KIRISHITAN

Japanese corruption of the Portuguese cristâo, Christian.
Designation for Japanese Christianity and Christians, most specifically Roman Catholicism and Roman Catholics during the 16th and 17th centuries.

The first Christian missionary to reach Japan was the Jesuit St. Francis Xavier who entered the country in 1549 only six years after the first visits of Portuguese traders.

During the next hundred years the missionaries who never totalled more than 200 made converts variosly estimated at between 200,000 and 500,000, a percentage of the total Japanese population never since equalled by Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries.

Political fears aroused by the expansion of Christianity partly determined Japan´s decision to close itself off to foreign trade except with the Dutch, Chinese and Koreans.

The first missionaries were received favourably by the military ruler Oda Nobunaga (1534-82) who apparently used Catholicism to counteract the political strength of Buddhist institutions. Some of the oppressed peasantry welcomed the gospel of salvation and the merchants and trade-conscious warrior lords regarded Catholicism as an important link with valuable European trade.

Oda´s successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-98) followed more restrictive policies toward the Kirishitan. With the arrival of Franciscan missionaries in 1593 the Japanese became aware of competition between the mission orders and between Spanish and Portuguese commercial interests. Hideyoshi also questioned the reliability of subjects who held a secondary allegiance to a foreign power, the Vatican.

In 1587 he issued an edict ordering all foreign missionaries to leave, but the order was not really enforced until ten years later when 26 Kirishitan including nine European missionaries were martyred.

A new edict was issued in 1614 banning the Kirishitan sect and expelling missionaries, followed during the reigns of the shoguns Hidetada (1616-23) and Iemitsu (1623-51) by severe persecution. The repression of Japanese Christians had the ultimate effect of strenthening the position of the Buddhist priests in government. As a means of suppressing Christianity every family was required to belong to a Buddhist temple and was reported on periodically by the temple priest. Christians were forced to renounce their faith; if they refused to do so they were either tortured or exiled.

What has been called the Christian century in Japan was brought to an end by the Shimabara Revolt of 1637-38 when some 37,000 Kirishitan in Kyushu rebelled against the political and economic oppression of the Tokugawa regime. By 1650 the Kirishitan had been so thoroughly suppressed that they existed in Japan only as a secret sect Kakure Kirishitan.