Japanese Christianity — the Hidden Christians’ Emergence & the Meiji Church

On 17 March 1865, weeks after a French church opened in Nagasaki's foreign settlement, a group of villagers from nearby Urakami came in, and one woman quietly told the priest that the hearts of all present were the same as his, and asked where the statue of Mary was. They were descendants of Christians driven underground in the 1600s, who had kept baptism, prayers and a liturgical calendar for over two hundred years without a single priest. In the months that followed tens of thousands more made themselves known. The government's ban was still in force, and the Urakami villagers were deported and held until 1873. When it was lifted, a Christianity of three kinds grew quickly in Meiji Japan. Catholic parishes rebuilt around the emerging hidden communities, Protestant bands of samurai-class students at Yokohama, Kumamoto and Sapporo, and a Russian Orthodox mission that Nikolai of Japan had begun in 1861 and staffed largely with Japanese clergy. Not all the hidden Christians rejoined: some, the Kakure, kept the tradition exactly as they had received it, and remain separate to this day.