Paper short abstract:

This paper the manuscripts of Tenchi hajimari no koto—a collection of oral Christian narrative written by some communities of kakure kirishitan—and the changes these stories underwent since their introduction to Japan by Catholic missionaries.

Paper long abstract:

In March 1865, Domingos Mataichi, a member of a hidden Christian (so-called kakure Kirishitan) community from Nagasaki, handed a manuscript to the French Catholic priest Bernard Petitjean. According to Mataichi, it had been written between 1822 and 1823 by a Japanese Christian who knew its contents by heart. This manuscript contained a cycle of Christian stories which later became known as Tenchi Hajimari no koto (The Beginning of Heaven and Earth). In the early twentieth century, scholars found other copies of the same manuscript with few variations, so it seems to represent a cycle which circulated among the kakure kirishitan communities of Sotome, the Gotō Islands, and Nagasaki. It is thought to have been composed in the second half of the seventeenth century, when no Catholic missionaries (European or Japanese) were left in Japan, in which case its authors would have had no help or supervision from a Catholic priest or brother. Its narrative sources appear to include some of the books printed by the Jesuit mission press, especially the Dochirina Kirishitan and some prayer books, as well as the memory of the Japanese Christians who survived the persecution, which they passed on orally through the generations. They will have compiled what they remembered of the missionaries' teachings into a concise sacred history, from the beginning of the world until the Passion and Ascension of Jesus Christ. These stories were often told by the missionaries in the form of theatrical performances at Christian festivals such as Christmas and Easter. This paper traces the sources of the Tenchi Hajimari no koto and analyzes how some Christian stories, brought to Japan mainly by Iberian missionaries, changed through the years as they were retold by the Japanese kakure kirtishitan until they were written down in this manuscript.