Kakure Kirishitan

History

Main article: Christianity in Japan

ja are the Catholic communities in Japan which hid themselves during the ban and persecution of Christianity by Japan in the 1600s. During this time, many believers modified their religious practices to resemble Buddhist ones on a surface level, but which held hidden Christian meaning in reality. For instance, depictions of the Virgin Mary modeled on the Buddhist deity Kannon (Avalokiteśvara), goddess of mercy, became common among ja, and were known as "Maria Kannon". The prayers were adapted to sound like Buddhist chant, yet retained many untranslated words from Latin, Portuguese, and Spanish. The Bible and other parts of the liturgy were passed down orally, because printed works could be confiscated by authorities.

ja were recognized by Bernard Petitjean, a Catholic priest, when Ōura Church was built in Nagasaki in 1865. Approximately 30,000 secret Christians, some of whom had adopted these new ways of practicing Christianity, came out of hiding when religious freedom was re-established in 1873 after the Meiji Restoration. The ja became known as , or 'ancient Christians', and emerged not only from traditional Christian areas in Kyushu, but also from other rural areas of Japan.

Some ja did not rejoin the Catholic Church, and became known as the . ja are now primarily found in Urakami and on the Gotō Islands.

In the early 1990s, anthropologist Christal Whelan discovered some ja still living on the Gotō Islands where ja had once fled. There were only two surviving priests on the islands, both of whom were over 90, and they would not talk to each other. The few surviving laity had also reached old age, and some of them no longer had any priests from their lineage and prayed alone. Although these ja had a strong tradition of secrecy, they agreed to be filmed for Whelan's documentary ja.

The ja still exist today, forming "what is arguably a separate faith, barely recognizable as the creed imported in the mid-1500s by Catholic missionaries". In 2025, it was reported that there were less than 100 Hidden Christians left on the island of Ikitsuki in Nagasaki, down from 10,000 in the 1940s.

References

References

1. (2012). "S". Shogakukan.
2. (2012). "隠れキリシタン". Shogakukan.
3. Morishita, Sylvie. (2006-04-01). "Les « séparés » du Japon au XIXe siècle". Revue des sciences religieuses.
4. Schumacher, Mark. "Virgin Mary & Kannon, Two Merciful Mothers".
5. (4 February 2000). "Kakure Kirishtan".
6. (October 11, 2015). "Driven Underground Years Ago, Japan's 'Hidden Christians' Maintain Faith". NPR.org.
7. (4 June 2025). "'A huge loss.' In remote Nagasaki islands, a rare version of Christianity heads toward extinction". [[AP News]].