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French Catholic Missionaries in Japan in the Bakumatsu and Early Meiji Periods

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Jean-Pierre Lehmann
Jean-Pierre Lehmann
Affiliation:
University of Stirling
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Extract

The legacy of the Portuguese Jesuits and Spanish mendicant orders in Japan in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was strongly felt both in Japan and in the Catholic Church. In Japan the alien religion had been suppressed in the early Edo period and throughout the decades of sakoku measures continued to be taken to ensure that Christianity would not re-emerge. In Europe, however, the determination of Christian missionaries to return to Japan persisted. Already in the seventeenth century, after the expulsion of the Iberian missionaries and at a time when the French Société des Missions Etrangères (established in 1658) had been granted by the papacy the exclusive right of missionary work in the Far East, on two occasions bishops of the Société were appointed Apostolic Vicars to Japan—even though, needless to say, they never set foot in the country. Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Japan remained little more than a distant memory of the past and a distant hope for the future. Following the French Revolution, the end of the Napoleonic wars, the onset of the Bourbon Restoration and with increasing French naval activity in the Far East, however, the Société's interest in Japan revived.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , July 1979 , pp. 377 - 400
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

1 Launay, A., Histoire Générale de la Société des Missions Etrangères, Vol. III (Paris, 1894), p. 202.Google Scholar

2 Throughout most of the Meiji period Catholic missionaries in Japan were predominantly, if not exclusively, French. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, Spanish Franciscans from the Philippines and Jesuits and Marianites of other nationalites began entering Japan.

3 For the role of the Société in French imperialism in Indochina and China, see Cady, John F., The Roots of French Imperialism in Eastern Asia (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1967).Google Scholar

4 See Cady, Roots of French Imperialism, p. 142 and chs XI to XV.Google Scholar

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11 Forcade to Libois, 12 August 1845, in Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, 1846 (Paris).Google Scholar The problem of translating Christian dogma, terms, psalms, and so on into Japanese was a particularly difficult one for all the pioneering missionaries to Japan. As Sir George Sansom wrote, ‘Most baffling among the linguistic obstacles were the problems of selecting suitable equivalents for such words as God, Spirit, Soul, Atonement, Grace, Conscience, and notably, Logos; for literal renderings often produced ludicrous results’. Sansom, G. B., The Western World and Japan (New York, 1950), p. 474.Google Scholar

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18 CP, Vol. II, de Bellecourt to Thouvenel, 24 January 1860.Google Scholar

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20 Included as an appendix to CP, Vol. V, de Bellecourt to Thouvenel, 21 January 1862.Google Scholar

21 CP, Vol. V, de Bellecourt to Thouvenel, 19 February 1862.Google Scholar

22 M & D, Vol. I, Girard, ‘Mémoire Relatif au Rétablissement de la Religion Chrétienne au Japon’, 1862 (neither date nor month are given).Google Scholar

23 In Chaillet, Monseigneur Petitjean, p. 84.Google Scholar

24 In ibid., p. 85. Petitjean was not the only French missionary believing that war with Japan would have salutary effects for the christianization of the country. Both Girard and another missionary, Mounicou, expressed similar sentiments; see Archives of the Société des Missions Etrangères (Paris), Lettre Commune, 20 June 1863. At the time of the British expedition to Kagoshima, it was rumoured among the missionaries that Britain intended to annex the Ryukyus as a colony, a step which was to be welcomed, for the missionaries would then have‘all possible liberty for the exercise of their ministry among the natives’ (Lettre Commune, 20 June 1863).

25 Cary, , History of Christianity in Japan, p. 281.Google Scholar

26 The tenacity and devotion of these Kakure Kirishitan were amazing. During the whole period of sakoku they maintained the Christian faith in hiding, at great peril, and without the ministry of any priests. Christian teaching was handed down from father to son. Kakure means hidden or concealed, thus kakure kirishitan could be translated as crypto-christians.

27 See Chaillet, , Monseigneur Petitjean, pp. 170ff.Google Scholar

28 Marnas, , La Religion de Jésus au Japon, pp. 669–70.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., p. 672.

30 The missionaries expressed great disapproval of the lack of Christian militancy—and indeed at times of lack of Christian values and faith—on the part of the French diplomats, especially Roches and to a lesser extent his successor, Max Outrey: see Chaillet, , Monseigneur Petitjean, pp. 199–212;Google ScholarLaunay, , La Socité des Missions Strangères, pp. 484–7;Google ScholarMarnas, , La Religion de Jésus au Japon, pp. 669–74,Google ScholarPagès, L., La Persécution des Chrétiens au Japon et l'Ambassade Japonaise (Paris, 1873), pp. 1–20;Google Scholar and Piolet, La France au Dehors, pp. 450–2.Google Scholar In fact there is very little that the diplomats could have done, short of resorting to force, and that was excluded by Paris. France, as pointed out, was not paticularly interested in Japan; she had no colonial designs on the country and militarily had enough problems to cope with—in North Africa, Indochina, until recently in Mexico and indeed in Europe.

31 Roches to Petitjean, 8 08 1867, taken from Pagès, La Persécution des Chrétiens au Japon, pp. 8–9. Of course it must be added that by this time Roches had committed himself completely to the cause and political survival of the Bakufu and indeed had developed reasonably close relations with the last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu (Keiki). The Christian crisis was a source of considerable annoyance and embarrassment to him.

32 CP, Vol. XV, Roches to de Moustier, 9 September 1867.Google Scholar

33 Roches, to Petitjean, , 09 (no date) 1867, in Pagès, La Persécution des Chrétiens au Japon, pp. 9–10.Google Scholar

34 Petitjean to Roches, 12 October 1867, in ibid., pp. 12–14. The new British representative, Sir Hary Parkes, who rarly found agreemnt on any issue with Roches, nevertheless did so on this occasion: ‘M. Roces has even obtained the consent of the Gorojiu [Rōjū] to their release, but that the prisoners themelves and their foreign pastors who are greatly excited would almost prefer the horrors of martyrdom to this leniency’. Parkes to Stanley, 17 August 1867, copy given to Roches and sent to Ministry, CP, Vol. XV, Roches to de Moustier, 18 August 1867.

35 Outrey repeated these arguments on numerous occasions; see Outrey to Ministry, CP, Vol. XVI, 7 July 1868, CP, Vol. XVIII, 11 February 1869, CP, Vol. XIX, 22 January and 21 February 1870. Outrey shared the conviction of many Westerners at the time that not only would religious freedom soon be granted in Japan, but indeed that the Japanese would embrace the religion. Outrey claimed that Christianity was intimately linked with the progress of civilization in Japan; see Outrey to Ministry, 4 June 1870.Google Scholar

36 See Anesaki, M., History of Japanese Religion (London, 1930), pp. 334–9,Google Scholar and Sansom, , The Western World and Japan, pp. 468–70.Google Scholar

37 When Iwakura paid his visit to the French Foreign Minister, Rémusat, he was presented with a petition for religious freedom signed by members of the Chamber of Deputies; M & D, Vol. II, ‘Mémoire relatif aux garanties de liberté religieuse pour le Christianisme à demander au gouvernment japonais à l'occasion du renouvellement de nos traités’, par les Députés de l'Assemblée Nationale, March 1873. Rémusat also argued with Iwakura in favour of granting religious freedom; M & D, Vol. II, ‘Compte rendu des Conférences entre le Ministre et Iwakura’, January 1873.

38 CP, Vol. XXII, de Turenne to de Rémusat, 24 February 1873.Google Scholar

39 Reference to flirtations with Christianity during the early Meiji period can be found in numerous works written about the period. Sansom tells us, for example, that ‘in 1873 members of the Japanese legation in Berlin inquired of Professor Gneist whether he thought that Japan should introduce Christianity as the state religion’. The Western World and Japan, p. 471.

40 In 1863 a missionary expressed the view that ‘the iron arm which holds back the impulse of the masses towards the truth which we have brought to them’ was what was preventing conversions; Lettre Commune, 20 June 1863. In 1864, before the Kakure had been discovered, the missionaries exclaimed, ‘Give us freedom and we will convert by the thousand’; Lettre Commune, 25 June 1864.

41 In Chaillet, Monseigneur Pelitjean, p. 333. There is of course a slight ambiguity here in that the Chinese character for France (futsu) and the Buddha (butsu) is the same. Rather than adopting France, the samurai may have been renouncing his new faith and proclaiming his belief in his old faith. Needless to say, however, this was not the way the missionaries chose to interpret it.

42 See Piolet, , La France au Dehors, pp. 482–501.Google Scholar

43 Marnas, F., Conférence sur le Japon, Faite à la Société de Géographie de Lyon (Lyon, 1891), pp. 47–8.Google Scholar

44 See CP, Vol. XXIII, Broglie to Berthémy, 7 August 1873.Google Scholar

45 See the Appendix on page 400.

46 The material one is dealing with is fragmentary. The archives of the Société des Missions Etrangères are closed to the public. The information here is gathered from the ‘Lettres Communes’ these are yearly compilations which included reports from the various missions and extracts from the missionaries’ letters to Paris. I wish to express my gratitude to Frs Guennou and Prouvost for having given me permission to use the library of the Société, where I was able to consult these Lettres Communes which cannot be found elsewhere.

47 Lettre Commune, 25 July 1867.Google Scholar

48 The interesting thing is that a good many kakure refused to accept the ministry of the French missionaries, which was a source of considerable irritation to the missionaries. For example the kakure population of Amakusa proved particularly recalcitrant (Lettre Commune, 31 December 1876) and by 1884 at the village of Oe, out of a kakure population of 4,000, only 142 had accepted to join the Church (Lettre Commune, 31 December 1884).

49 Lettre Commune, 31 December 1880. One should note that by 1909 the total Catholic population of Japan was 54,556. Of these 44,931 came from the Nagasaki area. If one compares this with the figures for 1885 one sees that conversion in the north increased by less than 50%, while in the south it nearly doubled. (The figures for 1909 are taken from Cary, History of Christianity in Japan, p. 371.)

50 Lettre Commune, 20 June 1863.Google Scholar

51 Lettre Commune, 20 July 1865.Google Scholar

52 Lettre Commune, 31 December 1877.Google Scholar

53 Ibid., see also Lettre Commune of 31 December 1880 where it is stressed that the important thing is not just to build a church, but to build a beautiful church.

54 Lettres Communes, 1874 and 1884. According to Les Missions Catholiques (Lyon), ‘the Japanese of the interior are more gentle, more moral, better disposed than the inhabitants of the coast’ (18 September 1874).

55 Lettre Commune, 31 December 1878.Google Scholar

56 Lettre Commune, 31 December 1882.Google Scholar

57 Lettre Commune, 31 December 1874.Google Scholar

58 Marin recorded his journey in a number of articles which appeared every week from 27 February to 18 September 1874 in Les Missions Catholiques.

59 Lettre Commune, 31 December 1876.Google Scholar

60 Lettre Commune, 31 December 1878.Google Scholar

61 Lettre Commune, 31 December 1879.Google Scholar

62 Lettre Commune, 31 December 1880.

63 Lettre Commune, 31 December 1881.

64 Ibid.

65 Lettre Commune, 31 December 1876.Google Scholar

66 Lettre Commune, 31 December 1880.Google Scholar

67 Lettre Commune, 31 December 1884.Google Scholar

68 Lettre Commune, 31 December 1881.Google Scholar

69 The Marianites and the Jesuits provided the main Catholic education; cf. Cary, History of Christianity in Japan, ch. XIII.

70 Lettre Commune, 25 July 1867.Google Scholar

71 Lettre Commune, 31 December 1877.Google Scholar

72 Lettre Commune, 31 December 1881.Google Scholar

73 See, for example, praise of their work by the missionaries in Lettre Commune of 31 December 1885 and an article appearing in Les Missions Catholiques of 10 January 1879.

74 Lettre Commune, 31 December 1879.Google Scholar

75 The problems resulting from the conversions of eta are mentioned in Lettre Commune, 31 December 1885.Google Scholar

76 The nuns ‘achieved great success in aiding the poor and the weak. Catholics… gained many friends among…members of the lower classes. These uneducated people had no real understanding of Christianity.’ In Kisimoto, H., Japanese Religion in the Meiji Era (Tokyo, 1968), pp. 211–12.Google Scholar On the converts coming mainly from the poor, see the Lettres Communes of 1881, 1882 and 1884.

77 See Cary, , History of Christianity in Japan, p. 360.Google Scholar

78 See, for example, Chaillet, Monseigneur Petitjean, p. 395.Google ScholarMarnas, f., La Religion de Jésus au Japon, pp. 479–89Google Scholar; and Piolet, f., La France au Dehors, p. 479.Google Scholar

79 CP, Vol. XXXI, Sienkiewicz to Ministry, 20 October 1885.Google Scholar

80 See, for example, Schwantes, R. S., ‘Christianity versus Science, a Conflict of Ideas in Meiji Japan’, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 12 (1952).Google Scholar

81 Piolet, , La France au Dehors, pp. 482–500.Google Scholar

82 Ibid., p. 498.

83 Kisimoto, , Japanese Religion in the Meiji Era, p. 212.Google Scholar