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.