About Nagasaki
Oura Cathedral, dedicated to the Twenty-Six Holy Martyrs of Japan, and the discovery of the Hidden Christians
During the last years of the Tokugawa shogunate and the early Meiji era beginning in 1867, the Christian missionaries who arrived in Japan worked with a vigor of unrivaled passion and managed to pass the baton on to their successors in a splendid manner. The bright light of hope fell upon their descendants in Nagasaki, a place filled with the history of the Hidden Christians who had overcome such a long and harsh period of suffering. And this all started with the completion of Oura Cathedral, the Basilica of the Twenty-Six Holy Martyrs of Japan.
Two priests who arrived in Nagasaki upon the opening up of Japan to the world
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It was in the year 1644 that Japan became bereft of any Christian priests following the Tokugawa shogunate’s policy of forbidding Christianity. Around ten years later in Europe the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris was founded by secular priests not affiliated to any monastic order, with the objective of propagating the faith in the Far East, initially in Southeast Asia. In the last years of the Tokugawa shogunate the Vatican delegated the mission of restarting missionary work in Japan to the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris, and three priests – Prudence Girard, Louis Furet and Eugène-Emmanuel Mermet-Cachon – were sent to the Kingdom of Ryukyu (present day Okinawa) to learn Japanese. Against this background, in 1858 when Japan started to open itself to the world the port of Nagasaki was opened and the foreigners who settled in Japan to work on sales routes for overseas trade were given permission to build a church in which they could assemble to celebrate mass each Sunday.
On June 8th 1862, Pope Pius IX canonized to sainthood the Twenty-Six Martyrs who had been martyred in Nagasaki. In the Catholic Church, canonization is the declaration of a martyr or person of especial faith and virtue as an officially recognized saint, declaring them worthy of public veneration.
Foreseeing that Japan was on the verge of opening up to the world, the Vatican delegated the soon-as-possible restart of missionary work in Japan to the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris, and straight away Fr. Prudence Girard, the Provincial , ordered Fr. Furet and Fr. Petitjean, who had been standing by in the Kingdom of Ryukyu, to enter Nagasaki. In 1863, the two missionaries were dispatched to Nagasaki. The mission they were delegated to fulfill by the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris was the construction of a church dedicated to the Twenty-Six Martyrs of Japan who were martyred on a hill overlooking Nagasaki called Nishizaka. But that was not all; they were also tasked with finding the descendants of the Hidden Christians carrying on the faith away from the public eye, and who it was believed must still exist.
In this part, we will focus on the secrets of the Oura Cathedral, a national treasure, the miracle of the “discovery of faith,” and the subsequent activities and sad stories of the Christians.
COLUMN 1 A National Treasure – Oura Cathedral
◆Oura Cathedral (officially named the Basilica of the Twenty-Six Holy Martyrs of Japan)
Built as if to blend in with the mountains, sea and nature, the starting point for the group of numerous churches in the area of Nagasaki Prefecture is Oura Cathedral, constructed in the wake of the Discovery of the Hidden Christians that occurred there. At the time of its construction the architectural style of Oura Cathedral combined a Gothic design with three towers and a Baroque frontal façade, while the surface of the external walls employed the uniquely Japanese namako style of plastering, a technique combining plastering and rectangular tiles for weatherproofing. The cathedral was extended and altered in the years 1875 and 1879, with changes to the floor plan and exterior design, and the alteration of the walls from wood to white stuccoed brick, although the interior remains as it was originally. In 1862 the Yokohama Sacred Heart Cathedral was completed on the Yokohama foreign settlement, but it was destroyed during the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, and Oura Cathedral was designated a National Treasure as the oldest surviving church in Japan.
Report on opening the path to canonization
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Fr. Furet, who arrived first in Nagasaki, managed to acquire a plot of land at Otsu 1, Minamiyamate, through the mediation of the French Consulate. He first started construction on the rectory that would be the living quarters. When Fr. Petitjean arrived in Nagasaki in early August 1863, he earnestly set about searching for the as yet unknown site of the martyrdom of the Twenty-Six Martyrs of Japan, in order to select a site upon which to build the new church. There can be no doubt he understood that it would be The Twenty-Six Martyrs who would be the pillar comforting the hearts of those subsequent martyrs and the oppressed, and the site of the martyrdom would be a very special place to the Christians of Nagasaki.
By the time that six foreign missionaries including Petro Bautista Blasquez, who was a Spanish Franciscan priest, and 20 Japanese Christians were finally canonized, no less than 265 years had passed. One amazing fact about The Twenty-Six Martyrs is that just seven years after their martyrdom, in 1604, a movement to have them canonized arose among the Japanese faithful. In the collection of the former Archivo de Pastrana (now the Archivo Franciscano Ibero-Oriental in Madrid) there is a document addressed by Japanese Christians to the Pope. In response to this a movement immediately sprung up in Europe, but the flow of information was stemmed due to the expulsion of the missionaries and the policy of prohibiting Christianity, and the movement temporarily halted. Subsequently, the Twenty-Six Holy Martyrs of Japan were beatified on two occasions in Rome, before finally being canonized as saints some 230 years later. The completion of the Oura Cathedral in Nagasaki, which opened the long-locked door of the era of prohibition of Christianity and became a chance for a new age of propagation, was in November 1864. However, just before completion in October 1864 Fr. Furet suddenly took a sabbatical and returned to France. He was replaced by the youthful 24-year-old priest Fr. Joseph Marie Laucaigne.
The Basilica of the Twenty-Six Holy Martyrs of Japan is the official name of Oura Cathedral. The Cathedral, dedicated to The Twenty-Six Martyrs stands on a site looking towards the hill of Nishizaka, the site of their martyrdom, and still stands as if offering prayers.
COLUMN２ The Twenty-Six Martyrs Museum and Monument (Nishizaka Park)
◆The Twenty-Six Martyrs Museum and Monument (Nishizaka Park)
Nishizaka is the hill where, under the prohibition of Chrstianity enforced by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, on February 5th 1597 six missionaries of the Society of Saint Francis who had been preaching the Gospel in the Keihan region and 20 other Japanese believers were executed. It is said that the believers requested to be executed at this particular place bacause of its resemblance to the hill of Golgotha (Calvary) where Jesus Christ was crucified, and it was subsequently the site of numerous Christian executions. In 1950 Pope Pius XII designated Nishizaka as an official Catholic pilgrimage site. On the centennial anniversary of the canonization of The Twenty-Six Martyrs in 1962 a high-relief bronze memorial monument featuring life-sized sculptures of the martyrs was unveiled, accompanied by an adjacent Memorial Museum and Memorial Church. The area continues to communicate the history of the stolen freedom of faith.
COLUMN３ Twenty-Six Martyrs Museum
◆Twenty-Six Martyrs Museum
The museum was opened in 1962 to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the canonization of The Twenty-Six Martyrs. The numerous exhibits consist of precious documents such as the complete collection of the correspondence of Saint Francis Xavier; an original 1621 letter to a senior Jesuit from Nakaura Julian, who had traveled to Rome in 1582 as a member of the Tensho Embassy before returning to Japan and being martyred on the same hill of Nishizaka; a number of 16th century Pietà in the same shape as fumie that the faithfull had protected for many years, and a painting of Our Lady of the Snows. The musum is an ideal place to appreciate the history of Christianity in Nagasaki with an easily understood commentary on that history, starting with the arrival in Japan of Saint Francis Xavier and propagation of Christianity, and progressing through the era of suppression, The Twenty-Six Martyrs, the prayers of the Hidden Christians and the revival of the faith in the Meiji period.
The “French Temple”
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Oura Cathedral, when it appeared on the side of a hill in Minamiyamate, was called “Furansudera” (“the French Temple”) by local people at the time. Fr. Petitjean described that sense of joy in the following report he made to the Superior at the Seminary in Paris. “The church is complete. Everybody is praising it. The gold-colored crosses on the three belfries are dazzling, and one can see them from anywhere in Nagasaki and from the front of the Holy Hill* of martyrdom.” (Nishizaka was referred to as “Holy Hill” prior to the canonization.)
On February 19th 1865 the splendid ceremony dedicating the church was finally conducted, battleships in Nagasaki Harbor from the navies of Russia, Great Britain, the Netherlands and France fired their canons in celebration, and their captains were all in attendance at the ceremony. The flags of eight nation were hoisted in front of the church. However, no senior officials from Japan attended, with just a small number of public servants being sent in proxy. This obliquely shows the intentions of the Prefect of Nagasaki. The “French Temple” that drew many people during its construction is said to have stopped attracting people after its dedication ceremony.
Nonetheless, around one month later on March 17th, this church that had arisen on the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement became the scene for the Discovery of the Hidden Christians, a discovery that was met with amazement around the world. From the perspective of the descendants of the Hidden Christians it was the momentous event of the “discovery of the missionaries.” *（The “Holy Hill” was the name given to the place of the martyrdom of the Twenty-Six Holy Martyrs of Japan before it was definitively ascertained.）
The Discovery of the Christians that stirred the hearts of both the Christians and the priests
The faithful, people who quite apart from never having stepped foot inside a church had never even seen one, and could not even pray out loud together. It was a faith that cannot be seen with the eyes that they had passed down among each other for so long. And it can be imagined that what supported that faith was their deep feelings towards the ancestors who had taught them how to pray. What came to their minds was the Virgin Mary with her motherlike and tender expression. “Where is the statue of the Virgin Mary?” From the time that a handful of Urakami Christians visited Oura Church a new era for those who had chosen the path of faith and hidden themselves started. On the façade of the Oura Church that was built for the foreigners living in the foreign settlement, the words “Tenshudo” (church) were written in Japanese. The feelings of the Christians welled up as though a dam had burst. Both the priest and the Urakami Christians must have felt a shock like electricity racing around their bodies head to toe, their hearts surely started to thump ― though they had believed a priest would someday come, until this moment they had led their lives without daring to think about the arrival of this day. It was indeed a miraculous moment. The faithful dotted around various districts gradually started to head for Oura Church. “Our hearts are the same as yours.” There can be no doubt that whatever the danger involved the people wanted to express these words.
The drawing close of the priests and the Christians
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When Fr. Furet and Fr. Petitjean first arrived in Japan they headed for Urakami and other places, handing out sweets to children and observing whether or not they made the sign of the cross before eating them. Fr. Furet intentionally fell off the horse he was riding to see if anybody would help him, a missionary, and it was said that the two devoted themselves to finding the descendants of the Hidden Christians. However, the Christians who had not once encountered a missionary, and had continued to live hidden lives for generation after generation did not realize that the long black clerical clothing of the soutane the priests were wearing was a sign they were missionaries. They just supposed the two were “oranda san” (Dutchmen), and walked straight past them.
Oura Church, which had officially become a cathedral in 1891 , was designated as a National Treasure in the year 1933. Looking up at the façade, the Japanese characters for “church” come piercingly into view. It is said that after the Discovery of the Hidden Christians, when Fr. Petitjean went to visit the Christians of Urakami they told him: “We had noticed you but we didn’t realize you were priests until the church was constructed.” The advent of the Oura Church, a tangible subject of faith, powerfully drew together the two parties that had been distant from each other for so many long years.
The Discovery of the Hidden Christians that deeply stirred the hearts of both the Christians and the priests
The Discovery of the Hidden Christians awoke those who had been secretly keeping the faith in various places, and changed their fate. In fact, the reason that Fr. Furet left Japan before he had completed his goal was due to his sense of despair that it would not be possible to preach to the Japanese people while Christianity was under prohibition. However, after Fr. Furet learned of the Discovery of the Hidden Christians, in May 1866 he reentered Nagasaki with Fr. Jules Alphonse Cousin and devoted his time to dealing with the believers who had rushed from various points to Oura Church. In the same month, Fr. Petitjean was appointed by Pope Pius IX as the Bishop of Japan. He became Bishop Mgr. Petitjean at an ordination ceremony conducted in Hong Kong in June 1866, and by the end of the year a team had been established with the five priests of Fr. Furet, Fr. Laucaigne, Fr. Cousin, Fr. Poirier and Fr. Henri Armbruster assisting the bishop. Subsequent to the Discovery of the Hidden Christians, other Christians from Kaminoshima Island, Takashima Island and Iojima Island, outside Nagasaki Port, as well as the Christians of the Goto Islands and Sotome region announced their faith. Once it became apparent that there had been several tens of thousands of Christians hiding in Nagasaki alone, the leaders of Christian groups surged towards Oura Church each day, and the priests spent a busy period hearing all their confessions, sorting out information, and coping with the situation.
The movements of the Hidden Christians in each district
Gaspard Yosaku, at the time a 17-year-old man from the Kiri district of the Goto Islands Wakamatsu Island (nowadays Shinkamigoto Town), was convalescing from a wound in Nagasaki. When he saw Oura Church he was stunned to witness with his own eyes the crucifixes and statues of the Virgin Mary like the ones that had been secretly passed down by those in imitation of their own ancestors. Yosaku straight away spoke with Bishop Petitjean and understood that this man was indeed the real Padre (Father) that they had waited so long for.
Furthermore, the eldest son of Michael Senzo the mizukata of the Hidden Christians of Io Island, a man called Domingo Kawahara, and Domingo Mori Matsujiro, whose family had moved from the Sotome district’s Kurosaki to escape the coercive population control and suppression of the Omura Clan, and settled in Kamigoto Tainoura, both regularly visited the Oura Church and received direct instruction in the faith from Bishop Petitjean. Kichidayu and Daikichi Deguchi, a father and son who served as mizukata on Kuroshima Island , along with 20 others representing their community secretly went to visit Oura Church and directly told the priests that “there are 600 believers on Kuroshima Island.” Kuroshima Island was an island from which settlers arrived from outside in the 18th century. Some of the settlers included Hidden Christians from the Sotome region. These local representatives frequently visited Oura Church and started to receive the teaching of the Catholic Church in person from the priests.
From the priests to the faithful
At the beginning of 1867 Bishop Petitjean secretly dispatched Fr. Cousin to the Goto Islands. This was at the request of Domingo Mori Matsujiro, who visited Oura Church after the Discovery of the HiddenChristians and subsequently became the leader of the Christians on the Goto Islands.Fr. Cousin departed from Nagasaki on the early morning of February 5th and crossed the waters ofthe East China Sea for 80 kilometers in a boat rowed by believers, arriving that evening in Kamigoto Tainoura on Nakadorishima Island. The next day he performed a Mass with a sliding door cupboard in Matsujiro’s house serving as the altar, and many of the faithful in attendance. In the subsequent days Fr. Cousin dropped by on the uninhabited Kashiragashima Island, which has a diameter of just 4 kilometers and is situated off the north east coast of Nakadorishima Island. He then started to head back to Nagasaki on the 18th. Afterwards, Matsujiro settled on Kashiragashima Island, made his house into a temporary church and opened a place to foster catechists . Father Cousin visited Kamigoto again in April that year.
Even after the opening up of Japan to the West the shogunate placed stringent regulations on where foreigners were allowed to enter through the Treaty of Amity and Commerce Between the United States and the Empire of Japan. In the Tenryo shogunal demesne
of Nagasaki the shogunate’s territory – in other words the area of the city center and its environs up to the Urakami area – was the area in which entrance was permitted to foreigners, and Fr. Cousin’s journey around the Goto Islands was an immediate violation of the regulations. His secret journeys on little boats between Nagasaki Harbor were an act of immense danger.
The first steps towards building a seminary
It is surprising that at the end of the year of the Discovery of the Christians, Bishop Petitjean was already starting to foster Japanese priests. He housed three men in his rectory, namely Keizaburo and Gentaro, who were the sons of the central figure among the Urakami Christians Domingo Senemon Takagi, and the previously mentioned Gaspard Yosaku. In a remodeled room in the eaves of the rectory they received instruction, mainly from Fr. Laucaigne, in Latin and the catechism. Father Cousin, who had only recently arrived in Japan, spent the daytime learning Japanese and the evenings teaching doctrine (the liturgy). That room in the eaves of the rectory was in fact the site of the foundation of Nagasaki Kokyo Theological School (the present Nagasaki Catholic Theological School), and since the instruction was conducted in Latin it is known as the “Latin Seminary.”
The man appointed to be the first principal of the Theological School that was later opened to serve as the institution for the fully-fledged training of Japanese priests was the youthful Fr. Jules Alfred Renaut, just 24 years of age at the time. Fr. Renaut was also responsible for another great deed. That was his recording in writing, at the time of the Discovery of the Hidden Christians, of the first words with which they professed their faith: “Our hearts are the same as yours.”
At that moment, Bis hop Petitjean who was attending to the Hidden Christians did not make a record of the woman who had whispered these words by his ear. However, Fr. Renaut, who had just arrived
in Japan recorded all the information and it was possible to establish that she was a midwife living in Hamaguchi machi called Yuri Isabelina Sugimoto. These details are recorded in the Renaut Diaries that are now stored in the collection of the Saint Sulpice Seminary in Fukuoka.
Bishop Petitjean’s right-hand men, the fisherman brothers
The words whispered to Bishop Petitjean by Yuri Isabelina Sugimoto launched the history of the “Christian Revival.” The event of the Discovery of the Hidden Christians was spread by word of mouth from one home to another that very day, and on the following day Hidden Christians appeared one after another at Oura Church, not only from Urakami but from the islands outside Nagasaki Harbor, Sotome, Goto, and Amakusa. Among the throng was a man called Pedro Masakichi Nishi. His elder brother was Miguel Chukichi Nishi, a chokata (Christian community leader) and Masakichi was a mizukata (a baptizer), the brothers both being fishermen and Hidden Christians from Kaminoshima Island. Later on the two would come to serve as the right-hand men of Bishop Petitjean, continuously providing him with information. They shared with him the precious details of the names of the islands and villages and the numbers of Hidden Christians living there. With the help of the fishermen brothers, following the Discovery of the Hidden Christians, Bishop Petitjean conducted an investigation of the religious lives of the Hidden Christians, the succession of their organizations, transmission of doctrine and prayers, and in particular the efficacy of their baptisms. However, this research was suspended due to the Fourth Urakami Crackdown.
The Urakami Crackdowns – these had been a series of incidents with a surge of arrests that had caused much suffering to the Hidden Christians of Urakami. The first to third crackdowns had been based mainly on rumors and secret reports, resulting in a dozen or so people being hauled before the Nagasaki Magistrate each month, but the fourth crackdown was somewhat different in nature.
Roundup that attacked the secret churches
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After the Discovery of the Hidden Christians, the Urakami faithful who had pretended to be Buddhist parishioners of Zenza machi’s Seitokuji Temple hammered out a letter breaking relations with the temple and saying that they did not want to hold a funeral at the temple even if one of them died. As matters gathered pace, in an extemporaneous measure the Nagasaki Magistrate gave his permission for the Christians to conduct funerals without the presence of a Buddhist priest. Delighted at this, the Christians established four secret churches in Urakami and the invited priests held masses and baptisms. Around the time most people were at sleep, the priest would cast off their soutanes, put on topknot wigs, and walk between the various places disguised as Japanese wearing Japanese clothes. Fr. Laucaigne would later look back on those days of preaching with the words “the happiest days of my life were those times.”
On July 13th 1867 Fr. Laucaigne set off with the intention of spending a couple of weeks or so in Urakami. At the secret church of St. Mary, when a large number of Christians were fast asleep on that Sunday night and Fr. Laucaigne was also resting his tired body in a little room, the incident broke out.
Constables and government officials simultaneously swooped on the four secret churches, and 68 of the Urakami Christian were seized and then taken to the Sakura machi Prison near the Magistrate’s Office. This was the fourth Urakami Crackdown, following on from those in 1790, 1842 and 1846.
COLUMN４ Secret churches
◆Secret churches
Following the Discovery of the Hidden Christians, the Urakami faithful straight way secretly welcomed priests, and set up four secret churches so they could become baptized and study the catechism: Saint Clara (in present day Ohashi machi), Saint Francis Xavier (in Hashiguchi machi), and Saint Mary and Saint Joseph (both in Tsuji machi). A “church” is in principle a “group” of people who teach and spread a common religion, and also the name for the building in which they do so. It is said that these four secret churches were thatched roof buildings just like the ordinary homes of the time. It was in upon these churches that the government officials fell in one swoop and the Fourth Urakami Crackdown was unleashed. One hundred years from the Discovery of the Hidden Christians monuments were erected at the sites they had stood on, and on the 125th anniversary explanatory signboards were added.
Tragedy of the Urakami Mass Exiles
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After the Fourth Urakami Crackdown, Bishop Petitjean approached the French government to make a diplomatic solution to the problem, and returned to Europe in order to have an audience with the Pope, accompanied on his journey home by the new missionary Fr. Marco Marie de Rotz. On the day after their departure, based on the premise that the Urakami Christians had not been totally purged, the leading Christian figure of Takagi Senemon and another 114 people were banished far afield to Tsuwano, Fukuyama and Hagi. Then, on February 4th 1869 the Urakami Mass Exiles occurred when the remaining Urakami Christians were banished from Nagasaki. In the biggest exile ever seen, all 3,589 people of the Urakami community were exiled here and there across 21 places in 20 wealthy domains as far east as Nagoya. The lords of the domains that the Christian were exiled to were given complete power over their lives or deaths, and they underwent cruel torture and were relentlessly pressured to recant their faith.
On the morning of the mass exiles Nagasaki experienced unusually heavy snow, and the town was completely blanketed in white. Amid the blistering snow the prisoners were loaded onto the 12 steamboats prepared to carry them by the various domains. Among them were those who rejected their faith in terror of the death or torture worse than death that might be awaiting them in the near future. Above their heads the shouts of the government officials could be heard. “114 animals for Bizen Okayama collected. 179 animals for Aki, Hiroshima collected.” During this time the Christians were not even treated as human.
On this day, Bishop Petitjean was not present as he had gone to attend the Ecumenical Council of the Roman Church. There was absolutely nothing that the priests left behind could to; they had no choice but to solemnly watch down from Oura Church as the numerous faithful were herded onto the fleet of boats, which then slowly headed out of Nagasaki Harbor. Fr. Aimé Villion, who had been staying in Nagasaki since the previous October recorded the sights of that day as follows. “All the Christians were looking towards the church. Some of them were making the sign of the cross. The women were putting over their heads the white veils used in their christenings, declaring their faith…..we could only stand there stupefied, gazing at this scene from the veranda.”
Before the very eyes of the priests, tragedy was yet again unfolding.
Return from the hardships of “the journey”
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The Urakami faithful described their exiles as “the journey.” They perceived what happened to them at the places of exile as a “destination” where they could win the real faith required in order to enter the home land of Heaven. The “journey” was an extraordinarily painful one that began and ended in hunger and overwork, but it is said that for the Urakami faithful, who had unhealed scars from turning their backs on their belief through the fumie practice and so on, it was a journey that had freed them from their sense of guilt.
From the 16th to 18th century the word “love” was translated as “precious (taisetsu)” in the Christian terminology. Humans consist of a soul and a corporeal body; the martyrs who believed that even if the body dies the soul can live on eternally, considered the presence of God – who is the very essence of truth, goodness and beauty – to be “precious,” and did not think twice about giving up their own lives. This is because they cherished the hope they would be able to “live eternally with God,” free from the powerful who killed or would kill their bodies.
After the Discovery of the Hidden Christians, those who had been hiding in various parts of Nagasaki went into action straight away. The advent of the roundup incident that occurred just when the Christians were feeling the joy of being able to proclaim their faith caused a surge that brought great pain to the faithful, not only in the Urakami district but also in places on the Goto Islands and other locations that had until then suffered hardly any persecution.
In the year 1873, their hand forced by the opposition and criticism of foreign powers, the Meiji government finally abolished the kosatsu “bulletin boards” forbidding Christianity. In February that year the Urakami believers returned at last from their “journey.” Of the 3,394 people exiled, 1,930 had maintained the faith, 1,022 had recanted, 56 had died and there were also some new infants. These people who had been prosecuted due to their beliefs just like their ancestors were met upon their return by Fr. Laucaigne, Fr. Poirier and Fr. De Rotz.
Another symbol of the Virgin Mary – the Japanese Virgin Mary Statue
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The white marble statue that greets visitors at the entrance of the National Treasure Oura Cathedral was obtained from France in the year after the Discovery of the Hidden Christians, paid for by donations collected by the Urakami faithful, and was named “the Japanese Virgin Mary Statue.” The statue is impressive for the kind expression of the Virgin Mary, an expression full of mercy that enwraps the looker.
The Urakami faithful who were exiled from Nagasaki Harbor on that winter day of blistering snowfalls. In the same way that the priests who watched their flock being sent into exile from Oura Church, surely the Virgin Mary statue was looking on, praying that they would all come home safely.
It can doubtless be said that one of the huge values of Oura Cathedral, dedicated to the Twenty-Six Holy Martyrs of Japan, is the fact that it is the place of both the joy and the lamentations of the Hidden Christians.
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