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6d ago

Hidden Christian Faith in Rural Japan Nears Disappearance

Remaining practitioners document rare rituals to preserve a faith at risk of disappearing

A Christian cross at a memorial park for Catholics martyred in the early 1600s is silhouetted before sunrise at Hirado, southern Japan, Tuesday, April 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae)
St. Francis Xavier Memorial Church, back right, looks over Zuiunji, lower left, and Komyoji Buddhist temples, in front of the church, in Ikitsuki island in Hirado, southern Japan, Tuesday, April 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae)
Masatsugu Tanimoto, a farmer and one of the few remaining hidden Christians on Ikitsuki Island, hangs a scroll of the Virgin Mary and Jesus once secretly worshipped at his home in Ikitsuki Island in Hirado, southern Japan, Sunday, April 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
A fisherman, left, walks on a seashore of Ikitsuki island in Hirado, southern Japan, Monday, April 28, 2025, as seen from a sacred site where it's believed a grave was built after Catholic family members were martyred. (AP Photo/Hiro Komae)

Overview

  • Once numbering around 30,000 in Nagasaki in the 1940s, Hidden Christians have recorded no baptisms since 1994 and now consist almost exclusively of elderly adherents.
  • Practitioners preserve distinctive rituals born of clandestine worship, such as Latin Orasho chants and concealed icons like the Closet God and Maria Kannon.
  • Many communities remained separate from mainstream Catholicism after 1865 because priests required rebaptism and the removal of ancestral Buddhist altars.
  • Postwar modernization eroded the rural communal bonds that once sustained the faith, prompting younger generations to migrate to urban areas and abandon traditional practices.
  • With only a few families left, researchers and local believers are capturing ceremonies and archiving artifacts to ensure the religion’s legacy endures.