STORY NOTES

The first Europeans set foot in Japan in 1543 A.D. Six years later, Francis Xavier (1506-1552) arrived and started the Jesuit mission. This became very successful, and the Jesuits acquired almost complete control of the port city of Nagasaki. Soon, churches were founded even in Kyoto and Osaka, and seminaries were established for training Japanese preachers. The Jesuits recorded Japanese customs and culture of the day, resulting in the famous Japanese-Portuguese Dictionary (Nippo jisho). The book recorded the language, not as written in Chinese characters, but exactly as it sounded to the Jesuits. By 1580, there were an estimated 200,000 Japanese Christians, including many more than a dozen daimyo (lords).

Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), the first of the three great unifiers of Japan, was curious about the foreign religion and allowed the Jesuits to spread Catholicism. After being assassinated by Akechi Mitsuhide, one of his trusted generals, Nobunaga was succeeded by Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598). Hideyoshi established a ban on Catholicism, but it was nominal and the number of converts continued to increase. Catholic missions, closely tied to foreign trade, continued to flourish as late as 1613.

When Ieyasu Tokugawa came into power in 1603, he tightened his grip on the country, and foreign influences dwindled. Everything was done to stamp out Christianity, more for political reasons than for religious ones. It was suspected that Christians did not accept the government as a supreme authority, and it was feared that Christianity might serve to unify defiant daimyo against the Shoguante. There were also fears of intrusion on Japan by European powers. These fears were exacerbated by disputes between Spain and Portugal, as well as between Jesuits and the more recently arrived Franciscans and Dominicans. As a result, each Japanese family had to officially register as members of a Buddhist temple. Villagers and temples filed annual reports stating that everyone in their district had been examined and that no Christians were found to be among them.

In 1637, a mostly Christian revolt led by 16-year-old Amakusa Shiro was put down near Nagasaki. Thirty-eight thousand peasants and ronin shut themselves up in Hara Castle on the Shimabara Peninsula and defied the Tokugawa government. The Dutch assisted the Shogunate by bombarding the castle from the sea. After a four-month siege, Hara Castle was stormed and the starving Christians killed. Only a few ”secret Christians” (kakure kirishitan) survived, mostly practicing their religion on islands off the coast of Nagasaki. It was not until 1873 that the restrictions on Christianity were lifted.

• Everyday Life in Traditional Japan by Charles J. Dunn, 1969, Charles E. Tuttle Co., Rutland, VT and Tokyo, Japan

• Cultural Atlas of Japan by Martin Collcutt, Marius Jansen, and Isao Kumakura, 1998, Facts on File, Inc., New York, NY.