How were The Hidden Christians Treated during the Edo Period?
During the Edo period, Christianity faced severe persecution in Japan. The government deemed it a threat, especially amidst Southeast Asian colonization. Christianity was banned in 1614, and laws in the 1630s required citizens to register at Buddhist temples to prove they weren'
How were The Hidden Christians Treated during the Edo Period?
Perspectives Reflected
Modern Descendants: Descendants of The Hidden Christians talking about the history and highlighting the key information for more awareness of what the hidden christians had to sustain from.
Japanese Authorities: Governmental Creed acknowledging the suppression of Christianity through the Tokugawa Shogunate Laws and Policies
Hidden Christians: Accounts of history and orgins
Ideas left Out
Transmission of Faith: The ways in which the faith was spread and practiced, and passed down through a generation where it was absent of written records.
Psychological impact: There was lots of humiliation rituals and inhumane ways they killed them, including Crucifixion upon capturing on the hill of Nishikaze, they didn't discriminate upon women nor kids, which had a big impact on the victims and survivors of the religion
Women were seldom talked about during the history of Hidden Christians, but they have sustained a crucial role in teaching and sustaining the faith and traditions through teachings and healing, often being the Leaders of the organized commuinties and role models.
How is it Depicted and Why?
It is Depicted through the lens of the Kakure Kirishitan(Hidden Christians) Descendants who talk about how they have bled history, and how this blood has strengthened the DNA that is now the community of the Christian faith in Japan.
Who Wrote it(Video)
Kakure Kirishitan Descendants
Which questions can this source help me answer? Which can it not?
How it Is depicted and Why
Who Wrote it and Why
What it Looks Like
Big Ideas Left Out
Big Ideas Surrounding Hidden Christianity
Perspectives Unincluded
Perspectives Ommitted
Perspectives Omitted/ Questioned/ Challenged
Abandoned Faith: Survival Based Integration from Hidden Christians due to the aggressive and oppresive nature of the christian identity.
Non-Christian Japanes Communities: Allyship or not? how were the Christians seen socially? what was it influenced by? Propaganda?
Big Ideas
Community and Identity: The resilience and the undying perserverance of the community of the Christians despite the demonization of their religion, was vital for its survival during the troubling time of Edo Japan.
Cultural Adaptation: camouflaged their ways of worship through buddhist and shinto beliefs, often using symbolism from both those cultures to represent christian ones, and usually hiding mundane and everyday things to hide their faith including the use of the christian calendar, or the use of drawing stored in hidden storages.
Faith In Secrecy: Euthanized and Demonized in faith, under fierce adversity through the governmental laws which saw christianity as a threat, as it was a time of SE Asian colonization, and Japan was a very closed minded state, not letting Western Influences in issueing a ban on Christianity in 1614, and issuing a law to register to a temple to prove they weren't christian in 1630's.
What Does it look like
Hidden and camouflaged
Example: Camouflaged Ways of worship through hidden storages of drawings of the Mother Mary, and rearranging stones on top of the coffin of the dead into a cross for prayer and rearranging it again once finished.
Lasted untill the law was removed in 1873 Meji 6 Era.