Jūjikayama: The Hill of the Cross at Urakami

Jūjikayama (十字架山, "the Mount of the Cross") is a small hill in Tsuji-machi, once called the hill of Hira-gō (平郷の丘), in the Urakami district of Nagasaki.³⁴⁸ The name is read Jūjikayama.⁵

Houses and apartments now stand around it.⁵ The city guide puts the way up at the stone steps beside the St Francis Hospital bus stop, across the road from the hospital.⁴ On the slope up is a stone marker of the pilgrims' road, set up in 1927.⁵ At the top the stone cross stands in the middle, with the fourteen iron crosses of the Way of the Cross around the edge.¹

The Catholics of Urakami came home from exile in 1873.¹ They rejoiced that they had kept the faith, but one sorrow stayed with them: the memory of the fumi-e. Under the shogunate their forebears had trodden on the holy image against their will, and once they understood how grave a sin it was, they were deeply troubled and resolved that it must be made up for.¹

Fr Eugène Puthod (プトー), the second parish priest of Urakami,¹¹² knew what was in their hearts. He proposed: "Let us raise a cross on this hill and make it a holy place of reparation and thanksgiving." The hill was chosen because it looked like Calvary, where Christ suffered.¹²³ The year before, the faithful had bought the headman's house where the treading had been held and made it a temporary church (see the Takaya estate).¹ The archdiocesan newspaper calls that purchase an act of reparation and the cross a further one.⁸

The parish history gives two reasons for the cross: reparation for the treading in the years of the ban, and thanksgiving that the persecution was over, professing the faith openly.¹ The board on the hill names the intentions this way: to thank God for His protection in keeping the faith, and to make reparation and ask forgiveness for the sins of the faithful who trod on the image against their will and of the rulers who killed so many Christians.² At the hill in 2023, Fr Kuzushima Hidenobu listed four: penance for the treading, done from 1629 to 1857; pardon for believers who pretended to go into exile but did not; reparation for the rulers' sins and pardon for those who took part in the persecution against their will; and thanks to God that the faith had held through 250 years of ban and persecution.³

The faithful vied with each other to give their labour.¹² The base stone is 4 shaku (120 cm) square. Of the three tiers of base stones and the two of shaft stones, one is 3 shaku (90 cm) square and 3 shaku 5 sun (105 cm) high.² The stone came from the quarry at Ishigami in Motohara-gō.²⁴ Strong men chosen from the whole village carried the base stone to the top over seven days, so that the work would be the whole village's offering.Tradition¹ The board and the city guide give their number as sixty.²⁴ The archdiocesan newspaper in 2012 gives the base stone as one metre square and the quarry as 1 km away.⁸

On the three-tiered base they raised a wooden cross more than one jō (over 3 m) tall. September 14, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, was set as the day of its founding, and the parish history says the forebears often prayed beneath it.¹² At first the holy ground was only about 10 tsubo (about 33 square metres) around the cross. Later it was enlarged through the goodwill of the landowners.²

In August 1923 the wooden cross, rotted by the weather, was replaced with a cross of stone.¹² Note Both sources say the wooden cross had stood for "over fifty years" (50有余年), but 1881 to 1923 is 42 years.¹² The atomic bomb of August 9, 1945 damaged it, and it was restored to the form it has today.¹²

In 1950 Bishop Yamaguchi Aijirō of Nagasaki went to Rome. On that visit, at the bishop's audience with the Pope,⁴ Pope Pius XII designated Jūjikayama, together with Nishizaka, the place of the Twenty-Six Martyrs, as official pilgrimage sites of Nagasaki.¹²

In 1952 the parish enlarged the top of the hill and set up fourteen wooden Stations of the Cross on both sides of the path up. The parish history calls the Way of the Cross held there the first outdoor Way of the Cross in Japan.Unverified¹ For the centenary in 1981 the grounds were improved and the fourteen Stations were remade as iron crosses around the summit.¹

Since 2009 Mass has been offered on the hill every year, on the Sunday nearest the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. It is called the Jūjikayama Martyrs' Festival, and Urakami keeps it so that the hill stays a place of prayer.⁶ It is usually led by Urakami and the other churches of the Nagasaki Central district.³⁷ In 2012 the archdiocesan newspaper reported the martyrs' memorial Mass held there on September 9, concelebrated by two priests of Urakami.⁸

On September 10, 2023, the 150th year since the end of the exile, the archdiocese itself held the festival. More than 150 faithful came. Fr Kuzushima Hidenobu was principal celebrant in place of Archbishop Nakamura Michiaki, with seven priests concelebrating.³ On September 8, 2024, the sixteenth festival Mass, the parish priest Fr Yamamura Ken'ichi said Mass with about 60 faithful in heavy heat.⁶⁷ In his homily he recalled that the Christians of Urakami raised the cross here in reparation for the treading they had kept up through seven generations of persecution, and to ask pardon for the sins of the rulers. He urged the faithful to keep coming to pray.⁷

Every Friday in Lent, from the Friday after Ash Wednesday through Good Friday, the parish prays the Way of the Cross on the hill at 7:30 in the evening, with the same prayer in the cathedral at 7 for those who cannot climb. On Good Friday it is held at 3 in the afternoon, and the pilgrims leave the church at 2.⁹¹⁰ At the first Friday of Lent in 2024, about fifty people came in the cold of the night.⁹ For Good Friday, April 3, 2026, the parish invited the faithful to carry a cross up the hill. Each year volunteers quietly cut the weeds and prune the trees so the Way of the Cross can be held there.¹⁰