午夜剧场

“What on earth is this?” In the spring of 2017, I was left speechless by the illustrations in an out-of-print art book titled “Sacred Images of the Hidden Christians,” which I happened to pick up between assignments covering the political situation.

The sacred images were objects of faith that had long been preserved among the Hidden Christians on Ikitsuki, an island floating off the northwestern tip of Nagasaki Prefecture. I was surprised by the fact that such faith still continued, but my interest was truly piqued because the registration of the “Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region” as a World Heritage site was scheduled for the following year.

When one thinks of sacred images, the deep-featured depictions of Jesus and the Virgin Mary by Da Vinci or Botticelli leave a strong impression, but it is different on this island. They are flat and far from sophisticated. Furthermore, the man depicted in a piece titled “John the Baptist” actually has a “chonmage” (topknot) hairstyle. Having grown up in a Christian household and having my own image of what a saint should look like, the sense of incongruity was twice as strong for me.

The first surprise I encountered when I actually visited this remote island was the fact that a large fallen rock had been left abandoned for over a year on the path to a sacred site associated with martyrs.

In light of the theme of “Hidden Christian Heritage,” this should be a place receiving the most attention, yet it is not being treated with care. Compared to the Oura Cathedral in Nagasaki, which was restored using nearly 100 million yen in public funds, there is a certain “invisible disconnect.”

However, I was overwhelmed by the “Oratio”—prayers chanted in a mixture of Portuguese and Latin—offered to the sacred images. There is no textbook for the Oratio, which lasts for 40 minutes, and the believers do not prioritize the meaning. It has been passed down orally for over 400 years, relying purely on “sound.”

After the Meiji era, when the ban on Christianity was lifted, many believers “returned” to the Catholic Church, but the people of Ikitsuki chose the path of protecting the faith of the Oratio that their ancestors had maintained.

So, why do they not “return”? With what thoughts do they pray? Questions arose one after another, and I searched for clues.

While there is a fair amount of previous research, strangely, none of it records the “living voices” of the believers. This is not unrelated to the fact that researchers at Catholic-affiliated institutions have viewed Ikitsuki as heretical, which was the origin of why Ikitsuki’s name was erased from the recent World Heritage listing.

The faith that supported the island is fading, but there are those who protect it until the end. Their presence seemed to speak to us, who are losing our sense of where to return, about the “meaning of prayer.”

Shinji Hirono (Author)

Shogakukan

256 pages, 1,500 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.