Story
Louis-Théodore Furet was a scientist before he was a missionary. Born at Commer in the Mayenne in 1816 and ordained priest on May 25, 1839, he taught mathematics at the minor seminary of Précigné and made special studies in physics and chemistry at the Collège Stanislas in Paris.He entered the seminary of the on January 23, 1852, and left for Japan on April 19, 1853.
Japan was still closed. Like the other French priests of his generation, Furet had to wait on the Ryukyu Islands, at Naha, where missionaries could stay but could not preach. He arrived on February 26, 1855, tried in vain to reach and Hakodate, tried again in 1856, and returned to Naha.His second stay lasted from October 26, 1856 to October 12, 1862, six years in all, the longest of any of the eight French missionaries who lived in the kingdom in those decades.
He did not waste the time. Having borrowed meteorological instruments from the French navy before he sailed, he took readings five times a day, at 6, 10, 13, 16 and 22 hours, from December 1856 to September 1858. His records were lost for more than 150 years and found in 2015 in the archives of the French weather service; the scholars who found them called them a new step for the historical climatology of nineteenth-century Japan.He studied the language, collected plants, seeds and birds for France, and sent home Ryukyuan crafts; the Société d'acclimatation made him an honorary member.Above all, he worked patiently to keep good relations with the Ryukyuan government while the mission waited.One of those he welcomed there was a younger priest, .
In 1862 Furet was finally able to settle in Yokohama, and in 1863 he went to Nagasaki, soon followed by Petitjean.The two priests built the church at , which was consecrated in February 1865. An architectural drawing of the church, dated about 1864 and kept by the , is believed to be Furet's work (Unverified).The church stood ostensibly for the foreign residents of the settlement; but the missionaries' first reason for coming was to find the .
They came within weeks. On a group from told Petitjean, "All of us here have the same heart as you", and asked, "Where is the image of Holy Mary?"
In 1866 he served for a time as acting superior of the mission.In 1867 (Unverified), in the reorganization after the discovery, he took charge of the chapel at Yokosuka for the French engineers building the arsenal there, and ran a school in that port for naval officers.In 1868 he moved to Edo.But he was now past fifty. He judged that his ministry could not be as fruitful as he wished, because his age had not allowed him to learn the Japanese language; in 1869 he returned to France and left the Society.
When Furet left, Bishop Petitjean wrote to the Bishop of Laval to recommend him. "M. Furet, one of our best apostolic workers, has just left our mission," he wrote. "This dear Father, whom I still love as a brother despite his desertion, asks me for a testimonial letter... I attest to Your Grandeur that M. Furet never deserved the slightest reproach during his stay in Japan, either in his public or his private life. Tired, no doubt, by his long stay abroad and by the too thankless ministry he exercised there, this dear confrère needs, he says, to end his priestly career in the country that saw him born."
He became parish priest of Chantrigné, then in 1875 (Disputed) of Notre-Dame des Cordeliers in Laval, and an honorary canon on December 5, 1876. He died at Laval on January 15, 1900.
What is uncertain
Where the sources disagree
- Disputed: birth date, March 25, 1816 (IRFA)or November 25, 1816 (BnF).
- Disputed: Chantrigné years. BnF: 1870 to 1876;IRFA: Notre-Dame des Cordeliers from 1875.
- Unverified: who designed Ōura. JTA: drawing "believed to be the work of" Furet.
- Unverified: the 1867 date of the Yokosuka posting is inferred by context from Marnas vol. 2.