Hidden Christians the missionaries encountered and their revival

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  Let’s take a close look at one of Fr. de Rotz’s great achievements, “the Woodblock Prints of Fr. de Rotz,” created in or around 1875. In order to explain the Christian doctrine in an easily understood manner and to serve as a visual tool for the missionaries, Fr. de Rotz asked a Japanese artist to create   ten hand-colored woodblock prints in the manner of the times. It is unknown who the artist or the wood engraver were. The prints have been designated by Nagasaki Prefecture as Tangible Cultural Properties and include the large 128cm x 68cm hand -colored woodblock print depicting the “Salvation of the Soul in Purgatory,” images of saints, and the “Death of a Good Man .” The ten woodblock prints are currently preserved in Oura Cathedral, but there is a total of 86 such prints; versions of a different but similar design, spread across Dozaki Church in Goto City , Oe Church in Amakusa City, and other churches and museums in Kyushu. It is thought that the locations of these prints coincide with the areas of activities by missionaries dispatched by the Roman Curia to recommence the propagation of Christianity in Japan. This fact speaks of how greatly the Woodblock Prints of Fr. de Rotz were used all over Kyushu while the propagation of the Christianity was recommenced.

Secrets behind the creation of Japanese hymns

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  Singing plays an important role in the Christian Mass. It is said that singing is an expression of praise, love and faith, and by singing out loud the feelings of people are induced, faith deepened, and the hearts of the community become united into one. During the recommencement of the propagation of the Christian faith one of the things that the first missionaries dispatched to Japan did was produce “Japanese hymns.”
  
  After the Discovery of the Hidden Christians, the orasho that the Hidden Christians had passed down for generations did not become conventional hymns at the Masses celebrated by Bishop Petitjean. However, the missionaries who felt that it was difficult for the Japanese Christians to sing hymns in the Western musical scale to which they were unaccustomed, are said to have chanted in verbal recitations unaccompanied by music in order to correctly transmit conventional hymns. The collections of hymns compiled at the start of the Meiji were printed in 18 versions. The “Christian Songs” printed at Oura Cathedral by Bishop Petitjean in 1879 as a supplement to the Prayer and  Doctrine Book was the first collection of hymns since the Discovery of the Hidden Christians. This translation into Japanese of a collection of Gregorian chants and French hymns was written in a way that continued the tradition of the orasho by including Nagasaki dialect in order to protect the words that the Hidden Christians had handed down over the years.
  
  After the Discovery of the Hidden Christians, despite the huge obstacle of the language barrier between the priests trying to recommence the propagation of the faith and the Japanese Christians, the priests did their best to remain close to the faithful, and it is from this that the Japanese hymns arose. It was surely a quite extraordinary efforts on the part of the priests.

Construction of a proper theological school and the start of doctrinal education

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  It is said that the Woodblock Prints of Fr. de Rotz were printed at the theological school connected to Oura Cathedral, and the construction of the theological school itself was also the work of Fr. de Rotz.    Equipped with a knowledge of the architectural field, before going to serve alone in the Sotome region in 1875 Fr. de Rotz was tasked by Bishop Petitjean with the design and building of the Nagasaki Catholic Divinity School (generally known as the “Latin Seminary”) that was planned to be built next to Oura Cathedral. In October 1877 the first fully-fledged piece of architecture in Japan created by Fr. de Rotz opened as a theological school for the fostering of Japanese priests.
  
  In December 1880 under the tutelage of the first principal of the school, Fr. Jules Renaut, the first three Japanese priests were ordained – Tatsuemon Fukahori, Gentaro Takaki and Hidenoshin Ariyasu – and the fervent hopes of Bishop Petitjean were finally realized. Oura Cathedral was packed with 3,000 Christians wishing to celebrate this occasion, and it is said that Bishop Petitjean sent a message recounting this sense of joy to the headquarters of the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris.

The priests who dealt with both “revival” and “hiding”

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  During the period of the Hidden Christians, it is said that it was the “Bastian Tradition ” passed down through their ancestors that supported the Christians who secretly kept their faith. The missionaries who actually appeared before the Hidden Christians seven generations later were met with different reactions in the places where the Bastian Tradition remained, and in the places where it had not been handed down.
  
  In the regions where the Bastian Tradition had not been handed down, the people who had continued to protect their form of faith as underground organizations had no recognition themselves that they were “Christians,” and thus felt a sense of unease when churches were built in their villages. And without converting they continued to pursue the form of Christian faith that had been passed down to them by their ancestors. They rejected the path of revival, and while placing Buddhist statues on the Shinto altars in their homes they worshipped statuettes of Christ and the Virgin Mary kept out of sight in closets (“closet altars”), and continued to follow the faith in the form passed down by generations of their ancestors. These were the so-called “Hanare Kirishitan” (Separated Christians)   . The main villages that until recently had maintained this form of the faith included the former Sotome-cho districts of Kurosaki and Shitsu, and the Goto Islands’ Fukue Island, Nakadori Island, Hirado Island, Narus Island and Ikitsuki Island.

The wish of the Japanese faithful – “a House of God”

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  Those who achieved the return to Christianity (Catholicism) were passionately keen to have their own “House of God ” in the communities they lived in, and under the guidance of Bishop Petitjean by the mid-Meiji period churches for the Japanese faithful were constructed in quick succession. Within Nagasaki Prefecture, among others the former Daimyoji Church was built on Io Island between 1879 and 1880; the former Gorin Church on Hisaka Island, one of the Goto Islands in 1881; and the former Ebukuro Church in Shinkamigoto’s Sonego , also on the Goto Islands in 1882. According to the investigations of Hideto Kawakami, a researcher into church architecture, while some of the original churches have been lost due to rebuilding the number of churches constructed in Nagasaki during this period was no less than 30. Father Marie-Augustine Bourelle, Father Joseph Ferdinand Marmand and other priests who were active in Nagasaki in those days exerted themselves in the construction of the churches of the time. 

Passionately preaching to the Hidden Christians too

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  The priest who succeeded Fr. Pelu was Father Emile Raguet. After arriving in Nagasaki Fr. Raguet took charge of the Kaminoshima district and Io Island , the latter of which lies outside Nagasaki Harbor, and in 1881 he built a church in Kaminoshima, later using this experience to build another church in 1885 at Himosashi, which he used as the base for his activities. Around this time, because the number of believers on Kuroshima Island was increasing it was predicted that the amount of agricultural land would become insufficient, and a land was purchased in the Tabira district of what is now Hirado City. Three families moved to settle there, and the foundations for the present day Tabira Church were built. Based on the success of this Fr. de Rotz invested his own money to buy large areas of land in both the Tabira and Himosashi districts, and a major project was launched to settle the faithful from Sotome and Shitsu.  
  
  Fr. Jean-François Matrat who arrived in Nagasaki in 1881 served as curate to Fr. Raguet, and after taking charge of the wide era of Kuroshima Island and Madara Island eventually took over from Fr. Raguet to become the chief priest of the Hirado district. On Hirado at that time, the former Hidden Christians who settled on the east coast had returned to Catholicism , but those living on the west coast of Hirado and the people of Ikituski Island were still Separated Christians protecting their own former forms of belief. Fr. Matrat passionately preached to the Separated Christians and, for the sake of those who returned to conventional Christianity, built the Kamikozaki Church, Hoki Church and Osashi Church. He also built the Yamada Church on Itsuki Island in 1912.

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  The recommencement of Christianity in Amakusa started with a single fisherman

  The figures who related to Bishop Petitjean the discovery of Hidden Christians in the Amakusa district were the fishermen brothers of Pedro Masakichi Nishi and Miguel Chukichi Nishi, who were the Bishop’s right-hand men in Nagasaki’s Kaminoshima. Sometime around 1874 Masakichi entered a part of Oe Village called Nonaka, and under cover of the night assembled the villagers and told them about Christian stories. Among those listeners were a husband and wife who joined Masakichi on his return to Nagasaki. Tokumatsu Michida   left after his wife, but when the couple met Fr. Laucaigne at Oura Cathedral they were so impressed with the sincere response of the priest and the Christian teaching he gave that it was Tokumatsu  who asked to be baptized. When Tokumatsu and his wife returned to Oe Village with a missionary it served as the starting point in which signs of a return to Christianity in the village could be seen. In March 1876, Tokumatsu, naming himself “Amakusa Oemura Nonaka, commoner, Tokumatsu Michida” submitted to Kumamoto Prefecture a Petition to Change Religion . In June that year, eight people headed by Tokumatsu filed a Petition of Religious Conversion. In the Amakusa of the early Meiji period abandoning Buddhism or Shintoism and converting to Christianity was a matter of considerable seriousness. Amid this state of affairs, the itinerant missionaries started to visit the island. This was 12 years after the dedication ceremony of Oura Cathedral.

The way of life that Fr. de Rotz taught in the Sotome region

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  After taking up his new post in the Sotome region in 1879, the first thing that Fr. de Rotz did was to establish a girls’ boarding school. Five young women including Shige Oishi lived in a group and spent their days learning techniques such as weaving and dyeing. The Shitsu boarding school was named the Congregation of St. Joseph Convent, and in 1883 the Shitsu Aid Center Workshop was established on the site of the former village headman’s compound. Widows of men who had died at sea and the daughters of poverty-stricken farmers equipped themselves here with skills such weaving, sewing and    milling; they were also given instructions in elementary reading, writing and calculation. Later on instruction was also provided in the making of bread, macaroni and somen noodles, as well as oil pressing. These were all skills that Fr. de Rotz himself was equipped with, and did not hesitate to teach others about.  
  
  Not all the women who learned and worked at the Aid Center Workshop went on to devote their lives as nuns. After leaving the Workshop they were free to do as they pleased, and many of them now equipped with techniques and education became housewives. Fr. de Rotz set “creating good mothers” as one of his goals, and the Workshop thereby also acted as a finishing school. In addition, Father de Rotz obtained agricultural tools and excellent varieties of wheat and so on from France, and taught the men how to clear wastelands, improve farming, and guided them in French agricultural techniques.
  
  The visitor to present day Sotome will find that even 140 years after his time there the local people sill refer to him fondly with the honorific suffix of “sama,” and understand why his presence still resonates throughout this area.

The father of the Discovery of the Hidden Christians, opened up the path for the recommencement of missionary work and then passed away

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  Starting with the construction of Oura church, the Discovery of the Hidden Christians, then the Fourth Urakami Crackdown, banishment of entire communities, the abolition of the bulletin boards banning Christianity, recommencement of missionary work, fostering of Japanese priests and the start of building churches – all this during the 21 years since he arrived in Japan. Bishop Petitjean, who had truly lived through years of the utmost turbulence, finally passed away on October 7 1884 due to      pleurisy and coronary complications. He was 55 years old.
  
  If you proceed up the nave of Oura Cathedral towards the main altar, on the righthand wall there is a soapstone  epitaph that is the tombstone of Bishop Petijean. This is said to be the spot where Bishop Petijean knelt and said a prayer when Yuri Isabelina Sugimoto first spoke to him. His body was, as he had wished, buried under the cathedral floor just before the altar steps , and his presence is still a part of Oura Cathedral today. 

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