About Nagasaki
The Monumental Achievements of the Meiji Missionaries and Nagasaki’s Churches
From the middle of the Meiji era, the 1880s onwards, churches were built in swift succession both within and outside of Nagasaki Prefecture. The construction of these churches, each a House of God, was the fervent wish of all the Japanese faithful who had finally gained freedom of belief and returned to Catholicism. Behind this was their strong ambition to put their thoughts into something solid, the zeal of the foreign missionaries who made a reality of this, and the Japanese master carpenters who in that same spirit exerted their energies to build these churches.
Church construction imitated from the first missionaries
When going around the churches that are currently distributed across the whole of Nagasaki Prefecture one is deeply moved by both the simple wooden churches that stand as if to blend in with the surrounding seas, mountains and dramatic natural scenery, and the vigorous shape of the brick-built churches that suddenly come into sight. The fact that these churches stand in these places is proof of the Hidden Christian activities that were conducted for the long space of seven generations in these settlements, and is something that fills the visitor with a moving sense that the long-cherished hopes of the Hidden Christians were finally fulfilled.
One of the first priests to conduct a mission to Japan, Father Alessandro Valignano (1539-1606), valued the ancient traditions of Japan and felt it important to show a degree of empathy with Japanese believers. It is said that just like Francis Xavier, he therefore placed an importance upon using the traditional techniques of wooden architecture practiced by the Japanese craftsmen in the churches that were constructed in various places
The Meiji missionaries who arrived in Japan some 250 years later to recommence missionary work were no doubt aware of the Tensho embassy sent to Europe in 1582 and the way that Fr. Valignano had propagated the Christian faith; they also surely used as guidelines the vast collection of Jesuit activity records compiled by the 16th century Portuguese missionary Luís Fróis. This history certainly served as a source that fanned the passion of all the recommenced missionary work. Travelling around the churches located here and there enables one to grasp the way that the Meiji missionaries kept alive the flame of the first missionaries in the construction of the churches.
The design plan for Oura Cathedral stored in the old documents archive at the headquarters of the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris is drawn with a black ink outline, and shows the Japanese-style crisscross namako raised plaster wall surfaces painted in brown, pale blue and grey, just as it was upon completion. The man who directed the construction of the churches, blending Japanese and Western architecture and employing wood and plaster, was Hidenoshin Koyama, a Japanese master carpenter who ran a construction company in Nagasaki at the time. It is said that the construction included suggestions in line with Koyama’s techniques, but the overall intentions of the designs contained the strong wishes of the missionaries who had started to recommence their work in Japan, including Fr. Furet and Fr. Petijean, and the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris.
The numerous churches built after the construction of Oura Cathedral in the villages of those who had maintained the faith, both inside and outside of Nagasaki Prefecture, are redolent of the wishes of both the missionaries who designed them and the faithful who had returned to Catholicism.
In this, the last part of our story, we focus on the hidden stories behind the construction of the churches that overcame great difficulties and sprang up across the region.
The hidden truth of the churches’ appearance at the time of building
Kazuma Hayashi, a former president of the Nagasaki Institute of Applied Science University and formerly the president of the Society to Register Nagasaki’s Churches in the World Heritage, suggests in his book The Churches of Nagasaki, that the 26 windows that were fitted in Oura Cathedral from the time of its construction in 1864 were a symbol of the Twenty-Six Martyrs of Japan. Hayashi writes: “It is almost too good to be a coincidence, and considering the initial wish to build a church dedicated to the 26 martyrs this sort of hidden meaning is not unlikely.”
Paying attention to the possibility of typhoon damage and improving the building’s functionality, Oura Cathedral was rapidly altered and extended, and because it had changed its appearance by around the year 1877 it is impossible to either prove or disprove this theory from the remaining photographs. However, walking up the steep hill and turning around at the entrance to the building, it is possible to take in a view straight ahead of the Nishizaka hill, which is the site of the martyrdom of the twenty-six saints. Just from its location one realizes the fact that behind the construction of Oura Cathedral were numerous thoughts and wishes aimed at the Twenty-Six Martyrs of Japan.
The first wooden churches built to the wishes of the Japanese faithful
-
With regard to the characteristics of the first wooden churches built by the mid 1880s, Hayashi cites the way that they all had single layer roofs, their edifices were completed with plaster and simple panels and that their appearances could almost be mistaken for an ordinary domestic house. There is a tendency for it to be supposed that this was due to a naivety about Western architectural techniques during the early days of church construction, but since it is foreseeable that instruction was provided by the French priests, Hayashi argues that the reason the churches were intentionally given a house-like appearance was to make them blend in with the indigenous local scenery and is probably an intentional expression of the wish to make them merge with the surrounding landscape. As proof of this, in a complete reverse to the sober edifices the interiors of the churches were from the outset beautiful structures consisting of Gothic-style rib vaulting ceilings, appropriate to being called “the House of God.”
Furthermore, at the time the structural techniques were left up to the Japanese master carpenters and it is surmised that the floors of most of the churches were paneled and the worshippers sat on tatami mats or portable goza straw mats spread on the floor. The low ceilings too were finished in order to provide a church interior that was suited to the low eyeline of the Japanese. The former Gorin Church on Goto City’s Hisaka Island (built in 1881) and Ebukuro Church in Shinkamigoto Town (built in 1882) both fit this description, but in addition to these splendid churches a great many smaller and humble churches existed.
The first churches built to the wishes of the Japanese faithful
The rib vaulted ceiling of the former Daimyo Church on Io Island, the first church to be built for the Japanese faithful, is finished in plaster like Oura Cathedral and is in contrast to the other five early churches, which had paneled ceilings. The former Daimyoji Church was designed by Fr. Furet, who was the parish priest on Io Island. The construction work was initiated by the master carpenter Isekichi Owatari, who had participated in the building of Oura Cathedral, and the church was completed in the year 1880. The church was strongly influenced by Oura Cathedral and the decorative wood carvings on the ceilings were very similar to those of the cathedral.
Furthermore, along with Isekichi they were two Christian carpenters who had worked under Hidenoshin Koyama at Oura Cathedral, namely Ichizo Mizoguchi of Uramaki and Kumekichi Kawahara of the Sotome region’s Kuroshima. In 1880, Fr. Bourelle who was posted to Kamigoto designed the churches of Chuchi, Omizu, Nokubi, Setowaki and Ebukuro, but the construction of the former Ebukuro Church was the work of Kumekichi Kawahara.
It is said that at the time Fr. Bourelle made frequent visits to Fr. de Rotz in the Sotome region. In the early years of the construction of the churches the interest of the French missionaries who designed them tended strongly towards their appearance, but Fr. de Rotz placed an emphasis on their blending in with the indigenous landscape and had his own manner of design that was clearly different from structural predilections. The former Ebukuro Church, like the early Shitsu Church in the Sotome region, has an unusual hakamagoshi style trapezoidal gable roof and beam-end moldings that jut out from the eaves, and since these appear to be Fr. de Rotz’s architectural techniques it is conceivable that he had an influence on the design.
Taking time to build splendid churches
-
Since ancient times the dominant view of public and formal architecture of Europe placed a priority on stone and avoided leaving brick walls exposed. That is why the brick-built edifices that have been treated is limited to the early period. Subsequently, there was an increase in the churches in which the bricks were left exposed. Looking at churches such as the Sasebo region’s Kuroshima Church, built in 1902 to the design of Fr. Marmand, and Dozaki Church on the Goto Fukue Island, built in 1907 to the design of Fr. Pelu, one can easily imagine how those who saw the buildings at the time of construction must have felt. They are sure to have been attracted by the structural solidity of those thick bricks, their magnificent appearance, power and beauty. The churches of this period pay very little attention to fitting in with the local landscape, and express the shape of the church in a bold and straight-forward manner. Moreover, even when wooden churches were erected there were many calls from people hoping for built-brick churches, and since in such cases the building costs were borne by the parishioners, funds for their construction were set up. As the faithful consisted of poor people it took a long time before these churches were completed.
Yosuke Tetsukawa, the unrivalled master carpenter of churches
“The churches are buildings that were born out of Nagasaki’s culture, landscape, light and the belief of the faithful.” These words were written by Father Diego Pacheco (also known as Ryogo Yuki), the first director of the Twenty-six Martyrs Museum, in his book The Churches of Nagasaki. Fr. Pacheco continues: “The most appropriate word to describe church architecture is ‘harmony.’ The harmony between size, shape, doorways, windows and pillars. The altar and so on are in harmony with each other. The whole building itself and the nature of the land it is built on are in harmony. There are no fissures between the hearts, heads and hands that that achieved their construction. The churches are beautiful and typically Nagasaki constructions that developed from overseas architecture.” The man who earnestly bore in mind this sort of spirit about the churches of Nagasaki felt by the late Fr. Pacheco and made a reality of it was probably Yosuke Tetsukawa, a Japanese master carpenter born in the Goto Islands. Yosuke learned about church architecture directly from the foreign missionaries, and was the only Japanese church carpenter who built many churches outside of Nagasaki Prefecture throughout his life.
Yosuke, who learned from the foreign missionaries and spread his wings
-
Yosuke was born in the year 1879 as the son of a carpenter in Kamigoto's former Shin’uonome-cho, Maruogo, and after graduating from elementary school became an apprentice to Yokichi Nohara, a head carpenter on Fukue Island who was regarded as a pioneer of church architecture in the Goto Islands. The first person to instruct Yosuke to construct a church was Fr. Pelu, who among the missionaries arriving in Japan was particularly knowledgeable about architecture, and had overseen the completion in 1895 of the former brick-built Imochiura Church in the Tamanoura district on Fukue Island.
According to the reminiscences of Yosuke himself, the first time he became involved in the construction of a church was when, from 1901 to 1902, Fr. Pelu built the former Sone Church in the district that Yosuke was born in. Since Yosuke related that he had learned from Fr. Pelu the method and geometry for building rib vaults, it is likely that he frequently visited the building sites of the wooden former Tainoura Church and the brick-built Dozaki church that Fr. Pelu went on to build, and learned many other techniques. Furthermore, Yosuke knew Fr. de Rotz, who introduced him to new building methods during the construction of the still standing former Archbishop of Nagasaki’s Residence. Fr.de Rotz gently teased Yosuke saying: “Your skills are about the same as a carpenter’s apprentice. Compared to you I’m an engineer who graduated from a University faculty of architecture!” Nonetheless he called him “Tetsu” in a fatherly way, gave him specialist books on architecture, wood turning lathes and planes, and thoroughly initiated him in all sorts of aspects of church architecture such as the application of mortar and use of bricks.
COLUMN２ The former Archbishop of Nagasaki’s Residence
Oura Church Christian Museum
Yosuke Tetsukawa received direct architectural guidance from Fr. de Rotz over a period of around four years during the rebuilding of the then Bishop’s Residence that had been built prior to Fr. de Rotz’s final work, Oura Cathedral. The design for this building work that was carried out as a project to commemorate the ordination of Bishop Mgr. Cousin, was overseen by Father de Rotz. Yosuke was selected as the builder. Skillfully using the sloping site, the building has a basement and three floors above ground, and the structure is mainly brick-built with some wooden structural features. Standing together with the old Latin Seminary the two buildings serve as the Oura Church Christian Museum, which exhibits precious materials related to the history of Christianity.
Mastering a unique architectural method
Yosuke Tetsukawa, a designer and builder who approached the construction of churches with a wish as powerful as that of the faithful – although he was a Buddhist all his life – was involved in the extension and alteration of no less than 50 churches in and outside of Nagasaki Prefecture. It is quite certain that he continued to face these challenges one by one filled with a wish to fulfill the dreams and hopes of the faithful.
The sheer number of churches built by Yosuke, who started as a complete novice, their diversity and completeness is unparalleled. Respectful of the way the priests lived, their views on architecture and everything, Yosuke absorbed from their stance on the selection of materials and architecture, their knowhow about church construction and the role of instructors on building sites. Although in his earlier works it is possible to detect numerous common points with the churches that Fr. Pelu and Fr. de Rotz designed, he gradually developed his own depiction of church architecture methods. He mastered working with wooden, brick, stone and ferroconcrete structures, as well as the methods for interior spaces such as soaring rib-vaulted ceilings and coved ceilings, establishing a form of church architecture unique to himself.
Splendid churches for the long-waiting faithful
-
Yosuke’s actual maiden work was the entirely wooden structure Hiyamizu Church, built in 1907 on a piece of high ground overlooking Shinkamigoto Town’s Nama Bay. Amazingly he then went on the next year to construct the brick-built former Nokubi Church, located on Nozaki Island, a small island that was part of Ojika-cho. And in 1912 he completed another brick-built church, Yamada Church, on Ikitsuki Island. The overall floor plan, interior elevation, ceiling structure and sculpted capitals on the columns of Hiyamizu Church are very much like those of the former Tainoura Church, which is situated in a similar topographical position. Again, the style of the lancet arches, the buttress dressed with stone and the brick-built fundamentals of the former Nokubi Church, completed just after the brick-built Dozaki Church, are highly reminiscent of Dozaki Church and one gains the impression that Yosuke used the churches of both Tainoura and Dozaki as blueprints for Hiyamizu Church and the former Nokubi Church. In the interior of Yamada Church too, the surfaces of the upper arch walls are decorated and the curves of the rib vaulted ceilings are board-lined, methods that can be observed in the virtually contemporary Hirado Hoki Church designed by Father Jean François Matrat . All of these churches that served as models were designed and built by Fr. Pelu, and one can see how Yosuke learned from and imitated him. On the other hand, the brick-built Aosagaura Church that Yosuke completed at the age of 31 is the first to use a multilayered roof and integrates an imaginative design. Immediately after this Yosuke completed a slightly altered and scaled-down version of Aosagaura Church with the Kusuhara Church in Goto Kishiku.
Octagonal domes become a special feature of Yosuke’s architecture
-
By completing a series of churches in this way Yosuke’s fame became widely known throughout Nagasaki Diocese and he earned the trust of the priests. Coinciding with the time that he built along with Fr. de Rotz the Archbishop’s residence in 1913, Yosuke displayed a dynamic leap in his work with the completion of the Imamura Church in Fukuoka Prefecture’s Tachiarai Town. Among the impressive features is the twin towers of the edifice, the first such attempt around the vicinity of Nagasaki and the first such brick-built building in Japan. The sheet copper roofing on the twin domed towers is a structural motif that Yosuke repeatedly used, and it is considered that he gained the idea from Father Edouard Duran’s Kaminoshima Church. Yosuke later worked on the twin domes of the former Urakami Church that was destroyed by the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
The other church that along with Imamura Church is regarded as being matchless in its perfection is Tabira Church, built in 1917. The 1916-built Oso Church too, despite being simplified due to financial difficulties, displays new experiments such as using the brickwork on the edifice in a decorative manner.
COLUMN３ Twin towers of the former Urakami Church
Twin towers of the former Urakami Church
The former Urakami Church, constructed in 1915, appears to originally have had a tiled roof in order
to cut the faithful’s burden of construction costs and because they wanted a place to pray as quickly
as possible. However, in the year 1915 the twin towers were built on the front of the church, and a bell tower was completed with the installation of a French-made angelus bell. The towers were built by Yosuke Tetsukawa. Isn’t the atmosphere of the dome so typical of Yosuke? However, the building was damaged in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945. The south bell tower collapsed inside of the church while the north tower collapsed to the north side of the church, and came crashing down into the stream flowing below the cliff. The north side bell tower was buried in a stone wall for a while during river construction work, but it was uncovered in 1971 and one can still see it today.
Yosuke, forever taking up the challenges of the wishes of the faithful and learning
-
Egami Church, built in 1918, has won acclaim as the wooden church with the highest degree of finish. Yosuke created this church over the period of around one year. The flowing pillars have been incised with a comb in the pattern of age rings, and the work displays a great meticulousness. Furthermore, for the first time Yosuke painted the exposed parts of the wood interior with a wood grain pattern, a technique used by Father de Rotz in Shitsu Church, and no doubt a tribute of gratitude and memorial from Yosuke to the priest.
-
On Kashiraga Island, which had been uninhabited until the last days of the Shogunate, the Hidden Christians of Tainoura had settled in order to escape persecution, and in 1887 the first wooden church was constructed in the former grounds of their leader Domingo Mori Matsujiro’s house. However, in 1919 at the hands of Yosuke the first Romanesque stone-built church was erected there, the only such building in Western Japan and extremely unusual anywhere in the country. Stones that had been cut by the faithful were shipped to the island, carefully built up, and after around 10 years of work the new church was finally completed. The exterior is grand, but inside the ceiling and walls are decorated with camelia flowers and other features, lending it a gentle impression. Yosuke frequently used the camelia motif that had long been popular on the Goto Islands. In the Kashiraga Church he made bold use of floral patterns, and attempted to create a space that was rooted in the Japanese landscape and culture rather than being majestic.
After the 1920s which was the peak of the age of stone-built churches, not a single stone-built
church was erected. The reason for this is thought to be the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, after which most churches were built using the more durable ferroconcrete structure.
Yosuke’s fame reached Amakusa too
-
Forty years after the arrival of Fr. Garnier in Amakusa, where he is still held with almost saintly cherishment, in 1933 the priest spent his entire personal fortune and together with the faithful built the pure-white Romanesque-style Oe Church, with Yosuke taking charge of the design and construction. Built atop a hill deep in the mountains, the church with its octagonal dome bell tower must surely have stood out at the time. At the time of construction the walls were left as undressed concrete. Subsequently, Father Augustin Halbout of Nagasaki’s Kuroshima Island was reposted as the fourth priest of Sakitsu, replacing the now elderly Fr. Garnier. The construction work then began of the new Sakitsu Church, as the original church was now becoming decrepit. Standing in the center of a little fishing village located in Amakusa’s Shimoshima Island, it is impossible to forget the impression of first seeing the 1934-built Sakitsu Church from the opposite shore of the bay. Around the center of Yokaku Bay against a background of steeply rising mountains , a little group of traditional Japanese houses stands and from within it the silhouette of the church appears. This is the vista that is well suited to the church’s nickname of “the sea church.” In 1933, Fr. Halbout purchased the land on which the house of the village headman had once stood during the years of the fumie practice, and commissioned Yosuke to build a church on it. Fr. Halbout attempted to create a blend of Japanese and Western styles while making the most of Japanese carpentry techniques, and it is said that he liked the way that Yosuke tried to save money on building costs. As a result, in order to compensate for a lack of funds two thirds of the church was built with wood, while at the front of the church the narthex , its flanks on either side and the bell tower used ferroconcrete.
In the churches that were the ideals of Fr. Garnier and Fr. Halbout, Yosuke added the new technique of ferroconcrete construction to his repertoire of skills and completed churches that blended in with various parts of Amakusa.
COLUMN４ Site of the village headman’s house where the fumie practice was conducted
Jujikayama, the Mountain of the Cross
The place where the present day Urakami Church stands is also the location of one of the places where the faithful were forced to undergo the fumie practice during the years of the Hidden Christians. The faithful who were joyful at having obtained freedom of belief also grappled with deep feelings of penitence. This was due to their sense of guilt regarding the fumie practice that had continued without fail each year for over 250 years and through seven generations. The faithful of Urakami believed that they had to do penitence for their ancestors and their own sins, and for the enormity of the sins of the government administrators who had coerced then into that blasphemy. Father Claude Eugene Puthod , the parish priest at the time, thoroughly understood their feelings and suggested erecting a cross on the hill at Hirogo, which was similar in appearance to Mount Calvary where Christ was crucified, and making it a sacred place of penitence and gratitude. The faithful busily worked and gave their services, carried stones to the top of the mountain, and on September 14th 1881 the cross was completed to coincide with the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Since then the mountain has been known as Jujikayama (Mountain of the Cross), and it became a place of pilgrimage that people climbed in penitence for the fumie and where their descendants have continued to pray for the forgiveness of God. In 1950, Pope Pius XII designated this Mountain of the Cross, along with the hill of Nishizaka that is the Site of the Martyrdom of the Twenty-Six Saints, as official pilgrimage sites.
A final word
Fr. Pacheco, the first director of the Twenty-six Martyrs Museum, who continued to advocate learning from the history of the Christians spoke as follows. “For me, rather than something beautiful a church is a building that has power to express the human heart. The bishop who designed it and the local faithful who had experienced persecution dreamed of a church, or in other words a House of God, their hearts united as one at the end of the happy dawn of freedom of belief. And despite their poverty they used materials around them such as wood, red bricks and sand in an effort to do their utmost to make that dream come true. We learned when we visited these churches. They brought the sand from that beach, they brought the clay from that hill to make bricks, the remains of the kiln are over there. The stones were cut here. The grave of the priest who designed it can be seen next to the church.”
Thanks to the passion of the Meiji missionaries and the sweat and perseverance of the faithful, the churches that rose up in the villages and settlements that continued to maintain the faith have gone on to remain protected from one generation to the next for more than 100 years. To these people, they are the spiritual homes that unite both their ancestors and the missionaries. And at the same time, for the local residents the churches remind them of their ancestors who first cultivated these lands, and are places giving them a heartfelt sense of pride that they are local treasures.
NEXT
