A village in the hills
Sendaiji (千提寺) is a small village in the hills about six miles north of Takatsuki, a little off the road to Kameoka.It lies about 4 km north of the old Yamazaki highway and about 3 ri from either Takatsuki or Ibaraki.In 1920 it belonged to Seikei village (清溪村) in the Mishima district of Osaka prefecture, and it is now part of northern Ibaraki.In earlier times it lay in the fief of the lord of Takatsuki.
Northern Settsu, on the main road between Kyoto and Osaka, was the home ground of the Wada, Takayama and Nakagawa families in the story of Japanese Christianity.Records show that followers of the forbidden faith kept appearing there after the ban.A survey of 1658 reported that about ten Christians had come out from the Takatsuki domain of Nagai Hyūga-no-kami.That was the year the shogunate renewed the ban and put up new notice boards.
The gravestone of Maria
The first find at Sendaiji was a Christian gravestone, discovered by a university student, Hashikawa Tadashi, and the local schoolteacher Fujinami Daichō.It is a rough granite stone about 64 cm high, carved with a cross over the name of Maria of the Ueno family (上野マリヤ).It is dated the 10th day of the 1st month of Keichō 8, which is February 21, 1603.It was the largest of the gravestones in the 1923 Kyoto report, and the only one there from outside Kyoto.
The stone had lain in a field for decades, and village youths used to lift it in trials of strength.In 1921 its owner, Higashi Tōjirō, moved it to the hill behind his house.
The box in the roof
On September 26, 1920, Christian relics were found in an old farmhouse at Sendaiji.According to the family who lived there, the objects had been kept in one of three important boxes tied to the ridge-beam of the roof, whose contents nobody knew.No written record or family story explains how they were handed down.It is said that the house had burned once in the Meiji period, and that the family belonged to the Sōtō Zen sect and honoured Tenjin.The find was first reported in the Osaka Mainichi Shinbun on October 1, 1920.
What the box held
The box held about a dozen objects.There were two paintings, a portrait of St Francis Xavier and a picture of the Madonna with the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary.There were also copper-plate prints, one of them so finely made that it was judged to come from Europe.A small painted wooden figure of Christ crucified, about 21 cm high, had lost its cross.Its arms had come off, and the figure had been pushed painfully into a bronze tube, probably whatever came to hand when it was hidden.
The family also kept a small ivory Virgin, crudely carved and perhaps Japanese work.A lacquered lid decorated with crosses may have covered a vessel for the consecrated host.Among the eight medals was one of Pope Gregory XIV, inscribed for an indulgence granted to the Philippine Islands.
The rarest object was a pocket-book of 138 handwritten leaves on thin Japanese paper, in a European-style leather binding.It explains how to hear Mass, and gives the litany of the Blessed Sacrament, meditations for the seven days of the week, and guidance on mental prayer.Few such handwritten compendiums survive.The objects date broadly from the Keichō era (1596 to 1615) and belonged to a believing household attached to the Jesuit mission.Scholars of Kyoto Imperial University called the find "one of the richest and most interesting discoveries ever made".
A faith kept quietly
The Christians of Sendaiji kept their faith hidden even after the ban was lifted in 1873.Higashi Tōjirō said that the neighbouring villages of Miyama (見山) and Otowa (音羽) also had descendants of Christians.Shimootowa (下音羽) is named with Sendaiji as a hidden-Christian area.
Sendaiji today
In September 1987 the Ibaraki City Christian Relics Museum opened at Sendaiji.When an expressway was built through the area, residents photographed the landscape before it was lost.They now keep up a walking path called the "Christian's Boardwalk", with guided tours and picture books on the hidden Christians.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- When the gravestone was found. the 1923 Kyoto report says February 1920 in one place and September 1920 in another, and says Hashikawa saw it on September 20, 1920, after a report from Fujinami.Shimizu dates the first discovery to 1919.
- When the faith came into the open. Shimizu says the Sendaiji Christians kept their faith hidden until the 1919 discovery, a year earlier than the Kyoto report's dates.
- The name on the gravestone. the English résumé reads 上野マリヤ as "Uyeno Mariya", the Japanese text as "Kamino Maria".
- The cross on the gravestone. one passage describes "a sort of Latin cross", another a double-barred cross.
- The village's name. the English résumé places Sendaiji in "Kiyotaki", while the Japanese caption gives Seikei village (清溪村).
- Gravestone and relics. the stone belonged to the Higashi family too, but the 1923 authors found no proven link between it and the relics.
- How the family kept its faith. apart from the boxes in the roof, nothing shows how the Christian tradition was kept, and the family's own customs were Buddhist and Shinto.
- How the Gregory XIV medal arrived. Oka thinks such medals came by way of Manila and Macao.
- Another painting in the collection, damaged at the head, cannot be identified as a saint, the young Christ or the Madonna.