A Glimpse into the Gotō in History

The history of those known as the Hidden Kirishitan on the Gotō in the Tokugawa period (1603–1868) begins with the tale of a small group of settlers who migrated from the mainland to a region of the Gotō Islands known as Sotome. The late eighteenth century migration of Hidden Kirishitan to the Gotō is first officially mentioned in a document on the 16th day of the 3rd month of An'ei 5 (1772), called the An'ei gonen ninbetsu aratame 安永五年人別改, or the An'ei 5 Census (Aokata monjo). The document attests that 108 settlers landed at Mukata (Fukue Island) on the 12th day of the 11th month in the lunar calendar, equivalent to the 4th January, 1798. These Kirishitan migrated to locations including Hirazō, Kurozō and Kusubara on Fukue Island. The community historian Urakawa Wasaburō details that this modest group was followed by 3000 more Hidden Christians, who came to inhabit a myriad of inlets and harbours on the many islands of the Gotō, including some previously uninhabited islands and hidden away crags. There were also many Kirishitan who arrived that were unaccounted for in official records.

A circular selection of a historical map of Fukue Island, with several early landing places of Kirishitan's annotated. — Fig. 1. Fukue Island on Edo Period Map, with annotations of early landing places of the Kirishitan. Drawn on 五島列島絵図 3K 936 map, Collection of Nagasaki History and Culture Museum. Photograph with permission by Gwyn McClelland, 2023.

A photograph of a stone statue of Yohane Gotō found on Fukue Island at Mizu-noura Church. The statue is of a man in kimono holding a cross to his chest and a book at his side, staring into the distance. — Fig 2. Statue of Yohane Gotō found on Fukue Island at Mizu-noura Church, Photograph by Gwyn McClelland, 2023.

Soon after I (Gwyn) interviewed him, Nakamura Mitsuru (Interview 4) drove me up the east coast of the island, stopping first at a site he said was memorialized as the location where Portuguese Jesuit priest Luis de Almeida SJ (1525–1583) landed on the Gotō Islands in the 1560s. In 1566, Almeida, accompanied by Brother Irman Lorenzo (a Japanese monk likely born in Hirado), began a Gotō mission. In that early wave of Christianization (approx. 1551–1639) on the Gotō Islands the Christian population was quite high. Nagasaki City itself was donated to the Jesuits over seven years from 1580–1587 by Christian Daimyo Omura Sumitada.

Luís Fróis (1532–1597) wrote in his history of Japan that the Lord of the Gotō lived in the best environment available on the islands (Fukue Island, which was certainly the most spacious), and that the islands enjoyed riches of fresh fish, fish oil, dried fish and salted fish. One of the twenty-six martyrs of 1597, executed by Hideyoshi in Nagasaki, was a nineteen-year-old monk, Yohane (Juan) Gotō (Fig. 2), who was born on the Gotō Islands and who would thereafter inspire the Kirishitan who followed. He was executed by Hideyoshi in Nagasaki along with the twenty-five others after being forced to walk in the winter cold from Kyoto. However, after the institution of a Christian ban in 1613, the numbers of Kirishitan on these islands dwindled, if not died out completely, until new migrations began post-1797.

Japanese Translation: Satsuki Oosaki