JAPAN: Amid worries that their tradition may face extinction, Japan's "Hidden Christians" celebrate Christmas

Record ID: 465667

  • Title: JAPAN: Amid worries that their tradition may face extinction, Japan's "Hidden Christians" celebrate Christmas
  • Date: 23rd December 2007
  • Summary: SUNLIGHT POURING THROUGH THE CLOUDS ABOVE THE SEA AROUND IKITSUKIJIMA FISHING VESSEL IN THE DISTANCE AT SEA FISHING VESSELS IN PORT
  • Embargoed: 7th January 2008 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Japan
  • Country: Japan
  • Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment / Showbiz,Religion
  • Reuters ID: LVA2468MW131VT23ZP1XH0PDHHV8
  • Story Text: One by one, ancient relics -- a 400 year old medal of the Virgin Mary, a crucifix, bottles of holy water and other sacred objects -- are taken from a cupboard and placed on an altar for a Christmas Eve ritual passed down from Japan's earliest Christians.
    Carefully preparing the once-bare alcove for the seasonal celebration is kimono-clad and bare-footed 68-year old Yatsutaka Toriyama, one of the leaders of the handful of "Kakure-Kirishitan" or "Hidden Christians" left still practicing this ancient and adapted form of Christianity on Ikitsuki island, which is 1000 kilometres (600 miles) south of the capital Tokyo.
    During the preparations, he remains aloof and silent - by tradition he ise not allowed to talk to 'erenja', a word derived from the ancient Portuguese word for heretics (heresia) and now referring to all non-members of his cult But fellow Hidden Christian, 79-year old Ayuzo Matsuyama explained that their celebrations, held on Saturday (December 15) and Sunday (December 16), were indeed about the birth of Christ.

    "I don't know about traditions in other places, but here and from as long as we could remember, the 'Gosanmachi', and 'Otanjo' are about Christ," Matsuyama said using their words for Christmas eve and the Nativity.
    Kakure-Kirishitan celebrate Christmas eve and Christmas on the first Saturday and Sunday before the winter solstice which generally falls on December 21 or 22 in the northern hemisphere.
    After the preparations were over, all members changed into traditional kimonos and began murmuring chants, bowing and making the sign of the cross - all in a rite passed down for centuries from the earliest Christians who were forced into hiding when the religion was banned 400 years ago in Japan.
    First brought to Japan by Portuguese missionaries in 1549, Christianity was banned less than five decades later in 1614, initiating a period of bloody persecution that forced the faithful to choose between martyrdom or hiding their beliefs.
    Rites such as confession and communion that could only be conducted by priests were lost. Others took on elements of Buddhist ancestor worship, indigenous Shinto with its focus on purification, and folk practices such as prayers for good crops.
    Medals or hanging scrolls depicting saints and martyrs, often with Japanese features, were hidden in cupboards as "nando-gami" -- "gods in the closet" -- and only taken out on special days.
    Transmitted orally and in secret, Latin "oratio" chants -- "orasho" in Japanese -- lost all but their symbolic meaning.
    These days, in an apparent echo of the bread and wine of the Eucharist, elders share sashimi and sake as part of the Christmas Eve ceremonies with huge "mochi" rice cakes adorning the altar.

    "They preserved the style and form of Christianity, specifically of Catholicism when it first came in to Japan and which they inherited but, the core of their spirituality, namely the teachings, were no longer from the Bible and that changed into respect for local martyrs," said Shigeo Nakazono, curator of an island museum and a scholar into the dying traditions of the Hidden Christians.
    Most modern Japanese take a relaxed attitude toward religion, opting for Christian or Shinto weddings and Buddhist funerals and the occasional visit to a shrine in between. Less than one percent of the population are Christians.
    But these days, the long-preserved Hidden Christian religion faces a thoroughly modern threat of extinction as young people leave the tiny 10-kilometre long island in search of jobs, drifting away from their gods and the rituals that honour them.
    How many "Kakure Kirishitan" remains is uncertain, but clearly their numbers on Ikitsuki are shrinking as the overall population of the island, now about 7,000, dwindles and ages.
    Nakazono estimates about 500 people in six groups are active on Ikitsuki, compared to some 2,000 in 20 groups two decades ago and the fear of their extinction is palpable amongst the remaining Kakure-Kirishitan.

    "That is our biggest headache; people are leaving one after the other from this religion. They actually still have the faith but these kind of the rituals seen in our group are being lost," said Yatsutaka Toriyama who holds the hereditary position of "gobanyaku", or head of a household that traditionally held a group's icons, such as scrolls or medals.
    For Toriyama himself, the fear that his religion will vanish is also personal. His son left the island after high school and lives with his wife and child in Fukuoka, three hours away by car.
    Toriyama says he has not yet found the nerve to ask his son to learn the ways of his ancestors as his son has distanced himself from the traditions of the island and returns home only a couple of times briefly each year.
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