In 1596, less than 50 years after St. Francis Xavier brought Christianity to Japan, the emperor Toyotomi ordered all Christian missionaries arrested. He did not like what he saw as the growing European influence in his empire, and worried that western powers would seek to rule Japan as they did the Philippines. Among those arrested was a young Japanese Jesuit named Paul Mikki, who was only months away from his priestly ordination. He was sentenced to death by crucifixion along with 23 other prisoners, all of whom were subjected to terrible beatings and humiliations during a month-long forced march to Nagasaki for execution. On a hill outside the city, they were presented with their crosses. In response, the prisoners began to sing the Te Deum, a traditional song of thanksgiving (the popular hymn “Holy God, We Praise Thy Name” is based on it). The martyrs were bound to the crosses. Hanging on his cross, Paul Mikki said to those gathered: “As I come to this supreme moment of my life, I am sure none of you would suppose I want to deceive you. And so I tell you plainly: there is no way to be saved except the Christian way. My religion teaches me to pardon my enemies and all who have offended me. I do gladly pardon the Emperor and all who have sought my death. I beg them to seek baptism and be Christians themselves.” With that, the soldiers unveiled their lances and ran each martyr through. It was the beginning of the great persecution of Christianity in Japan, with forced apostasies gained by the threat of torture along with the public trampling of religious images. The last known priest in Japan, Fr. Piter Kibe, was martyred in 1639.
It wasn’t until the mid-19th century that the presence of Catholic priests would again be tolerated in Japan. One was a Frenchman named Fr. Bernard Petitjean, who had arrived in 1863 and who oversaw the building of a church dedicated to the martyrs St. Paul Mikki and Companions, who had been canonized the year prior – and whose feast day is this Tuesday, February 6. The priest’s work, however, bore little fruit. Then, one day in 1865, a group appeared at the doors of his church, wanting to speak with him. They asked him three questions. First, they asked him if he followed “the great chief of the Kingdom of Rome.” Believing that they were referring to the pope, he said yes. Second, they asked to see “the statue of Santa Maria.” He brought them over to the statue of Mary. Finally, they asked him if he had a wife and children. When he responded no, they rejoiced and revealed to him that they were Catholics, and that there were thousands of others like them in the villages outside the cities. Despite the absence of priests in Japan for over two centuries, small groups of lay faithful had retained their faith, keeping it hidden by camouflaging it with Buddhist imagery and chants. They had appointed laymen as catechists, who taught and performed baptisms. They abstained from meat on Fridays, observed Lent and Easter, as well as some feast days of saints – all in secret, for generations, hoping that someday the priests would return to them.
Today, the Church in Japan remains small and the majority of Catholics living in Japan are foreign-born. But the history of Catholicism in that country is remarkable. It should make us grateful for the freedom we enjoy to practice our faith and inspire us to take seriously our sacred responsibility to hand down the precious gift that we have inherited to the next generation.
posted 2/3/24
The Parish of St. Cecilia-St. Gabriel 