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- Convenor:
-
Mark Teeuwen
(University of Oslo)
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- Stream:
- Religion and Religious Thought
- Location:
- Torre A, Piso 0, Sala 02
- Sessions:
- Friday 1 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
In 1829, 6 alleged Christians were crucified in Osaka, 3 men and 3 women. This shocking incident, investigated by Ōshio Heihachirō, added greatly to the anti-Christian panic of late Edo. The official documents and other sources reveal much about the politics of gender and religion in this period.
Long Abstract:
In early 1827, Osaka officials detected Christian activity in their city. Their investigation soon spread to Kyoto, and by the summer, the two officials in charge, including Ōshio Heihachirō, had singled out six main suspects, three men and three women, whom they found guilty of engaging in "banned pernicious practices" in both cities. The officials proposed that the men should be beheaded and the women paraded through Osaka and crucified; after heated discussions in the Edo Hyōjōsho, all six were crucified in 1829 - although only two, a woman called Mitsugi and a man called Heizō, were still alive by that time.
The men involved were primarily interested in the Christian teachings, while the women practised austerities and performed rites for clients under the cover of Inari mediums. They had no connection to established communities of "hidden Christians," and constructed their own version of Christianity on the basis of books. What rendered their practice "Christian" was their use of a honzon they called Tentei (Lord of Heaven), and of the spell zensu maru haraiso, "Jesus Maria paradise."
This shocking incident changed perceptions of Christianity and its dangers. It came two years after Aizawa Seishisai's Shinron, which rang the alarm over Christianity's evil influence. It broke with established ways to deal with discovered Christians, who were routinely let off with a reprimand and a fumie. Ōshio's 1837 revolt inspired a boom of popular writings, with some suggesting that his deviancy was rooted in the black magic he had learnt from Mitsugi. This incident contributed to the panic about Christian conversion much more than commonly acknowledged.
This panel builds on a treasure trove of original sources: official documents that include the suspects' testimonies, works of gossip, and amateur investigation. The panelists are engaged in a joint project to collect, transcribe, translate, and investigate these sources from multiple angles. The first paper will set the scene and contextualize this incident within the history of Edo-period Christianity. The second paper will focus on questions of gender and the practice of the women, and the third on the response of the shogunate, the investigation, and the juridical handling of the incident.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 1 September, 2017, -Mark Teeuwen (University of Oslo)
Paper short abstract:
An introduction to the Keihan Christian incident of 1827-29, its historical significance, the actors involved (both the accused and the prosecutors), the role of Ōshio Heihachirō, and the various categories of sources available.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will give an outline of the so-called Keihan (Kyoto-Osaka) Christian incident of 1827-29 and set the stage for the two other papers in this panel. I will sketch previous research, place the incident in the history of Christianity in the Edo period and discuss its significance as a popular focus of "Christianophobia" at a crucial historical juncture. I will describe some of the actors, both victims and persecutors, and finally introduce the main sources that contain information about this incident and its handling.
The incident involved a truly remarkable set of actors. The arrested "Christians" included not only the three men and three women who were ultimately condemned, but also many from their networks of contacts. These contacts ranged from court retainers, doctors, and licensed diviners to penniless widows and prostitutes. On the prosecuting side, the involvement of Ōshio Heihachirō raises the question of how his perspective may have shaped the course of the investigation.
The sources available to us are equally diverse. We have located and transcribed official documents from both the Osaka magistrate's offices and the central shogunal offices in Edo. These documents contain detailed testimonies given by the accused, allowing us to see what interested the authorities most in their investigation. They also reveal the concerns of the Hyōjōsho and the rōjū in Edo, which were not happy with the reports they received from Osaka. Other sources shed light on popular reactions to this spectacular case. In Osaka, an anonymous doctor wrote a detailed report on the matter as it unfolded, questioning neighbours, temple priests, and even prison wardens. After the verdict and the crucifixions, all kinds of rumours spread around the land; entries in zuihitsu collections give us some idea about what people made of it. Finally, after Ōshio's fall in 1837, his involvement with the Keihan incident inspired wild speculations, expressed in a genre of Ōshio Heihachirō monogatari. Some of the questions raised in this paper will be followed up by the other panelists.
Fumiko Miyazaki (Keisen University)
Paper short abstract:
Gender aspects of the Keihan Christian Incident, as they emerge from a comparison of the activities of the female principals with those of the male principals, as well as other female religionists active outside officially sanctioned religious institutions and female founders of New Religions.
Paper long abstract:
The main figures in the Keihan Christian incident formed two sub-units, one made up of women and the other of men. These did not have direct contact with each other and engaged in different activities. At the time, women tended to be seen as passive and unable to act as principals, whether for good or evil. In this instance, however, the female and male members of the heterodox group were alike sentenced to the heaviest punishment, death by crucifixion, and both official and popular accounts depicted the women as more culpable and dangerous than the males. This paper explores this and other gender-related aspects of the incident.
Whereas intellectual interests were a factor in the male members' involvement in the group, for the women, who came from a background as diviners and Inari mediums, the key motivation was a desire to attain heightened spiritual powers. The female and male members showed different attitudes toward the performance of austerities and observance of celibacy as a premise for gaining access to the powers endowed by the Lord of Heaven. The women, whose practice drew on their experience as Inari mediums, consistently took a more rigorous stance on these points, a factor that perhaps influenced the view of them as more audacious and unrepentant than the men. They also were more concerned to spread their faith to others. To illuminate and contextualize these differences, the paper will compare the female members to other female religious figures active outside the officially sanctioned religious institutions of early modern Japan, such as unordained nuns and female priestesses who collected alms and performed divination in the townspeople's quarters of large cities, and also female founders of New Religions such as Nyoraikyō and Tenrikyō.
Kate Wildman Nakai (Sophia University)
Paper short abstract:
The Keihan Christian incident as a window into Tokugawa investigative and judicial procedures, the government's stance toward heterodox religious groups, and the operation of the temple registry system in late Edo urban centers.
Paper long abstract:
Accounts of the Keihan Christian incident convey a vivid picture of the varying backgrounds and motivations of a group of people involved in religious activities deemed subversive. But the accounts offer more as well. Because we know of these people and their activities from the record of their testimony while under investigation, the accounts also provide a window into the government's investigative and judicial procedures. The investigation of the Keihan Christian group extended beyond the jurisdictional authority of the Osaka Town Magistrate, which brought the group to light, and because the case involved capital crimes, it was referred to and deliberated by the highest shogunal councils. Nevertheless, it did not come under the direct investigative purview of the office most immediately involved with religious matters, the Temple and Shrine Magistrate. Perhaps in part for this reason, the investigating officials concerned themselves primarily with objective issues: the group's network of contacts; the nature of the activities, including magical practices, in which its members engaged; and how they obtained and transmitted forbidden objects and books. The officials showed little interest in more intangible questions, such as the group's beliefs or doctrines, a circumstance that contrasts with records of religious investigations elsewhere, including those conducted by the Inquisition in Europe, or other Edo-period inquiries into the activities of unrecognized religious groups.
The incident also shines light on the functioning or not of the various controls that the shogunate relied upon to thwart the emergence and spread of heterodox beliefs and practices. Among other things, the testimony suggests that the temple registry system could be quite formalistic and porous as a means of keeping the large urban floating population of the late Edo period under surveillance. On the other hand, in the incident's aftermath, the temples with which the members of the group were individually affiliated were held accountable for failing to keep proper track of their parishioners. In these ways the incident, while a dramatic outlier in many regards, also illuminates fundamental features of Tokugawa religious administration.