military action and fortified Nagasaki and Mogi. In 1585, Gaspar Coelho asked the Spanish Philippines to send a fleet but the plan was rejected due to the shortness of its military capability.

When Toyotomi Hideyoshi issued the first ban on Catholicism in 1587, the Jesuits in Japan, led by Coelho, planned armed resistance. At first, they sought help from Kirishitan daimyo but the daimyo refused. Then they called for a deployment of reinforcements from their homeland and its colonies. But this plan was abolished by Valignano. Like the Kirishitan daimyo, he realized that a military campaign against Japan's powerful ruler would bring catastrophe to Catholicism in Japan. Valignano survived the crisis by laying all the blame on Coelho. In 1590, the Jesuits decided to stop intervening in the struggles between the daimyo and to disarm themselves. They only gave secret shipments of food and financial aid to Kirishitan daimyo.

It seems that the Jesuits had no military plan during the Edo period since they realized that the Tokugawa shogunate was much stronger and more stable than Toyotomi Hideyoshi's administration. In contrast, mendicant orders relatively openly discussed military options. In 1615, a Franciscan emissary of the Viceroy of New Spain asked the shogun for land to build a Spanish fortress and this deepened Japan's suspicion against Catholicism and the Iberian colonial powers behind it.

Japan's policy toward Catholicism

When the Jesuit priest Francis Xavier arrived, Japan was experiencing a nationwide civil war. Neither the emperor nor the Ashikaga shogun could exercise power over the nation. At first, Xavier planned to gain permission for building a mission from the emperor but was disappointed with the devastation of the imperial residence. The Jesuits approached daimyo in southwestern Japan and succeeded in converting some of these daimyo. One reason for their conversion may have been the Portuguese trade in which the Jesuits acted as brokers. The Jesuits recognized this and approached local rulers with offers of trade and exotic gifts.

Monument to Kirishitan martyrs in Nagasaki

The Jesuits attempted to expand their activity to Kyoto and the surrounding regions. In 1559, Gaspar Vilela obtained permission from Ashikaga Yoshiteru to teach Christianity. This license was the same as those given to Buddhist temples, so special treatment cannot be confirmed regarding the Jesuits. On the other hand, Emperor Ogimachi issued edicts to ban Catholicism in 1565 and 1568. Anyway, the orders of the emperor and the shogun were not influential.

Christians refer positively to Oda Nobunaga, who died in the middle of the reunification of Japan. He favored the Jesuit missionary Luis Frois and generally tolerated Christianity. But overall, he undertook no remarkable policies toward Catholicism. Actually, Catholic power in his domain was trivial because he did not conquer western Japan, where the Jesuits were based.

Buddhist statue with hidden cross on back, used by Christians in Japan to hide their real beliefs

The situation was changed when Toyotomi Hideyoshi reunified Japan. Once he became the ruler of Japan, Hideyoshi began to pay attention to external threats, particularly the expansion of European power in East Asia. The turning point for Catholic missions was the San Felipe incident, where in an attempt to recover his cargo, the Spanish captain of a shipwrecked trading vessel claimed that the missionaries were there to prepare Japan for conquest. These claims enraged Hideyoshi and made him suspicious of the foreign religion. He attempted to curb Catholicism while maintaining good trading relations with Portugal and Spain, which might have provided military support to Christian Daimyo in western Japan. In 1587, he banned the ruling class from converting to Catholicism, because he was concerned that divided loyalties might lead to dangerous rebels like the Ikkō-ikki Sect of earlier years. At the same time, he put Nagasaki under his direct rule to control Portuguese trade. In 1597, 26 Kirishitan followers were executed in Nagasaki on Hideyoshi's order. He also abolished slavery in Japan and substituted it with debt bondage.

After Toyotomi Hideyoshi's death, Tokugawa Ieyasu assumed hegemony over Japan, in 1600. Like Toyotomi Hideyoshi, he disliked Christian activities in Japan but gave priority to trade with Portugal and Spain. He secured Portuguese trade in 1600. He negotiated with Manila to establish trade with the Philippines. The trade promotion made his policies toward Catholicism inconsistent. At the same time, in an attempt to wrest control of the Japan trade from the Catholic countries, Dutch and British traders advised the Shogunate that Spain did indeed have territorial ambitions, and that Catholicism was Spain's principal means. The Dutch and British promised, in distinction, that they would limit themselves to trading and would not conduct missionary activities in Japan.

The Tokugawa shogunate finally decided to ban Catholicism, in 1614. This marked the end of open Christianity in Japan. The immediate cause of the prohibition was a case of fraud involving Ieyasu's Catholic vavasor, but there were also other reasons behind it. The shogunate was concerned about a possible invasion by the Iberian colonial powers, which had previously occurred in the New World and the Philippines. Domestically, the ban was closely related to measures against the Toyotomi clan. On the other hand, some Jesuits cited "reasons of state" as the key factor; they realized the superiority of state politics over religion in Japan.

Christian view of Kirishitan history

Non-religious researchers find it difficult to understand the motivations behind martyrdom. Instead of giving detailed accounts, they merely point out the rate of martyrdoms; the number of Christians at their peak is estimated to have been 500,000 whereas there were likely around 1,000 known martyrs during the missionary period. In contrast, Christians attach a great importance to martyrdom and persecution, noting that countless more people were dispossessed of their land and property leading to their subsequent death in poverty.

Picture of Christ used to reveal practicing Catholics and sympathizers

The Japanese government used Fumie to reveal practicing Catholics and sympathizers. Fumie were pictures of the Virgin Mary and Christ. Government officials made everybody trample on these pictures. People reluctant to step on the pictures were identified as Catholics and then sent to Nagasaki. The policy of the Japanese government (Edo) was to turn them from their faith, Catholicism. However, if the Catholics refused to change their religion, they were tortured. But since many of them still refused to abandon their faith, they were killed by the government. Execution took place at Nagasaki's Mount Unzen, where many were dumped into the volcano^{[citation needed]}.

The Shimabara Rebellion, led by a young Christian boy named Amakusa Shiro Tokisada, took place in 1637. The Rebellion broke out over economic desperation and government oppression, but later assumed a religious tone. About 27,000 people joined the uprising, but it was crushed by the shogunate after a sustained campaign. They are not considered martyrs by the Catholic Church since they took up arms for materialistic reasons.

Many Japanese were deported to Macau or to the Spanish Philippines. Many Macanese and Japanese Mestizos are the mixed-race descendants of the deported Japanese Catholics. 400 were officially deported by the government to Macau and Manila, but thousands of Japanese were pressured into moving voluntarily. About 10,000 Macanese, and 3,000 Japanese were moved to Manila.

The Catholic Remnant in Japan was driven underground and its members became known as the "Hidden Christians". Some priests, however, remained in Japan illegally, including eighteen Jesuits, seven Franciscans, seven Dominicans, one Augustinian, five seculars and an unknown number of Jesuit irmao and dojuku.

Since this time corresponds to the Thirty Years' War between Catholics and Protestants in Germany, it is possible that the checking of Catholic power in Europe reduced the flow of funds to the Catholic missions in Japan, which could be why they failed at this time and not before.

During the Edo period, the Kakure Kirishitan kept their faith. Biblical phrases or prayers were transferred orally from parent to child, and secret posts (Mizukata) were assigned in their underground community to baptize their children, all while regional governments continuously operated Fumie to expose Christians.

Drawn from the oral histories of Japanese Catholic communities, Shusaku Endo's acclaimed novel "Silence" provides detailed accounts of the persecution of Christian communities and the suppression of the Church.

Rediscovery and Return

Japan was opened to foreign interaction by Matthew Perry in 1853. It became possible to live in Japan for foreigners with Harris Treaty in 1858 . Many Christian clergymen were sent from Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Churches, though proselytization was still banned. In 1865, some of the Japanese who lived in Urakami village near Nagasaki visited the new Ōura Church which had been built by the Paris Foreign Missions Society (Missions étrangères de Paris) barely a month before. A female member of the group spoke to a French priest, Bernard Thadee Petitjean, and confessed that their families had kept the Kirishitan faith. Those Kirishitan wanted to see the statue of St.Mary with their own eyes, and to confirm that the priest was single and truly came from the pope in Rome. After this interview, many Kirishitan thronged toward Petitjean. He investigated their underground organizations and discovered that they had kept the rite of baptism and the liturgical years without European priests for nearly 250 years. Petitjean’s report surprised the Christian world. Pope (Pius IX) called it a miracle.

The Edo Shogunate still banned Christianity, however, and heavily persecuted the religion in 1867, the last year of its rule. Robert Bruce van Valkenburgh, the American minister-resident in Japan, privately complained of this persecution to the Nagasaki magistrates, though very little action was taken to stop it. The succeeding Meiji government continued in this vein, several thousand people were exiled. After Europe and the U.S. began to vocally criticize the persecution, the Japanese government realized that it needed to lift the ban in order to attain its interests. In 1873 the ban was lifted, the exiles returned and started to construct the Urakami Cathedral, which was completed in 1895.

It was later revealed that tens of thousands of Kirishitan still survived in some regions near Nagasaki. Some officially returned to the Roman Catholic Church, but others remained apart from the Catholic Church and became known as Hanare Kirishitan, retaining their own traditional beliefs. Their descendants currently do not regard themselves as Christians or Buddhists^{[citation needed]}. They assert that they just keep their ancestor's religion. Their exact numbers are still unknown, but they are gradually converting to Buddhism or Catholicism^{[citation needed]}. When John Paul II visited Nagasaki in 1981, he baptized some young people from Hanare Kirishitan families.

See also

• Kakure Kirishitan ("hidden Christian") refers to the Japanese communities that continued to secretly practice a native form of Christianity in spite of persecution. Their isolation led to their drifting away from the foreign version of the religion.
• Nanban trade period
• Nippo jisho
• Martyrdom of the 26 Saints of Japan
• Tomas Araki
• Japanese words of Portuguese origin
• Suwa Shrine (Nagasaki)
• Shusaku Endo's novel "Silence" about the 17th century suppression of the last known Japanese Christian communities.
• Francis Xavier

References

1. ^ Catholic Encyclopedia, 1909 on St. Francis Xavier
2. ^ Saint Francis Xavier on Catholic Forum
3. ^ The Keikyo Institute: "Nestorian Christianity in the Tang Dynasty". http://www.keikyo.com

External links

• History of the Japanese Catholic Church by the Daughters of St. Paul convent; Tokyo, Japan
• Pilgrimage Sites and Churches in Nagasaki by TCA (Think Catholic Asia) Japan located inside Nagasaki Catholic Center
• Christianity is popular in Japan today

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