The kakure kirishitan and their place in Japan’s religious tradition

Abstract

For more than two hundred and fifty years, while Japan was relatively isolated from the Western world and Christianity was strictly forbidden by the Tokugawa Bakufu, a small group of Japanese Catholics tried to keep the faith alive underground. Despite persecution and bloodshed, they sustained Christian teachings and practice through seven generations. When Catholic missionaries were once again permitted to enter Japan in the 19th century, they discovered small pockets of Christianity in Kyushu and immediately looked toward wooing these descendants of Japan's first Christians back to an orthodox practice of Roman Catholicism. Some Christian descendants accepted the teachings of the newly arrived Catholic missionaries. Others, however, numbering about 35,000 refused and they continued to live their own brand of Christianity, practicing what they believed to be the true faith as communicated to their ancestors between 1549 and 1639. Although there are several names applied to this latter group, I will use the term kakure (hidden) Kirishitan in this paper. The emergence of this Christian remnant in the 19th century raises many questions. How were these people able to transmit their religious beliefs over seven generations without detection? Why did they not accept with joy the return of Catholic missionaries? Why did they choose to continue to practice their faith in secret even after the ban on Christianity had been lifted? A partial answer to these questions is found when one tries to answer the larger question of what place the kakure have in Japan's religious