Kirishitan
Kirishitan, also known as Kakure Kirishitan or "hidden Christians," refers to a unique form of Christianity that emerged in Japan over 450 years ago. Following the introduction of Christianity by Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier in 1549, the faith initially flourished until the late 16th century, when political leaders began to perceive it as a threat. This led to severe persecution, culminating in the outlawing of Christianity in 1614, forcing many believers underground. The Kirishitan adapted their religious practices to evade detection, blending Catholic elements with local customs and using Buddhist imagery to conceal their faith.
Their unique traditions included altering religious icons to resemble Buddhist figures, creating hidden compartments for Christian symbols, and memorizing prayers in a way that mimicked Buddhist chants. Although Christianity was legalized in 1873, many Kirishitan continued their practices in secrecy, valuing the connection to their ancestors and the historical struggles they faced. Today, the Kirishitan community is dwindling, primarily consisting of elderly members in remote areas, with efforts underway to sustain or revive their practices as a tribute to their heritage and faith. The estimated number of practicing Kirishitan in Japan today is around 150,000, though this figure is not precisely known.
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Kirishitan
The Kirishitan are alternately known as the Kakure Kirishitan, which means "hidden Christians." The Kirishitan are members of a Japanese form of Christianity that began more than 450 years ago. They survived for centuries in hiding after threats from the Japanese government drove newly converted Christians underground. The combined factors of having to hide their Christian practices and the lack of contact with other Christians resulted in a form of Christianity unique to the Kirishitan that remained long after any need to hide their faith had passed. After centuries of survival against the odds, the faith practices of the Kirishitan are endangered in the twenty-first century as fewer young people join or stay with the faith and older members of the community pass away.
Background
Buddhism was introduced to Japan in the sixth century by a delegation from Korea. By the seventh century, Prince Regent Shōtoku named Buddhism the country's official religion. The religion quickly became an important part of Japanese life, with government-built temples serving as centers of culture. The Buddhist faith remained in favor through most of the intervening centuries, and it was the majority religion among people of all classes by the fourteenth century.
Christianity came to Japan on August 15, 1549, when the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier led a band of missionaries to Kagoshima, a city on Kyushu, one of Japan's four major islands. Xavier, who was canonized as a Roman Catholic saint in 1622, and the missionaries were well received when they first arrived. They shared Catholic teachings and conducted many baptisms, the ceremony of initiation to the Christian faith, before Xavier and some of the missionaries left two years later.
Other missionaries from Xavier's Jesuit order continued to share the faith in Japan. The Jesuits learned, respected, and adopted local customs that were not in opposition to Christianity and learned Japanese so they could talk to and teach the Japanese people in their own language. This helped the missionaries gain three hundred thousand converts by the end of the sixteenth century. These converts included some of the shogun, the elite warlords who ruled Japan at the time.
Before the end of the century, however, Japanese political leaders began to fear that the Christians were a threat to the overall peace and security of the country. Buddhist monks added their concerns, which grew when Christians burned down temples to build churches. In 1587, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a Japanese general and warlord, gave the Christians twenty days to leave. Some Christians left but many, including a number of the missionaries, stayed and continued to practice and preach in a more low-key manner.
A new group of Franciscan missionaries that arrived in 1593 were bolder, provoking Hideyoshi. He was further incensed by a Spanish ship captain's claim that the vast Spanish empire increased its holdings by sending merchants and priests ahead of the conquering forces. Hideyoshi responded by gathering nine members of the Christian clergy and seventeen Christians, including three young altar boys, and publicly cutting off their noses and ears before crucifying them. These twenty-six people, now known as the Nagasaki martyrs, were the basis of the 2016 Martin Scorsese film Silence.
Things did not improve for the Christians. By 1614, the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu expelled the missionaries and outlawed Christianity. People suspected of being Christians were rounded up and forced to step on images and icons of Jesus and the Virgin Mary to prove they were not Christians. Those who refused were tortured and killed by dismemberment, crucifixion, or by other means.
Some Christians chose to step on the images and give the outward appearance of denying their faith. They then continued to practice Christianity in secret. These people became known as the Kakure Kirishitan, the hidden Christians.
Overview
The Christians who were driven underground by the persecutions adapted their religious practices to maintain their faith. They altered their images of Jesus, Mary, and other saints so that they appeared to be Buddha or other images acceptable in the Buddhist faith. They built Buddhist temples in their homes that had hidden compartments to store their crucifixes and Christian icons, referring to the images contained there as nando-gami, or "gods in the closet." They memorized their prayers, hymns, and parts of the Bible and changed how they said or sang them so that they sounded like Buddhist chants.
The Kirishitan had barely forty years with trained priests and missionaries, so their faith practices were somewhat basic, but they managed to support each other and raise up their own faith leaders to sustain the Christian religion. However, with the need to alter their practices to avoid arousing suspicion and without Catholic-trained clergy to lead them, the Kirishitan developed a unique form of Christianity that became a blend of traditional Catholic practices and some local customs, such as honoring ancestors killed for their faith as gods.
Instead of an ordained priesthood, the role of priest was passed from father to son, as in the Buddhist faith. Rice and sake were substituted for the bread and wine used in the Christian community. Without access to many prayer books or Bibles, they relied on memorized prayers originally learned in Latin and passed down so many times that most people no longer knew exactly what the words meant. The secretive manner in which their practices and prayers were shared meant that various villages did things differently, with little standardization.
Even after the ban on Christianity was lifted in 1873 and Catholic missionaries returned to Japan, many of the Kirishitan stayed underground and continued to practice in their own ways. The need for secrecy and the desire to adhere to the ways of their ancestors had become an important part of the Kirishitan's faith. In the twenty-first century, it is estimated that there are around 150,000 practicing Kirishitan in Japan, though no one knows the exact number.
Many of the Kirishitan live on smaller Japanese islands in remote communities. Most of those who practice the faith are elderly, and they are generally not replaced, as young people increasingly choose life in bigger cities or simply turn away from their ancestral practices. Some people are trying to sustain or even revive the practices of the Kirishitan as an ongoing memorial to those who died for the faith.
Bibliography
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Kuhn, Anthony. "Driven Underground Years Ago, Japan's 'Hidden Christians' Maintain Faith." NPR, 11 Oct. 2015, www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/10/11/446865818/driven-underground-years-ago-japans-hidden-christians-maintain-faith. Accessed 10 June 2017.
Sieg, Linda. "Japan's 'Hidden Christians' Face Extinction." Reuters, 19 Dec. 2007, www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-christians-idUST14106220071219. Accessed 10 June 2017.
Yu, Doris. "'Silence': The True Story of the Jesuits in Japan." The Jesuits, 22 Dec. 2016, jesuits.org/story?TN=PROJECT-20161220114257. Accessed 10 June 2017.