KAKURE KIRISHITAN

Kakure kirishitan: translation

   'Hidden Christians' who survived the early Tokugawa persecutions, compulsory Buddhist registration and forced renunciation of Christianity during the two-century sakoku ('closed country') period to re-emerge as distinctive religious communities in the mid-nineteenth century. In some cases the kakure kirishitan adopted Shinto tendencies, partly as camouflage and partly to perpetuate indigenous ancestor-veneration, for example identifying the kami toyo-tama-hime with the virgin Mary, and enshrining martyrs and ancestors as kami. The Karemitsu jinja in Sotome, Nagasaki is the grave of an early European priest known as San Juan-sama.