475 years of faith in an exhibition in Paris

The exhibition “From the samurai to the sleevethe Christian epic in Japan”, will remain open until July 13 at the headquarters of the Foreign Missions in Paris. Objects from various collections are on display that cover the history of persecution and “hidden Christians”, but also of vitality of today’s “little flock.”

Paris () – At this moment in Japan there are about 430 thousand Catholics, just 0.34% of the country’s population. A community so small that it sometimes seems invisible, but with a very rich history and a great liveliness of initiatives, from orphanages to the defense of those who are discriminated against, such as the Burakumin minority, to helping the homeless, the drug addicts, alcoholics, the disabled, immigrants, prisoners, families and young people in difficulty, as well as support for victims of the numerous and serious natural phenomena such as earthquakes, tsunamis and floods that have often devastated the archipelago.

The exhibition titled “Of the samurai to the sleevethe Christian epic in Japan” – which can be visited in Paris, at the MEP headquarters until July 13, 2024 – traces the Christian presence in the country, from the arrival of the first missionaries to the present, through of a wide variety of objects and documents from various collections around the world.

The first Westerners to set foot on Japanese land were Portuguese merchants who landed on the island of Tanegashima in the south of the country in 1543, but it was the arrival of Saint Francis Xavier to Kagoshima in 1549 that brought Christianity to the Japanese archipelago. Accompanied by two Jesuits, he initiated the conversion of the first men in Omura (Nagasaki) and Zusho, near Kyoto.

Japan was a state administered by Shogunthe strongest general appointed by the emperor, on whom the Daimyo, the feudal lords who governed the provinces. At that time there was a civil war between the fiefdoms and the daimyō were trying to expand and develop their domains by promoting international trade and the construction of cities, and it was precisely this opening that allowed the activity of the missionaries. To represent the interdependence between religion and commerce, the exhibition includes a wooden statue with two faces that, like a Janus, correspond to the faces of a Jesuit and a European merchant.

However, in 1587 Shōgun Toyotomi Hideyoshi – to exert greater control over the Jesuit-converted feudal governors, the Kirishitan Daimyō – issued a first edict ordering the missionaries to leave Japan. However, in 1590, the Italian Jesuit Giovanni Cola managed to found an art school in Nagasaki to produce works to adorn churches. In those years, people of the Christian religion were still tolerated to protect the commercial relations that the country had with the West. The ban on practicing religion came in 1614 by decision of the Tokugawa Shōgun and from this date the Shōguns enacted a set of laws aimed at eliminating Catholicism and establishing strict control of the population. Thus began the time of persecution and there were numerous martyrdoms, in 1619 in Kyoto, in 1622 in Nagasaki and in 1623 in Edo (Tōkyō), although already in 1597 26 Catholics, including Jesuits and Franciscans, were crucified in Nagasaki, later canonized by the Pope Pius IX in 1862.

A practice imposed on people suspected of being close to Christianity was fumi-e, trample on the crucifix or images of the Virgin Mary. This practice was introduced after a major revolt by Catholics against the Tokugawa shogunate, the Shimabara Rebellion in 1637.

The shogunate suspected that Western Catholics had favored the insurrection and therefore decided to also interrupt commercial relations with the Portuguese, which after the expulsion of the missionaries and the Spanish, was the last relationship that Japan maintained with European Catholics. The isolation ended only in 1868 with the deposition of the Tokugawa family carried out by the new Emperor Mutsuhito, who returned power to the imperial family in what is called the “Meiji Restoration”, an event considered the turning point between traditional Japan. and the modern.

In those same years, Father Bernard Petitjean of the MEP was able to settle in Nagasaki, where he built a church that was consecrated in February 1865. A few weeks later, a group of fishermen and artisans, intrigued by the new construction, presented themselves to the missionary. . A woman approached him and said: “The hearts of all of us here are like yours” and with only three questions – “Do you know the Pope? Are they celibate? Do you pray to the Virgin Mary? -she discovered that they were descendants of the ancient Japanese Christians, the Kakure Kirishitan, who for 250 years had secretly guarded the Christian faith. An object in the exhibition that bears witness to this clandestinity is a small statue of Mary and a crucifix hidden inside a Buddha.

The exhibition that is now being held at the MEP headquarters also tells the recent history of the Japanese Catholic community. For example, the consternation after the nuclear bombing in August 1945 against Nagasaki, the center of the Christian faith in the country. You can see the image of a woman standing on a mushroom cloud that remembers Mary’s ascension to heaven, but it is the wife of the Catholic doctor and writer Paolo Nagai Takashi who died in the attack. Also the particular attention that the Japanese Church pays to the theme of peace: one of the objects on display is a flag created for the WYD in Toronto in 2002, which reinterprets the emblem of Japan with a dove rising above a red circle and with the characteristic colored stripes of the peace flag at the top of the circle.

The recent history of Christianity in Japan is also told in the catechism books of Father Corvaisier, the books of songs and prayers, the translations of the Bible, the versions sleeve of the New Testament and the life of Jesus, the noodles that Father De Rotz made in Shitsu to financially support the population and the nativity scene made with style dolls Hina Matsuri – the doll festival in honor of daughters that is celebrated on March 3 – which at the top has Joseph, Mary and an adult Jesus and not a child, at the intermediate level the Three Wise Men and at the bottom the rest from town.

The Japanese is, therefore, a faith and a Church that has known how to resist and develop over the centuries despite the difficulties, welcomed and shaped by the culture of the country, and that until today dedicates its best energies to the most people in need.

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