Christian Scroll 14

A Surprising Japanese Interpretation of the Lost Years of Jesus Christ Most Christians believe that Jesus was born and died in the Middle East. However, there is a small group of people in Japan who believe a completely different story. Some Japanese researchers think that Jesus’ history is different from what is generally believed.  This alternative version of Christ’s story was forgotten until 1935, when Kiyomaro Takeuchi (Takenouchi) reportedly discovered an ancient document in Ibaraki Prefecture in Japan. The text of the manuscript presented a shocking tale. It says that Jesus was buried in Herai Village in the Aomori district in Japan. Moreover, the document declares that he was buried at the site with his brother. The text looked very authentic and there was no reason to doubt that it could be an original. Nonetheless, the Japanese government decided to ban the document from public view. It became a part of the collection of the museum in Tokyo which was bombed durin...

Japan's encounter with Europe, 1573 – 1853 The first Europeans to arrive in Japan did so by accident rather than design. In 1543 a Portuguese ship was blown off course by a typhoon, shipwrecking the sailors on the island of Tanegashima, off the south-west tip of Japan. Eager to trade with Japan, the Portuguese soon established more formal traffic through the port of Nagasaki, and in 1549 the Jesuit priest Francis Xavier (1506 – 52) arrived in the country to found the first Christian mission. For the Japanese, any initial feelings of alarm caused by the appearance of the  nanban-jin , or 'southern barbarians', as the Portuguese were called, was soon overshadowed by the exotic appeal of these curious visitors. The fascination  aroused by the arrival of Europeans is revealed in many aspects of late 16th- and early 17th-century Japanese visual culture, most dramatically in screens that depict the arrival of a Portuguese vessel into a Japanese port. In an example f...

Driven Underground Years Ago, Japan's 'Hidden Christians' Maintain Faith From the Roman Empire to the Cold War-era Soviet Union, many Christian groups throughout history have been forced to conceal their faith to survive government persecution. But some of Japan's  kakure kirishitan , or "hidden Christians," have remained closeted for nearly 4 1/2 centuries — long after the threat of persecution had lifted. Their religion morphed into what is arguably a separate faith, barely recognizable as the creed imported in the mid-1500s by Catholic missionaries, including the Spanish Jesuit Francis Xavier. On a recent trip to Ikitsuki Island in southern Nagasaki prefecture, one of the few places where the "hidden Christian" traditions hang on, I met a 53-year-old resident named Masashi Funabara. Sitting in the government office where he works, he sang for me in a soft voice the sacred songs taught to his ancestors by the missionaries. Some of the song...

Rare early Japanese Christian painting discovered in museum collection The Japanese newspaper The Mainichi reports that one of the inscriptions says, “1592 years since His Birth.” Historians believe this is perhaps the date it was created and carbon dating supports this hypothesis, showing it was created before 1633. If the dating is accurate then this scroll was drawn in the decades following the arrival of St. Francis Xavier in Japan in 1549. Xavier and his missionaries were in large part responsible for the spread of Christianity through the island of Japan, and in some instances converted entire provinces to Christianity. CNA notes that by the 1580s  there were more than 200,000 Christians in Japan, but in 1588 Emperor Cambacundono commanded all Jesuits to leave the country. He gave them six months to leave before they would be killed. Christians who remained in the country were harshly persecuted and subjected to tortures unless they renounced their faith. If Christia...