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.