Christian Sorcerers on Trial: Records of the 1827 Osaka Incident by Fumiko Miyazaki et al.

Abstract

Reviewed by: Christian Sorcerers on Trial: Records of the 1827 Osaka Incident by Fumiko Miyazaki et al. Avery Morrow Keywords Japan, sorcery, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, fumie, persecution fumiko miyazaki, kate wildman nakai, AND mark teeuwen, TRANS. Christian Sorcerers on Trial: Records of the 1827 Osaka Incident. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020. Pp. 408. From the 1620s until the 1860s, Christianity was a mysterious banned sect in Japan, known to the common people chiefly as something they had to denounce and abhor. Most people had to affiliate themselves with a Buddhist temple to prove their disavowal of this unknown foreign religion; some had to swear oaths, and in the former Christian hotspot of Nagasaki, people were called regularly to local administrative offices to trample on images of Christ and Mary, called fumie. For one group of peasants in the 1820s, though, Christianity became a source of magical power. For the first time in English, Christian Sorcerers on Trial tells their stories, filtered through confessions to their prosecutors exacted under torture, as well the way their underground circle became rumor and legend in Edo salons. This book is a translation of primary sources buttressed by some scholarly commentary that situates it within Japanese history. The first section contains [End Page 158] confessions offered by the sorcerers, including some detective work and cross-analysis by the prosecutors. The second section is about the difficult process of sentencing, showing how the prosecutors had to step around sensitive political issues in their handling of Christianity. The final section translates the stray references to this case in contemporary literature. The editors offer background on the origins of each of the documents translated, and as an account of the incident the book feels fairly complete. The originator of "Christian sorcery" was apparently a man named Mizuno Gunki, already deceased by the time the group was uncovered. The Osaka prosecutor was unable to ascertain his origins, other than that he had moved to the city from somewhere else. He owned a few illicitly imported Chinese texts about Christianity (some by Matteo Ricci), and from 1818 onwards he carried with him a scroll bearing images of Mary and Jesus, but there is no evidence that he knew anything about the ordinary Christian form of worship. Instead, he selected only a few most trustworthy people around him to be invited into his inner sanctum, where they would drip their blood or sign an oath over his picture of the Virgin Mary, swearing to keep the worship of the "Lord of Heaven" and his mother a lifelong secret. In return, Gunki promised that his initiates would be able to work miracles and gain in material wealth. Gunki's most important initiate was Toyoda Mitsugi, a woman who was trained in yin-yang divination and mediumship through the deity Inari, often associated with foxes. Mitsugi created her own chain of initiation which ran through two other women. Among these women, Inari's mediumship became their outward practice, with the chanting of Christian names becoming the secret inward practice. Through this combination, the women claimed to have achieved worldly wealth and benefits, although when pressed by the prosecution, one claimed that she had impersonated a fox in order to encourage the others to wonder. None of the later initiates had actually read the Chinese Christian texts which Gunki possessed. Most embarrassing to the Japanese authorities was the adventure of the female initiate Sano, who never had a chance to see Gunki's scroll herself and wanted to know what the form of Jesus looked like. She had heard of the fumie practice mentioned above and so traveled to Nagasaki specifically in order to see the fumie and stamp on it, which heightened her faith. The fact that Sano made use of the fumie for precisely the opposite of its intended purpose caused much consternation among the prosecutors and it was eventually decided to censor this part of Sano's testimony from the final report. This translation makes careful note of both the original report and the revision and discusses the juridical procedure at length. [End Page 159] Much of the prior literature about this case concerns its chief prosecutor Ōshio Heihachirō, who...