The mountain god's other name
Tsuji Shrine stands in the northeast of Ōno, kept by the families of the Tsuji district for generations. It was a shrine to a mountain god, part of the nature worship of the area. But the prefecture says the hidden Christians of Ōno laid a second figure over that god: "San Jiwan", a Christian saint, whom they made their own secret object of faith.
That is why Ōno is one of the four World Heritage villages chosen to show what hidden Christians prayed to. In , just down the coast, it was pictures. In Ōno it was shrines: outwardly the villagers were Buddhists and , parishioners of the village shrines, and inside those shrines they kept their own objects of faith. At Ōno Shrine, too, the school guide says, they prayed so that no one could tell they were Christians.
A long walk to Mass
After the Discovery at on 17 March 1865, and once the ban was lifted, most hidden Christians of Ōno returned to the Catholic Church. For years they walked to Shitsu Church for Mass. In 1893 Father , the parish priest of Sotome, built them a church of their own in the middle of the village, as a chapel of Shitsu: a , with no priest of its own.
He built it for the 26 Christian households around Ōno. It looks like a farmhouse, but its walls are not. They are basalt from the hills around, set in a mortar of red earth mixed with lime: the "". The heritage site notes the wind screen in front of the door, and how the wall has stood for more than 130 years.
Sources: a long walk to mass
The World Heritage panel gives the official reading of Ōno; the prefecture's heritage site gives the building's data (1893, design by de Rotz, stone, ICP 2008). The same page gives the 26 households and notes that only a priest's room on the south side, added in 1926, has changed.
Once a year
Ōno church stands tucked away in the hills, in contrast to Shitsu on its open height. It is no longer a regular church: the heritage site says a memorial Mass is said here once a year. The site of Bastian's hut and the shrines where the villagers once prayed are within reach on the same coast.
