Christain Historical and Cultural Heritage of Nagasaki
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1549 - 1644
Oratio Story (1)
The Arrival and Flourishing of Christianity
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1645 -1853
Oratio Story (2)
The Ban on Christianity and the Secret Transmission of the Faith@
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1854 -
Oratio (3)
The Opening of Japan and the Discovery of the Hidden Christians
The Lifting of the Ban and the Revival of Christianity
Oratio Story (2)
The Ban on Christianity and the Secret Transmission of the Faith
History
| 1797 | Migration from Sotome to the remote islands gets underway. |
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Japanese Forms of Faith Based on Tradition and Local Social Customs
Despite the severity of the repression, Hidden Christians existed throughout Japan until the mid-seventeenth century. However, a series of campaigns of detection and persecution in the 1650s and 1660s in Kōri (Nagasaki), Bungo (Ōita), and Nōbi (Gifu/Aichi prefectures) left the Hidden Christian population limited principally to the Nagasaki region.
Under the guidance of lay leaders and in line with the church calendar, the Hidden Christians observed feast days and penitential days and conducted rites such as baptisms and funerals. Since they had no churches, they would gather secretly in the houses of religious leaders known as chōkata (“official of the book”) and mizukata (“water official”) and conduct prayers and rituals, while venerating the places where their ancestors had been martyred or were buried.
While the faith was maintained, it was gradually influenced by native Japanese traditions. The pronunciation of the Latin and Portuguese prayers (oratio) that had been brought to Japan in the sixteenth century became garbled, and certain prayers and ceremonies were altered by the influence of folk religions as they were transmitted from generation to generation.
© Shoji Yoshitaka -
Hidden Christian Villages Take Shape in the Gotō Islands
From the 1630s, the prophecies of the Japanese evangelist Bastian spread throughout the Sotome region of Nagasaki. Among the prophecies was this belief: “When seven generations pass, priests will appear and the day will come when you can be open about your faith.” Other ideas that were transmitted orally include the contents of a pamphlet providing guidance on contrition when priests were not available for confessions, and a catechistic book on the Old Testament, called Concerning the Creation of Heaven and Earth. These traditions show the symbiotic relationship that developed between Christianity and Japanese culture and how certain beliefs were passed down to later generations.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century, peasants from Sotome in the Ōmura domain migrated to the Gotō Islands at the request of the Gotō domain. Since many of these peasants were Hidden Christians, their migration resulted in the text of Concerning the Creation of Heaven and Earth also being transmitted to the Gotō Islands. The settlers who clustered in family units to cultivate the cramped hillsides formed Hidden Christian communities throughout the Gotō Islands.
Thanks to the detailed instructions provided by the missionaries when Christianity first reached Japan, the Hidden Christians were well equipped to keep their faith going in a systematic way.
© Shoji Yoshitaka
