The Kakure Kirishitan and Their Place in Japan’s Religious Tradition

For more than two hundred and fifty years, while Japan was relatively isolated from the Western world and Chris tianity was strictly forbidden by the Tokugawa Bakufu, a small group of Japanese Catholics tried to keep the faith alive underground. Despite persecution and bloodshed, they sustained Christian teachings and practice through seven generations. When Catholic missionaries were once again permitted to enter Japan in the 19th century, they discovered small pockets of Christianity in Kyushu and immediately looked toward wooing these descendants of Japan’s first Christians back to an orthodox practice of Roman Catholicism. Some Christian descendants accepted the teachings of the newly arrived Catholic missionaries. Others, however, numbering about 35,000 refused and they continued to live their own brand of Christianity, practicin