Diplomacy in the Vatican has been changing fast under Pope Francis, who has pushed the Roman Catholic Church to shift its gaze toward what he calls “the peripheries.”
These are those lands where the Catholic faith is
practiced by a minority, or which have not been seen as strategically
important until now.
The pope has been making overtures toward China, and the recent, fast-tracked canonization of Mother Teresa shows how keen the pontiff is on expanding eastward, beyond the Catholic Church’s more traditional grounds.
One of the peripheries is Japan, where a chance archaeological discovery
in Tokyo, and renewed interest in the first Christian samurai, raise
the possibility of new beatifications in Japan—a country where less than
1% of the population professes to be Christian.
It’s a push with links
to the Church’s activities there three centuries ago.
Things heard from the West
A few months ago, the bones of Italian priest
Giovanni Battista Sidotti—sometimes called “the last missionary”—were
transferred to St. Mary’s Cathedral in Tokyo.
His remains, and the special prison for Christians that held him until
his death in 1715, were discovered by chance at a construction site in
the Japanese capital in 2014. In April, DNA tests confirmed the bones were his.
The prison that held him, called the Kirishitan Yashiki,
or the “Christian mansion,” was designed for followers of the
then-forbidden Christian religion.
Two more sets of human bones were
recovered. While still unidentified, they are likely those of two
guards—an elderly couple known only as Chosuke and Haru—that Sidotti
managed to convert while in captivity (the upshot being that they too
were left to die in the prison).
Today, a large luxury condo with an adjoining
parking lot occupies the site. Aside from two commemorative steles and
an inscription nearby, there’s little to tell passersby of the ancient
detention facility and its grim contents.
Yet many Japanese scholars today credit Sidotti with being uniquely instrumental in the modernization of the country, as his conversations with his interrogator, the prominent Confucian scholar Arai Hakuseki, were turned by the latter into a highly influential volume.
Called Seiyo Kibun (or “Record of Things Heard from the West”) it helped to introduce Western technology and especially geography to Japan.
Sidotti died of hunger in a pit, but he was
buried in the Christian style, which suggests that his jailer had taken a
shine to him and his religion in spite of being a Confucian.
The story of Sidotti was one of the strongest inspirations behind Silence, a prize-winning novel
by Japanese Catholic writer Shusaku Endo.
More recently Martin Scorsese
turned the 1966 book into a movie starring Liam Neeson.
It’s set for release in December, Scorsese said this week.
Sidotti’s story is a convoluted, easily
romanticized one, and the discovery of his remains has the small
Japanese Catholic community ecstatic.
“It is such a joy, for me, at 82
years old, to receive the news that Sidotti’s bones have been found,
after 300 years,” said Rev. Mario Canducci, a Franciscan priest who has
spent more than half a century in Japan. “Our very saint Sidotti!” he
added, although no official canonization is yet under way at the
Vatican.
Sidotti, born in 1668 in Palermo, took orders at a young age and received a rare approval from Pope Clement XI
to travel to Japan. This was one and a half centuries after the country
had banned Christianity and missionaries altogether—and when deciding
to leave for Japan to engage in proselytism was nothing short of
suicidal.
Rough treatment
Japan and Christianity had proven to be a very
hard match.
The religion arrived on the nation’s coasts in 1549, when
St. Francis Xavier, a Spanish missionary who dreamed of evangelizing
China and Japan, arrived on the island of Satusma.
Initially, the faith
spread fast, with a few prominent local rulers making public
conversions—a development that greatly annoyed the Japanese.
Shortly
thereafter, the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi—also known as the “second unifier” of the country—forbade the pesky proselytizers from setting foot in Japan.
The main point of friction was the suspicious
idea of professing loyalty to the pope in Rome.
Many non-European rulers
saw him as nothing more than a foreign earthly king, which put into
question the loyalty of their own subjects.
Also, Buddhist and Shintoist
prelates, who had paramount influence at the court, watched the newly
imported religion with horror, and successfully pressured the
authorities to get rid of it. Christianity was labeled as the very
opposite of what was deemed to constitute the Japanese moral and
religious temperament, defined at the time as the Shinto way, Confucian
ethics, and Buddhist law.
But it was not only a matter of doctrine.
Portuguese missionaries had arrived with traders, who had given guns to daimyos (feudal warlords). That conferred a military advantage that was unacceptable to the local authorities.
In 1597, 26 Christians were crucified in
Nagasaki—18 Japanese and eight Europeans, who were eventually sanctified
in 1862 by Pope Pius IX. Through the decades, the ban was applied with
growing sternness, until in 1614 the whole of Christianity was
proscribed.
Churches were destroyed, and the daimyos were ordered to deport any converts in their domains to Nagasaki. Converted daimyos and samurais were expelled from the country, with some reaching the Spanish-ruled Philippines, or Portuguese Macao and Goa.
Over 200 Christians were killed, and successively
beatified by the Catholic Church. The situation became further
complicated by the Shimbara Rebellion, a revolt against the local daimyo staged by mostly Christian converts.
Eventually, as the initial impact with Western
traders and missionaries was being absorbed, the whole country sealed
itself off under the sakoku policy. No Japanese was allowed
abroad—at least officially—and no foreigner could step on Japanese soil
outside of a few well-defined and guarded places.
Throughout
parts of the 17th and 18th centuries, Japan kept only three
circumscribed areas of its territory semi-open to trade with
non-Japanese.
In the north, commerce was conducted with the Ainus of
Hokkaido. The island of Tsushima, in the Korean Strait, allowed contacts
and exchanges with Korea. Chinese and Western traders were allowed to
reside only in Dejima, a small island connected by a slim bridge to
Nagasaki.
All proselytizing was forbidden, under pain of
death, and Bibles or other devotional material were not allowed into
Japan even for personal use.
Seduced by tales of martyrdom and secret
Christians, Sidotti had sailed from Manila disguised as a samurai—hair
in a knot and sword by his side.
While there, he had probably heard
tales of the Kakure Kirishitan, the “hidden Christians” who had
taken their beliefs underground, even as they publicly abjured their
faith in Christ by spitting and stepping on a cross or a picture of the
Virgin Mary.
A quixotic venture
Given this background, the arrival of Sidotti in
1708 was clearly part of a quixotic venture that to this day has many
Catholic scholars and Japanese experts puzzled. Aldo Tollini, professor
of Japanese at Venice University in Italy, told Quartz:
We cannot look at Sidotti solely in a positive way. When he converted Chosuke and Haru, his wardens, he clearly put their lives at risk. We know that the three of them died of starvations in earthen pits, from which he kept exhorting the couple not to abjure the faith—had they done so, their lives would have been spared. But if we look at Sidotti from a secular point of view, his contribution to Japanese modernization is invaluable, for sure, thanks to the conversations he had with Arai.
Rev. Canducci is less critical of Sidotti, and believes that “as any martyr, our holy Sidotti ought to be made a saint.”
Sidotti will most likely be beatified. It remains
to be seen whether he achieves sainthood, which requires either
martyrdom or miracles (defined as healing that cannot be explained by
science).
Meanwhile the pope, continuing his expansion to
the “peripheries,” also plans to beatify the first-ever Christian
samurai in February 2017.
Takayama Ukon was expelled to the Philippines for
refusing to renounce the faith, and died there in 1615.
Though he was
largely forgotten in Japan for close to half a millennium, a few years
ago his story resurfaced thanks to a popular historical drama broadcast
on NHK.
The Pope’s decision to beatify him is sure to be noticed in this “periphery” of the Christian faith.