Japan's Clandestine Christians in danger of dying out

IKITSUKI, Japan, Aug 3 (AFP) - Yasutaka Toriyama, the leader of one hamlet on the southwestern Japanese islet of Ikitsuki, recites liturgy for Christmas, Easter and baptisms as his ancestors have done for the past 400 years.

The 64-year-old abacus teacher performs the role of "oyaji," or lay leader, for other local so-called Clandestine Christians -- descendants of islanders who went underground to survive the organised persecution of Christianity that began under 17th-century Tokugawa Shogunate and only ended in 1873.

BizVantage – Beyond the news - a realtime Net clipping service: for business, investment or technology.
Try the free, no-hassle 6 month trial!

Toriyama himself prays that "Kakure Kirishitan," Clandestine or Hidden Christians, will be able to overcome the danger of disappearing from the remote, subtropical islet -- and perhaps altogether.

"It pains me to hear that another Kakure Kirishitan community decided to disband because they cannot find successors," Toriyama said.

"I keep telling myself that we should not let such a thing happen here, but at the same time, I am wondering who is going to be next to go. Are we?"

Ikitsuki, at the northwestern tip of Kyushu island, 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) southwest of Tokyo, is the nation's last bastion of Hidden Christians who have opted to maintain their unique brand of Christianity despite being free now to practice their faith openly.

Households practicing the faith in Ikitsuki have declined more than 30 percent in the last six years to about 230, due to depopulation on the islet where many of the 7,900 islanders eke out a modest living from fishing and farming.

"The youngest believers keeping (our faith) going are already in their 40s, " said Yoshiaki Isomoto, a 55-year-old Clandestine Christian member of Ichibu, the island's biggest congregation.

"I will feel sorry for our ancestors if Kakure Kirishitan were to disappear from Ikitsuki," said Isomoto, section chief of Ikitsuki Town Hall's tax division.

"But realistically, I have to say such concerns may prove to be true in ten years."

Less than 10 percent of the island's population are Clandestine Christians, according to Shigeo Nakazono, a researcher of ethnology at Ikitsuki Island Museum, representing an estimated 70 percent of believers in Japan. Most of the rest reside in the Nagasaki region, although without a formal structure there are no official figures for the number of believers.

Ikitsuki's ties to Christianity date back to the mid-16th century.

Kyushu island is the birthplace of Japanese Christianity, introduced by Spanish Jesuit Francis Xavier shortly after he reached Kagoshima in southern Kyushu in 1549.

Other foreign missionaries followed the Spanish Jesuits, and preached mainly in western Japanese towns, including Ikitsuki.

By the early 17th century, the number of Japanese Christians hit 300,000 to mark the biggest Christian population of any Asian country at the time.

Its rapid spread ended brutally with the anti-Christian policy pursued by the Tokugawa Shoguns.

The Catholic clergy was expelled and local Christians were forced to renounce their faith and convert to Buddhism by trampling on holy pictures or be martyred.

Thousands of Christians defied the government only to succumb to the torture of death by being scalded with boiling water, crucified at sea or being hung upside down and bleeding to death after their ears were cut off.

An estimated 60,000 Clandestine Christians chose a third way -- outwardly pretending to be Buddhists while secretly preserving their Christian beliefs and rites in small groups under the leadership of "oyaji."

With no priests, each community worshipped pictures of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary and the saints, often depicted as ordinary Japanese clad in kimonos and with a topknot hair-style, to fool government inspectors.

When a Hidden Christian died, paper crosses were sneaked into the coffin. The entire body of doctrine and liturgy was handed down verbally by "oyaji" after the Bible and all religious texts were destroyed.

Inevitably, their religion evolved from orthodox Catholicism into a folk religion, combining elements of Christianity with native traditions.

The surviving Clandestine Christians have refused to return to the Roman Catholic Church even after Japan's abolition of anti-Christian law 130 years ago.

"People from outside this region say it's odd, but I believe in both Christianity and Buddhism," Toriyama said. "That's what we have been doing for hundreds of years."

In fact, Ikitsuki is a small melting pot of religions. Visitors are greeted by the sight of a Shinto shrine and a an 18-meter (60-foot) Buddhist bronze statue near Ikitsuki Bridge, the sole gateway to the island.

Mass is held several times a year by local Catholic priests in front of a large cross on the top of a small hill, while chrysanthemums are placed at a Buddhist-style shrine on the site of the martyrdom of Christians on the island.

"In the past, under the oppression, they had to be iron-willed in their solidarity, and Christianity was uppermost in their minds," said the ethnologist Nakazono.

"As time went by, they put more emphasis on a succession of anecdotes of tragedies of Japanese and foreign saints, rather than purely pursuing Christianity," he said. "The religion's remaining days are actually numbered."

Masashi Funabara, a 41-year-old Hidden Christian, says his community will decide by the end of this year whether it should disband, but he wants to pass on his faith to his five-year-old daughter and three-month-old son even by himself -- in the true spirit of Kakure Kirishitan.

"I feel I am responsible for passing on the religion, which our ancestors risked their lives to preserve," said Funabara.

si/ja/lg

Japan-religion-Christians-society