Hidden Christians of Nagasaki in Goto Islands

Three centuries ago, when Christianity was persecuted in the Japanese heartland, Goto became the bolthole for men and women fleeing the violence that swept from port cities down to farming villages just as the Word had blazed through years before. The kakure kirishitans (hidden Christians) of the Goto Islands found refuge on the wild coasts of the archipelago. After the persecution of Christianity ended, the Christians of Goto brought their traditions out into the open, and the islands are still home to living communities and the artifacts of congregations that have faded away.

When Francis Xavier arrived in Kagoshima in 1549, his mission, although poorly-understood by most of the shogun and their subordinates, was mostly treated as something benign. In the years that followed, links with European traders and missionaries furnished local lords with muskets and Chinese silks. But things began to go off the rails: the missionaries of rival nations began to compete for the souls of the Japanese people, suspicious shogun and daimyo began to persecute Christians, crucifying twenty-six Catholics at Nagasaki in 1597, and, following the Shimabara Rebellion of 1637, the Catholic leader of the revolt, had his head cut off.

The men and women that had accepted the faith were unwilling to accept their beliefs being crushed. The inquisitors came among the faithful and tortured them until they renounced their faith or died. In Japanese Christian author Shusaku Endo’s ''Despicable Bastard,” a character recounts the process: "In this torture the hands and feet of the prisoners were lashed together with ropes, which were tied behind their backs. They were then suspended from the ceiling while the officers beat them with whips." The islands of the Goto archipelago, not far from Nagasaki, a stronghold of Christianity, made an obvious place for the faithful to escape to.

The refugees of religious persecution had two choices: hide themselves or hide their faith. Some chose to head to the more remote islands, including a group that hid out in a cave not from where Wakamatsu Port is now located. The dozen or so refugees formed a new religious community that survived until it was spotted by local fishermen. For others, their faith could be concealed in place sight: the cathedral was replaced by the shrine, and Christians muttered their prayers to statues of the Bodhisattva Guanyin, a stand-in for Mary, mother of Jesus. The beliefs of the kakure Christians slowly diverged from mainline Catholicism, maturing into syncretic religions that merged Japanese folk tradition, millenarianism and preterism, and wholly-invented ways of worship.

Shusaku Endo provides another glimpse into the history of the kakure in his story “Mothers.” The narrator is brought to the Isle of Rocks by missionaries embarrassed by what they see as the puerile beliefs of the kakure. The kakure of the island produce an image that they have made of a woman cradling an infant, a recreation, perhaps, of the Madonna and Child:

Within me there welled up the feeling that their intent had been identical to mine. Many long years ago, missionaries had crossed the seas to bring the teachings of God the Father to this land. But when the missionaries had been expelled and the churches demolished, the Japanese kakure, over the space of many years, stripped away all those parts of the religion that they could not embrace, and the teachings of God the father were gradually replaced by a yearning after a Mother - a yearning which lies at the very heart of Japanese religion.

The Christian churches that can be found on the islands today were often built on the site of clandestine kakure Christian shrines. Egami Church on Naru Island was built around 1918, the result of missionaries returning to the islands, hoping to spread orthodox Catholicism among the islands’ underground Christians. The churches that dot the islands are a testament to the human ability to carry an idea, a faith, through persecution and exile, and also to our innate ingenuity. What it says about the human condition or about the nature of faith is something that each visitor to the islands’ Christian sites will have to answer for themselves.

若松港<若松島>

長崎県南松浦郡新上五島町若松郷

View All

Egami Church

Nagasaki Pref. Gotoushi Narumachiokushi 1131-2

[Tour registrationHours]9:00…

View All

Go here