website: Kirishtan.com
The
jumbled boulders of Nakaura lie brooding on the shore, defying the sea to do
its worst. Behind them squats a hill
clothed in bamboo, its giant knees of rock protruding through the trees. A continent of charcoal cloud looms over the
coast, yet the sun blazes triumphantly in the distant west, riding high above
the Gotoh Islands: it burns one’s face,
even in the tail-end of winter.
Julian
Nakaura was born here. They honor him
with a memorial that overlooks the village:
a pony-tailed boy in bronze pointing out at the sea, towards the Rome
the real boy visited. But I prefer the
Julian in bronze who stands, weathered and flinty, at the entrance to the
Shimabara Catholic Church, way down south: a gentle old man steeled by trial
and perseverance, a Missal in hand and nothing but his own two sandaled feet to
carry him. Those old feet would carry
him to a death unheard of even in a Europe where the burning of heretics and
the disemboweling and mutilation of Roman Catholic priests was the order of the
day.
In
1582 Catholicism was flourishing in some parts of Japan—especially on the
island of Kyushu. The Jesuits had opened
a school in Arima, southeast of Nagasaki, for training Catholic samurai youth
to become future teachers, catechists and priests—a Seminario. Father Alessandro
Valignano, dispatched by Rome as Visitor to Japan, had set up the school in
1580, and two years later he came up with a brainstorm: choose some fine young samurai from the
student body and send them on an embassy to Rome as showpieces of the Japanese
Church. Their mission would be to
impress upon the nobility of Catholic Europe the quality of this newest and farthest-flung
Catholic seedbed; and to impress upon themselves the grandeur of Catholicism in
Europe and report their impressions to their native brethren on their
return. Omura Sumitada, the first
Japanese daimyo (domainal lord) to be
baptized, loved the plan as soon as it hit his ears; he promised his full
support. Two other daimyo also joined
in; the mission was prepared immediately
(to be continued)
