Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Silvio Vita
(Kyoto University of Foreign Students)
Yukinori Mino (National Institute of Japanese Literature)
Yukihiro Ohashi (Waseda University)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussant:
-
Martin Nogueira Ramos
(Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient)
- Stream:
- Religion and Religious Thought
- Location:
- Torre A, Piso 0, Sala 03
- Sessions:
- Friday 1 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
The panel will show the value of this collection from the perspective of the influence of the Christian impact on Japanese society over time. Special focus will be given to its formation and to the consequences of the anti-Christian measures for the life of local communities in the Usuki domain.
Long Abstract:
This panel intends to share the preliminary results of ongoing research on the Marega collection recently discovered in the Vatican Library, a cache of more than 10,000 administrative records mostly from the region of Bungo running over about two hundred years (from the 17th to the 19th century). All the presenters are in the research team working on a project by the National Institutes for the Humanities of Japan and the Vatican Library for digitizing and cataloguing the collection.
The documents provide evidence of the restrictions applied on Christians and their descendants, and of the administrative machine for their application as well as its impact on village society and individual lives. Their unprecedented value lies on the extended period covered, and the focus on a limited geographical area, which allows to follow the working of the system in microscopic detail and in terms of longue durée.
From the point of view of archival studies present research is trying to give a proper collocation to these records in their original context as well as to make clear the process of their retrieval by Father Mario Marega (1902-1978) in the first half of the 20th century. At the same time, analysis of single items or groups of them is revealing their significance for the study of social order in Tokugawa Japan. In other words, the collection helps to clarify the influence of the Christian presence in Japan from different perspectives.
The first paper will dig into Marega's activities in the 1930s within the trend to recover the kirishitan heritage by missionaries. The other two will add on previous research by using the documents to look at the Usuki domain, from which the majority of them originate. A reconstruction of the bureaucratic mechanisms will be presented with special concern with the lifecycle of local communities. Following on, the last presentation will integrate these documents with other records from the same domain to look at the administrative key-word indicating the descendants of Christians (ruizoku) in order to show how this social "attribute" actually functioned in the overall system of social control.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 1 September, 2017, -Paper short abstract:
This paper will investigate the formation of the Marega collection, with particular attention to the individual motives of Marega as a missionary in the 1930s, and how his researches relate to the local community of historians in Oita as well as the academic discourse on the Christian Century.
Paper long abstract:
The documents collected by Father Mario Marega and now in the Vatican Library represent the results of a modern intellectual effort, with religious ideas motivating the task of the historian. Consequently, the collection also gives clues on the 20th century missionary movement in Japan and its involvement in a trend by academics and other subjects for creating historical representations of early Japanese Christianity. In my presentation, I will concentrate on this side by investigating the individual motives of Marega as a missionary in the 1930s, and how his researches relate to the local community of historians in Oita as well as the academic discourse on the Christian Century.
First, I will put to use the wealth of sources on Marega from the Vatican Library and from institutions of the Salesian order: the Library of the Salesian University in Rome, and the Cimatti Archive in Tokyo. On their light—and with the help previous research on him—it is now possible to track down the extent of Marega's interests on the traces of Christianity in his missionary territory, through his search for documental sources and material remains, Christian graves most noticeably.
In connection to the documents, partially published in two volumes in 1942 and 1946, Marega affirmed on different occasions that he was moved by the desire to find evidence of martyrdom and persecution possibly to be used for individual beatifications. However, to this purpose he interacted with a network of local historical associations, intellectuals, antiquarians and book dealers. And this gives us back a picture of the intellectual life in a provincial town that I shall try to reconstruct from the available evidence.
Lastly, I will show how Marega participated in a tendency of the same years, with special reference to the work of Anesaki Masaharu and other academic historians. As a matter of fact, at the time kirishitan studies were also taken up by missionary researchers, the Jesuits of Sophia University in particular. Seeing to what extent Marega's work fits in this context helps to appreciate its significance for the cultural and intellectual history of interwar Japan.
Paper short abstract:
This paper will analyze the actual working of the surveillance of Christians and their descendants at Usuki over time. The actors involved in the regular checking of local society will be identified as well as the bureaucratic documentation to be produced at different moments in the life of people.
Paper long abstract:
The anti-Christian measures of the Tokugawa bakufu, issued step by step, since their inception were adopted by the various domains all over Japan. In Kyushu, where the Christian population was more significant, the local domains showed a particularly active attitude in their implementation, and researchers have been following the major lines of this process with special attention to the 1630s.
However, the system for keeping under control Christians and their descendants (qualified as "cognates" (ruizoku) in the bureaucratic jargon) remained in operation for more than two hundred years, well after Christianity ceased to be a real threat. Within this framework all the aspects of life of these people (birth, marriage, illness, decease), their movements in case of travels, trips related to their occupations, or relocations, not to say of such exceptional events as people joining Buddhist priesthood or running away from their place of residence had to be checked meticulously.
The papers in the Marega collection provide an exhaustive documentation on the management of this record-based system in the Usuki domain. My presentation will focus on the central role of the written documents, and on how the measures against Christians were implemented through the circulation of specific formats. I will also analyze the duties of the officials involved in this circulation on the basis of the newly available sources. More in detail, through a document from 1723 (Kyōho 8) I will present a reconstruction of the tasks of the Bureau of Religious Affairs (shūmonkata) and its working over a yearly cycle (the scheduling of prescribed operations, the observance of the e-fumi practice on the second month, the relations with other offices in the domain administration, and so on). In this connection, I will also concentrate on the life cycle of the people through their bureaucratic obligations, like the production of registers concerning the local population and the keeping of these and other records. As it will be showed, this complex web of regulations, continued to be observed over the years, and affected individuals of all status, samurai as well as peasants and urban dwellers.
Paper short abstract:
This paper will try to understand the significance of being a descendant of Christians (ruizoku) as a social "attribute" in the Edo period by using records from the Marega Collection and other extant documents from the Usuki domain related to the surveillance system of this group of people.
Paper long abstract:
As it is well known, in Early Modern Japan the anti-Christian policies and the restrictive measures adopted to enact them at a local level more generally functioned as methods for social control. The concrete manifestations of this system in village life were the yearly verification of religious affiliation to local temples known as shūmon aratame, and the regular checking on the descendants of Christians, or ruizoku aratame. In my presentation I will pay specific attention on the material related to the latter activity in order to have a close examination at how the people labelled as descendants of Christians (ruizoku or "cognates") were treated and considered in early modern society.
To this purpose I will put to use the abundant mass of records found in the Marega Collection first of all by integrating them with other available sources, in particular other collections of documents from the same domain. By so doing it will be possible to see what gaps in the documentation the Marega papers can help us to fill, and get back a comprehensive picture of the records from both sides involved in the surveillance of the descendants of Christians in Usuki, the domain administration as well as the local villages and their authorities.
Needless to say, this approach will help to understand the rigid mass surveillance system under which the descendants of Christians spend their lifetime.
However, in analyzing the target of this system we need to understand that the framework indirectly went beyond the specific group that it aimed to keep under control. To identify the group, all the other people were also to be checked. My perspective will aim at getting closer to the real lives of the descendants of Christians within this larger framework. I will then try to consider the term ruizoku as one of the social "attributes" of individuals who were also peasants, merchants or craftsmen living in the Edo period. The available records can help us to understand the significance of this attribute and the perception of "Christians" in that time and society.