How the Catholic Faith went underground for centuries in Japan and was preserved by the lay faithful

Sandro Magister, "The 'Hidden Christians' of Japan ..." (Settimo Cielo, October 17, 2017):

Pope Francis has repeatedly expressed his admiration for the “hidden Christians” of Japan, who miraculously reappeared with their faith intact in the second half of the nineteenth century, after two and a half centuries of centuries of ferocious annihilation of Christianity in that country.

But few know the real story of this miracle on the brink of the incredible. It was reconstructed on Thursday, October 12 in a fascinating conference in the aula magna of the Pontifical Gregorian University, by the Japanese Jesuit Shinzo Kawamura, professor of Church history at Sophia University in Tokyo and an author of the most up-to-date studies on the issue.

The complete text of his conference, given at the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Japan and the Holy See, is reproduced on this other page of Settimo Cielo:

>> Pope Pius IX and Japan. The History of an Oriental Miracle

An extensive extract from this is published below. From reading this - which is a must - it can be gathered that what allowed the intact transmission of the Catholic faith, from generation to generation, among those Christians devoid of priests and entirely cut off from the world was essentially an oral tradition made up of a few decisive truths concerning the sacraments and in the first place confession, according to what was taught by the Council of Trent.

It is “Tridentine” Catholicism, therefore, that nourished the miracle of those “hidden Christians.” With its doctrine of sin and of sacramental forgiveness, anticipated in them by repeated acts of perfect contrition, in the absence of a confessor but also in the prophetic vision that one day he would finally arrive.

These were acts of contrition that followed, at times, the sin of apostasy, which involved publicly trampling on the “Fumie,” the image of Jesus, as they were forced to do by their persecutors in order to prove that they abjured the Christian faith, on pain of death....

"HIDDEN CHRISTIANS" IN JAPAN. THE HISTORY OF AN ORIENTAL MIRACLE
by Shinzo Kawamura, S.J.

On January 8, 1867, His Holiness Pope Pius IX dispatched a special message to Fr. Bernard Petitjean of the Paris Foreign Mission Society, who at the time was involved in missionary work in the city of Nagasaki. The purpose of His Holiness was to personally bless an event, which he exuberantly described as a “Miracle of the Orient.”

What he referred to as a “Miracle of the Orient,” was the fact that three years before this message was dispatched, that is, on March 17, 1865, an incident had occurred within one of Japan’s oldest churches, namely the “Oura Tenshudo" of Nagasaki, which is also known as the Basilica of the Twenty-Six Holy Martyrs of Japan.

A group of approximately 15 people, descendants of the Hidden Christians of Nagasaki Urakami, visited the Oura Tenshudo that had just been built, and engaged in a dialogue with Fr. Petitjean.

They spoke to Fr. Petitjean saying: “We are of the same faith as you. Where can we find the image of Saint Mary?”.

No sooner had these Hidden Christians ascertained the fact that Catholic priests had entered Japan, more and more of them began to come out of hiding, and their numbers in course of time exceeded ten thousand.

After having duly confirmed the fact that the faith of these priests was the same as that which had been adhered to by their ancestors 400 years ago, these Hidden Christians returned to the Catholic Church.

Three keywords

These Hidden Christians had endured about 250 years of persecution, due to the prohibitions imposed upon them by the Tokugawa government. Even so, they faithfully continued to preserve their faith, and when they eventually felt that the time was appropriate to do so, they rejoined the Catholic Church. This was indeed a miracle, but my question is, what was it that made this miracle possible?

I now wish to present three keywords that I consider most vital, with regard to the possibility of this Oriental Miracle....

Kawamura goes on to discuss in detail the "three keywords" to understanding the survival of the underground faith in Japan. Essentially, they come down to (1) lay communities that had been organized for the governance of the Catholic faithful in diverse territorial regions of the country since the time of St. Francis Xavier's mission in Japan; (2) the prophecy of a martyred catechist that after seven generations, black ships would arrive and Catholic "confessors" with the authority to forgive sins would return to Japan; and (3) hope of forgiveness in the absence of sacramental Confession through the Tridentine provision that "reconciliation between the individual and God can be attained by true contrition."

In these far-from-ideal conditions, how these Japanese "hidden Christians" were able to preserve and sustain their faith at all is indeed an "Oriental Miracle."

[Hat tip to JM]

"What makes Bach so successful among the Japanese?"

Uwe Siemon-Netto, "J. S. Bach in Japan" (First Things, June 2000). What an amazing article! Here are a few teasers ...

Twenty-five years ago when there was still a Communist East Germany, I interviewed several boys from Leipzig’s Thomanerchor, the choir once led by Johann Sebastian Bach. Many of those children came from atheistic homes. “Is it possible to sing Bach without faith?” I asked them. “Probably not,” they replied, “but we do have faith. Bach has worked as a missionary among all of us.” During a recent journey to Japan I discovered that 250 years after his death Bach is now playing a key role in evangelizing that country, one of the most secularized nations in the developed world....

... “In their frenetic pursuit of production, speculation, and consumption,” Repp said, “the older Japanese have provided their offspring exclusively with materialistic values. But the youngsters are yearning for something more. The result is an enormous gap between the generations; they are no longer able to communicate with one another.”

... ”What people need in this situation is hope in the Christian sense of the word, but hope is an alien idea here,” says the renowned organist Masaaki Suzuki, founder and conductor of the Bach Collegium Japan. He is the driving force behind the “Bach boom” sweeping Japan during its current period of spiritual impoverishment. “Our language does not even have an appropriate word for hope,” Suzuki says. “We either use ibo, meaning desire, or nozomi, which describes something unattainable.” After every one of the Bach Collegium’s performances Suzuki is crowded on the podium by non-Christian members of the audience who wish to talk to him about topics that are normally taboo in Japanese society—death, for example. “And then they inevitably ask me to explain to them what ‘hope’ means to Christians.” ...

Japan’s Bach boom does, however, have one baffling aspect: how is it possible that melodies and rhythms from eighteenth-century Germany should please people of an entirely alien culture thousands of miles to the east? Tokyo musicologists have come up with an astonishing answer: Bach’s appeal to today’s Japanese is directly linked to a Spaniard’s first attempt to evangelize their ancestors 450 years ago.

... Believers were crucified, burned at the stake, tortured to death, or hanged upside-down over cesspools to intensify their suffering. Few Japanese were aware of this sinister aspect of their history until last year, when the Tobu art gallery in Tokyo commemorated the 450th anniversary of Francis Xaviér’s arrival with a massive exhibition spread over three floors.

The enormous crowds filing through this show were horrified by the cruelties its images portrayed. But there was one thing they did not learn at the Tobu Gallery: Western music managed to survive the persecution. The Jesuits had introduced Gregorian chant to Japan and built organs from bamboo pipes.... By the time Christianity was totally outlawed in Japan in the early seventeenth century, elements of Gregorian chant had infiltrated Japan’s traditional folk music. That influence remained strong enough to help Johann Sebastian Bach’s music sweep across the island nation more than four centuries later.

This explains the amazing success of Bach’s collected works, which were published by Sogakukan, a Tokyo company, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death. This collection of fifteen volumes, including 156 CDs accompanied by books with the original lyrics in German and Latin plus their Japanese translations, cost a staggering $3,000 each. Within weeks the first edition of five thousand copies was sold out.

The collection’s editor, Tesuo O’Hara, described himself as one of Christianity’s sympathizers, though not a believer. He could have fooled me. “What makes Bach so successful among the Japanese?” I asked him. O’Hara replied, “Bach gives us hope when we are afraid; he gives us courage when we despair; he comforts us when we are tired; he makes us pray when we are sad; and he makes us sing when we are full of joy.”

[Hat tip E. Echeverria]

Breaking through 'Silence' ~ The other Jesuit in Japan, who didn't apostatize

This 2014 photo shows human bones unearthed in Tokyo, which researchers believe are of the
18th-century Italian missionary Giovanni Battista Sidotti. | AFP-JIJI
In case you missed it: "Italian priest imprisoned in 18th century may have been influential in Japan’s development" (The Japan Times, June 7, 2016):

Disguised as a samurai in kimono and topknot, Italian missionary Giovanni Battista Sidotti stole ashore on a small Japanese island in 1708, daring to enter a land hostile to his Christian creed.

He was quickly captured by authorities, who saw the alien faith as a threat to national identity. He was thrown into a prison for Christians, where torture was routine.

More than 300 years later, researchers using DNA analysis have confirmed that remains unearthed at a Tokyo construction site almost certainly belong to Sidotti — and say they back up historical accounts of his treatment.

Historians say Sidotti helped shape Japan’s view of the Western world with his knowledge after he won over the nation’s leading scholar of the day. But he fell from grace after refusing to give up his faith and his final days and death have been shrouded in mystery.

Christian missionaries made aggressive inroads in Japan in the 16th and 17th centuries, gaining adherents among commoners and even powerful warlords.

But fears they were an advance guard for European colonialism spurred a brutal crackdown long before Sidotti arrived.

Three sets of bones were unearthed in July 2014 from land that now forms the parking lot of an upscale condominium complex that was once the site of the prison — the Kirishitan Yashiki, or Christian Mansion. Its only reminder today is a stone marker commemorating the spot.

National Museum of Nature and Science researchers near Tokyo carefully cleaned the bone fragments before piecing them together like human jigsaw puzzles in a painstaking process that took more than six months.

Kenichi Shinoda, the museum’s chief of anthropology, analyzed DNA from a tooth and concluded that one of them had the same genetic type as present day Italians.

Japanese historical records show that only two missionaries from Italy had been held at the site, Sidotti and Giuseppe Chiara.

The latter was the model for the main character of a Portuguese priest in Shusaku Endo’s novel “Silence,” which director Martin Scorsese is turning into a film.

As records show Chiara was cremated after his death at 84, the unearthed remains are almost certain to be of Sidotti, who was 47 when he died in 1714, researchers said.

While at the prison, Japanese Christians and foreign missionaries were tormented with demands they renounce the banned religion, and many did so under duress.

While they feared foreign religion, Japanese officials also craved Western knowledge and scientific insights that were harder to obtain under the official policy of national seclusion that started in 1639.

As part of his interrogations, Sidotti was questioned by Japan’s top Confucian scholar, who developed a deep respect for the Roman Catholic priest for his knowledge of geography, languages and global affairs, experts said.

The scholar, the renowned Hakuseki Arai, is said to have tried to help Sidotti but the priest was later sent to the dungeon amid allegations he baptized the Japanese couple tending to his daily needs.

The Italian died there, but it is not clear how, researchers said.

Historical accounts, including those written by Japanese scholar Kotonobu Mamiya about a century later, however, mention that Sidotti was accorded a certain respect and treated far better than other prisoners — even in death.

Researchers say that is backed up by evidence from the remains.

Kazuhiro Sakaue, senior researcher of anthropology at National Museum of Nature and Science, observes a
restored skull believed to be that of Italian missionary Giovanni Battista Sidotti, at a laboratory
in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, in April. | AFP-JIJI
“His body was laid flat in a casket, a luxurious one as far as I can tell by the brackets,” said Akio Tanigawa, professor of archaeology at Tokyo’s Waseda University and lead researcher on the remains, referring to coffin pieces discovered with the bones.

“People did not bury human bodies like this,” Tanigawa stressed, suggesting Sidotti was likely given a burial “in the Christian way.”

He said that in 18th century Tokyo, then known as Edo, people were buried in a sitting up position in a small tub.

The two sets of bones unearthed next to Sidotti’s may be those of the Japanese couple, Chosuke and Haru, researchers said, as at least one was placed in a small tub.

The missionary had a great impact on Japan, Tanigawa stressed, citing books by Arai. An adviser to the rulers of the time, he penned a study of the Western world for which Sidotti is cited as a key source.

“The knowledge shared by Sidotti surely changed Japan’s view of the world,” he said.

[Hat tip to Christopher Blosser]

Related: Amy Welborn, "Reading Silence for the first time" (Catholic World Report, December 14, 2016)

Some off-hand thoughts on the movie, Silence

I read the novel Silence by the Japanese Catholic author, Shusaku Endo, years ago when I lived in Japan. He's called the "Japanese Graham Greene." With good reason. Like Greene, he's a darn good novelist. Also like Greene, his Catholicism in his writings is ambiguous. I don't hold that against him as a novelist. Some of my favorite Catholic novelists are also ambiguous about the Catholic faith in their writings, even though they are clearly and intentionally Catholic, like Walker Percy or Evelyn Waugh.

I read many, many reviews of Martin Scorsese's film based on Endo's novel, also called "Silence." One of the best on the critical side, I thought, was Monica Migliorino Miller's "Scorsese's Silence: Many Martyrs -- Little Redemption" (Crisis, January 9, 2017). But there were others that were also good on the appreciative side.

Personally, I liked the movie Silence. I think it was very well done. Whatever Endo's and Scorsese's motives, I think they both dealt powerfully with two things: (1) the exquisitely horrific tortures underwent by Catholics in Japan before the Meiji Restoration, and (2) the diabolically insidious temptations to apostasy that can make infidelity to Christ itself look like fidelity and virtue.

The latter theme of the movie, which I think most Christian audiences thought most significant, I think were (mis-?)understood in two ways: (a) by the 'liberals' as proclaiming a gospel of merciful accommodation indifferent to doctrine, and (b) by 'conservatives' as a message of doctrinal compromise intended by both Endo's novel and Scorsese's film.

I'm not at all certain that the latter is true. Whether it is or not, I think that not only the temptations but the consequences of apostasy were shown by both novel and film in a faithful light: the temptations were beyond ingenious, with the voice of Jesus seeming to come from His image on the fumie itself ("Step on me.") as if Christ Himself were counseling the mercy of apostasy as the path to redemption; and both apostate priests ended their lives by faded into oblivion, morphing into gollum-like shadows of themselves; and the Japanese Catholics (not all, but many) who witnessed their apostasy were significantly demoralized by it.

Remarkably, however, when Catholic priests returned to Japan after the Meiji Restoration of the mid-nineteenth century, they encountered Kakure Kurishitan (hidden Christians) who came out of hiding once again to present rosaries and crucifixes and statues of Maria Kanon that doubled as secret images of the Madonna, showing that the Faith had not been entirely wiped out. The price of persecution as well as apostasy was high. Only something like one tenth of 1% of Japanese people are Christians, and of these, half (about 509,000) are Catholic.

Some of you may remember the movie, The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe. One of the young samurai actors in the film was Shin Koyamada, who only discovered during the making of that film that his ancestors were among the Kakure Kurishitan. So moved was he by the narrative of persecution and Catholic resistance during the Shimabara Rebellion, that he ventured to make film about those events in which he played the father of Shiro Amakusa, the leader of that rebellion (see my review here with a trailer of the film, "Good Soil").


Another recent discovery is the book, A Christian Samurai: The Trials of Baba Bunko, William J. Farge, SJ., which contradicts the generally held belief among Western historians that the Catholic mission in Japan ended in failure. Farge relates how Christian moral teachings not only survived the long period of persecution but influenced Japanese society throughout the Tokugawa period. Baba Bunko was a Japanese Catholic essayist and satirist whose biting criticism of the authorities of his time eventually led to his execution; but he was brazenly bold in asserting his views, declaring, for example, that a representation of the Eucharist would be a more fitting symbol for Japan than the coat of arms of the emperor and insignia of the shogun.

Gotta run.

Making a virtue of apostasy: the "Step on me" Jesus of Endo's Silence

Monica Migliorino Miller, "Scorsese's Silence: Many Martyrs -- Little Redemption" (Crisis, January 9, 2017). An insightful review by an astute Catholic professor and critic. Excerpt:

In the film’s climatic scene Japanese Christians are horrifically tortured and Rodrigues is forced to watch. If he would only step on the fumi-e placed on the ground before him the torture would end. Ferreira is there urging him, as Rodrigues himself had urged others, to step on the face of Jesus. And of course the apostasy, as in all other instances, is connected to bringing an end to human suffering. It is this scene that makes the Scorsese film a theological failure. Ferreira is the Judas character—but it is very unclear whether this Judas functions negatively or positively. Is this a Judas who works against Christ—or is this a Judas, ala the Gnostic text, The Gospel of Judas who actually aids Jesus to accomplish his mission? Ferreira tells Rodrigues: “If Christ were here he would apostatize for their sake” and “To give up your faith is the most painful act of love.” (Spoiler alert.) Then the voice of Jesus himself is heard coming from the fumi-e image lying on the ground. It is a bronze plaque of the crucified Christ who Himself urges Rodriquez: “Step on me. I carried this cross for your pain.” With the permission of Christ, Rodrigues denies his Lord. Apostasy, this time his own, stops the suffering of others, and the Christians are not martyred.

This is the most troubling aspect of Silence. Jesus gives permission to betray him, gives Christians permission to fail in their witness. It makes all the difference whether the film intends this to be the voice of Christ to Rodrigues or whether the voice is just something Rodrigues imagines in his own head. In this reviewer’s opinion, Scorsese intends this to be Christ’s voice that clears the path to failure. First of all, technically speaking, it is sound outside of Rodrigues, emanating from the image to him. The voice is not presented as something coming from the interior of Rodrigues’ consciousness.

Why would Scorsese, based on Endo, give us a Christ who provides his followers permission to fail? What end does the “Step on me” Jesus serve? Since Rodrigues recommends apostasy only to avoid suffering, one could conclude that suffering trumps faith—that for the good of avoiding horrible pain, denial of Christ is justified as it is Jesus alone who “carries this cross for your pain.” Of course this consequentialist ethic is contrary to Christian faith and morals—namely to do evil for the sake of good.

One could also just as well conclude that the “Step on me” Jesus is a theology that only Christ’s suffering has any value. Human beings, due to their inherent sinful nature will inevitably fail, despite all high-minded goals and personal expectations and in the end all that matters is the abiding silent presence of God to those that suffer. However, this is an insufficient Christian message—especially when one considers that in God’s eyes human suffering does have salvific value as Saint Paul himself stated: “Even now I find my joy in the suffering I endure for you. In my own flesh I fill up the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body the Church.”

Or when Rodrigues steps on Jesus this is meant to be indeed the “most painful act of love” as he surrenders his own ideal for the sake of saving others. However, this interpretation is seriously weaken by the fact that he is miserable afterwards and for decades to come will continue to step on the face of Christ in repeated acts of apostasy when no one needs to be delivered from torture.

If however, the voice is just Rodrigues’ own justification to deny Christ—then indeed he is a true apostate and the movie works as a tale of God’s abiding presence to all those who suffer—the suffering of the martyrs as well as the suffering of those like Rodrigues and Kichijiro who are tormented by remorse and guilt for their failure. Jesus is there silently in the suffering of all—as the “voice” from the image says: “I carried this cross for your pain.” And this works well when one considers that Kichijiro commits apostasy over and over again, and is even a Judas who betrays Rodrigues to the authorities. Yet he always seeks out the priest to confess his sins and receive absolution. And indeed mercy is there for those who fail. Silence poignantly illustrates this point. Rodrigues indeed follows Ferreira—who ironically has wound up mentoring him into the life of an apostate priest. But long after Rodrigues quits the priesthood Kichijiro finds him and begs him to hear his confession and Rodrigues again provides him the absolution for which he craves.

Except for Christ telling Rodrigues to “Step on me” this forgiveness scene would be the climax of the film, and thus Silence would be about the silent abiding presence of God to all, even to those who fail. But this possible climax is overwhelmed by the very troubling permission of Christ to fail. The first climactic scene plunges the Scorsese film into a most problematic and erroneous soteriology. The end of the film attempts to show a certain level of redemption for Rodrigues who apparently remained a Christian privately, but is not powerful enough to overcome a depiction of Christ who leads his faithful servant to deny him.

This movie seriously examines Christian themes and ideas. But should a film that, to its credit, does such an examination necessarily be called a Christian film? I think not. A Christian film cannot simply explore—it must conclude and it must conclude in a way that is consistent with the gospel message—however unconventionally, provocatively, or innovatively presented. There must be the Christ of the Gospels who, rather than commanding his faithful followers to step on him, and twists this negativity, this denial of the Light, into “the most painful act of love,” calls them to follow him to the Cross—the Christ who rather ensures his faithful: “From the cup I drink from you shall drink; the bath I am immersed in you shall share.”

Believers hoping for a film that explores Christian ideas from an authentic Christian context—should skip this one. Silence should also not be seen by the young, or those whose faith is not strong as the theology in this movie is complex, clever and seductive. However, if you are a mature Christian looking for a finely crafted, well-acted, disturbing film that provokes thinking and debates—then Silence is for you. Let the debates begin.

Japanese high schoolers perform Mozart's Missa Brevis ... well!

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Arne Duncan.

Japan and the October Synod

Sandro Magister, "In Japan As on the Banks of the Rhine. The Church's Surrender" (www.chiesa, June 6, 2014): "The responses of the Japanese and central Europeans to the questionnaire for the synod on the family register the yielding of Catholics to the dominant “uniform thought.” But also the pastors' inability to lead."

[Hat tip to JM]

"How a children's cartoon destroyed Japanese agriculture"

An article by that title was just sent to me by Christopher Blosser. It relates how a popular anime TV program in Japan called Araiguma Rasukaru, about a kid and his adorable raccoon sidekick (based on the popular Disney movie Rascal), led to a disastrous surge of imports of North American racoons as intended pets in Japan, which, in turn, led to one of the worst invasive species events in Japan, with estimated agricultural damage of approximately US$300,000 per year on the island of Hokkaido alone.

However, Japanese interest in the lowly raccoon antedates the anime by upwards of a century. Sapporo's famed shopping arcade Tanuki Koji, named for the animal and with a shrine honoring it in the middle of the arcade, is commonly known as Sapporo's oldest shopping area, dating from the late 1800s. Some shops there have been in business for 100 years. It's an amazing place, burgeoning wish all sorts of shops, from clothing stores to the nationally famous "Sapporo Ramen" and "Jingisukan" shops.

How amusing.

[Hat tip to C.B.]

How to eat Ramen

The noble art of the noodle, demonstrated by an old Master:


... from the old classic movie "Tampopo"

Popular suicide spots in Japan

Larissa Macfarquhar, "Last Call" (The New Yorker, June 24, 2013) - a Buddhist monk confronts Japan's suicide culture:

From time to time, Ittetsu Nemoto gets a group of suicidal people together to visit popular suicide spots, of which there are many in Japan. The best known is Aokigahara forest, the Sea of Trees, at the foot of Mt. Fuji. The forest became associated with suicide in the nineteen-sixties, after the publication of two novels by Seicho Matsumoto, and even more so after Wataru Tsurumi’s 1993 “Complete Manual of Suicide” declared it the perfect place to die. Because its trees grow so closely together that they block the wind, and because there are few animals or birds, the forest is unusually quiet. The Sea of Trees is large, fourteen square miles, so bodies can lie undiscovered for months; tourists photograph corpses and scavenge for abandoned possessions. Another common suicide destination is Tojinbo cliff, which overlooks the Sea of Japan. Visiting such a place turns out to be very different from picturing it. The sight of the sea from a cliff top can be a terrible thing.

At other times, Nemoto, a Buddhist priest, conducts death workshops for the suicidal at his temple. He tells attendees to imagine they’ve been given a diagnosis of cancer and have three months to live. He instructs them to write down what they want to do in those three months. Then he tells them to imagine they have one month left; then a week; then ten minutes. Most people start crying in the course of this exercise, Nemoto among them.

One man who came to a workshop had been talking to Nemoto for years about wanting to die. He was thirty-eight years old and had been institutionalized in a mental hospital off and on for a decade. During the writing exercise, he just sat and wept. When Nemoto came around to check on him, his paper was blank. The man explained that he had nothing to say in response to the questions because he had never considered them. All he had ever thought about was wanting to die; he had never thought about what he might want to do with his life. But if he had never really lived, how could he want to die? This insight proved oddly liberating. The man returned to his job as a machinist in a factory. Previously, he had been so averse to human company that he had been able to function only in certain limited capacities, but now he was able to speak to people, and he got a promotion. . . .

[Hat tip to Saleem P.]

Related: a scene from the Japanese movie, "Departures," which portrays the respect and tenderness with which the dead are treated in Japan, a film well-worth seeing, in my opinion:

Catholic samurai rebels of 17th-century Japan

In the latest Latin Mass magazine, an article by the ever-informative Prof. Anne Barbeau Gardiner called to my attention that in 1962 Nagisa Ôshima directed a film called, in English, "Shiro Amakusa, the Christian Rebel," about the leader of the Shimabara uprising of 37,000 Christians in Japan (1637-38) against the Tokugawa Shogunate. The shogun eventually had to send a force of over 125,000 troops to suppress the rebellion, after learning that it wasn't a rag-tag army of peasants but a well-trained and armed rebellion led by Amakusa. At the heroic showdown at Hara Castle (in the southwestern Kyushu province of Hinzen), which was occupied by the rebels, the uprising was finally crushed, but only after a siege of several months in which the rebels were starved, yet inflicted huge losses (8,000-13,000) on the shogun's army. The result was a policy of "absolute seclusion" of Japan for over two centuries, and Christians were put to death by the thousands or were forced to apostatize.

I couldn't find a copy of the movie anywhere. But in my research online, I found that a short film on a similar topic was made in 2007 that I hadn't noticed, starring Shin Koyamada, who played alongside Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, but even more remarkably disclosed his own Catholic roots among the "kakure kirishitan" (Christians in hiding) who had suffered persecution in the Shimabara rebellion. In this movie, Koyamada plays Masuda Jinbei (the FATHER of Shiro Amakusa, and a samurai who dared to challenge the ideology of the warrior class, follow his personal beliefs, and face what was considered back then to be social suicide). In the linked article interviewing Koyamada below, he talks about the personal meaning the role had for him in this movie, entitled "Good Soil" (2007). Here's a trailer:


Dr. Craig Reid, "GOOD SOIL: LAST SAMURAI to First Christian Samurai" (Kungfu Magazine):

GOOD SOIL is a groundbreaking film about the first samurai warrior who refused to give up his allegiance to Christianity and blindly accept the Shogun as his master. To the film's star, Shin Koyamada, who plays Masuda Jinbei (a samurai who dared to challenge the ideology of the warrior class, follow his personal beliefs, and face what was considered back then to be social suicide), the role had personal significance.

"I was interested in this film because it's a samurai film that portrays true historical events of Japan, stuff we don't have many opportunities to learn school," Koyamada told kungfumagazine.com, "and even though there is this history of Christianity, we don't talk about it in school, just like we don't talk about in Japan what we did to China (during World War II). They try not to reveal that past but want to focus on the future. But learning one's own roots and identity are important, so when I read the script, I was not familiar with the story, but Jinbei hit me close to home."

Koyamada became interested in learning about his samurai heritage one year after coming to America, and the impulse to search for his past became stronger after starring with Tom Cruise in THE LAST SAMURAI.

"After that film, I spoke to my grandfather to find out more about my ancestors," he says, "and he told me about Kakure Kirishitan, which means 'hidden religion,' something that existed hundreds of years ago back in Kagoshima, Japan, throughout Kyushu. Apparently, my ancestors believed in a sort of 'hidden religion,' and when I asked what it was, he (Koyamada's grandfather) didn't know and wasn't interested. My parents told me not to tell anybody about my family heritage because it is considered shameful.

"People were persecuted by the government in the 1600s if you were part of Kakure Kirishitan, this was a bad thing. My ancestors were part of that, and it didn't click in me until I started doing GOOD SOIL and was talking to Craig (the film's director Craig Shimahara) and he was telling me the history of Jinbei and his son Amakusa Shiro.

"I'm the first in my family interested in this, so after I researched Jinbei, Amakusa, and the history of Christianity in Japan, something bothered me and after I spoke with Craig about my past he said, 'Wow.' When I told my parents and they asked if I spoke to Craig before the film and I said I didn't, I knew something was up. These stories are similar and as it turns out Kakure Kirishitan, the hidden religion, was Christianity.

"What's interesting is my ancestors escaped or were sent to the countryside because they were Christian, like in this film where Jinbei stands up for his beliefs and was sent to the countryside where he passed on his legacy to his descendants. All my ancestors were possibly Christian samurai in Kagoshima. Two years ago I visited my ancestors' land, we own a mountain, the place they were sent and secretly passed down our history from generation to generation, and I'm the direct descendant who can now pass it on."

So how do Koyamada's parents feel now that that he openly speaks to the world of those things that are considered shameful family secrets?

"I convinced them that times change, people change, there's nothing to hide," he says. "One need not be ashamed or afraid to speak up. Four hundred years ago it was a problem to speak about being a Christian to the public, but now there is no need to hide. If we admit the past, we can move on. I broke the rule by finding this out, I also broke the rule by marrying a Columbian. I'm the family troublemaker but you can't make a mark without risks, can you. Working on this film became personal."

Perfect sushi

We ran the above trailer from the award-winning film by David Gelb entitled, "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" some nine months ago (Musings, April 3, 2012).

The combination of Beethoven's music and the most exquisite culinary delicacy in the world is just perfect -- as I was again reminded when my son Christopher recently sent me the link to the same trailer, a guilty pleasure which I indulged yet again.

I have yet to see the movie. Hard to understand, I know. A little more exploration on the Internet has simply whetted the appetite for what I should call "I Dream of Jiro's Sushi":


Just imagine: a fifteen course dinner in twenty minutes, served one piece at a time, made to perfection, ingredient, technique, timing. Every item is served at the right time and temperature and stage in its preparation, and in the correct order, so that the flavors complement one another and don't detract.

Anthony Bourdain says at one point, "I'm ready to die now." I can remember thinking just that myself on occasion. It can be just that good. You can't touch this, Fr. Z.

Update: Just found the film on Amazon, where Prime members can stream it for free!