Kiku's Prayer: A Novel Page 3

  “As many as 400,000?”

  “Or possibly even more. But then the rulers of Japan developed a hatred for Christianity, and not only did they ban any missionaries from coming here, but they slammed shut the doors to the country itself. As you know, they allowed only a few Dutch traders to live in Nagasaki.” As he gave this explanation, the priest once again shifted his eyes toward the surrounding hills. The rain clouds were finally clearing away, and white billows of steam began to swirl skyward from the valleys between the hills. Still the hordes of cicadas continued their monotonous, melancholy droning. As though it were some sort of heretical hymn….

  “Yes, but … But I …”

  “But what, Father?”

  “Of course, this is just a selfish dream of mine, but I intend to find out whether any of the descendants of those early believers still follow our religion.”

  “I shall pray for your success, Father.” He spoke encouragement with his lips, but it appeared that Ensign Guirand had little interest in this topic. Instead, his head was filled with thoughts of the “geisha” in Nagasaki, whom he had heard about from a fellow officer who had visited Japan last year. They were supposedly as tiny as dolls, and as compliant….

  “Father, your welcoming party is waiting on the shore.” The ensign pointed to the makeshift wharf, piled high with stones. Another priest dressed in white stood as a tiny figure in the distance.

  The wharf was populated with not only those who had come to welcome the arrivals but also forty or fifty Japanese who had come to see the foreign warship. The priest had experienced the same phenomenon at Yokohama: the Japanese people, most likely because they had been isolated from the outside world for so long, displayed an inordinate curiosity about foreign things.

  Dark-skinned men wearing dismal kimonos with dismal expressions on their faces. And women with their teeth painted black. Swarms of naked children capering about. These were the Japanese. No wonder that Father Furet1 stood out in his white summer habit.

  When the skiff reached shore, Father Furet approached with both arms outstretched and a beaming smile on his face.

  “You’re here, Bernard!” The new arrival2 moved into those outstretched arms, and they gave each other a tight embrace. Two years earlier, they had been comrades studying Japanese as they waited in Naha for the day when they could begin to spread the Gospel in Japan.

  “I’ll wait here. Leave your trunk there. I’ll have someone deliver it. You’ll need to go see the Japanese authorities to take care of the procedures for disembarkation and to obtain a residence permit. They’re difficult, I assure you.”

  “I’m well aware.”

  The sailors who had reached shore ahead of the priest had already formed two lines and were being questioned by the authorities. The man doing the interpreting appeared to be Dutch.

  The authorities were, indeed, difficult. They took special pains with the priest to drive home the fact that he must not give any books relating to Christianity or any holy implements such as crucifixes to the Japanese and made him swear an oath to that effect. By the time all the bureaucratic formalities were completed, the sun had already set, and the hills surrounding the harbor were turning a dark purple.

  “Stay well, Father.” After exchanging a firm handshake with Ensign Guirand, the priest returned to the spot where Father Furet was waiting for him.

  “Phew! That was exhausting,” he grumbled to Father Furet.

  “Yes … But I’m sure you’re aware of how strictly the Japanese have proscribed Christianity for more than two hundred years.”

  The two remained silent as they climbed a sloping path. Giant camphor trees with spreading branches edged the path that traced its way beside a long fence. Evening cicadas shrieked mournfully from the trees.

  “What is this area called?”

  “Ōura.”

  He repeated the strange name over and over in his mind. It was the name of the place where he might live out the rest of his life.

  “Let me ask you,” he finally broached the question that had been on his mind, “Have you found among the Japanese you’ve met any who are secret believers in Christianity?”

  “Not one,” Father Furet shook his head. Father Furet had come to Nagasaki six months ago. Just four years earlier, in 1858, Japan had finally allowed the doors of seclusion to be opened a crack. They had signed treaties limited to commerce.

  As a result, trade representatives from the treaty nations of the United States, Great Britain, and France had taken up residence in Nagasaki along with their families.

  These people naturally needed a church. They needed the church that the Japanese had reviled for so many long years.

  Faced with demands from the trade treaty nations, the Tokugawa shogunate with great reluctance gave permission both for the building of churches that only foreign citizens would be allowed to enter and for the presence of missionaries. However, this was on the condition that they must not seek to spread Christianity among the Japanese.

  Consequently, Father Furet had come in January in order to build a church here in Nagasaki.

  “How is the construction coming?”

  Father Furet responded jovially, “It’s going very smoothly, Bernard. In fact, when it comes to working with their hands, these Japanese are the most skillful in the world. Despite the fact they’ve never seen a Western church, these carpenters have already completed more than half a chapel that combines Gothic and Baroque styles, basing their work solely on the diagrams and pictures and explanations I’ve given them.” He pointed toward the summit of the hill. “You’ll see it as soon as we reach the top of this hill. The view of the bay from the church is extraordinary! I don’t think there’s a bay this beautiful in all the south of France.”

  Petitjean responded with a thin smile while wordlessly bristling at the shrieking of the cicadas. But Father Furet went on animatedly describing the process of erecting the church.

  This is where this good priest and I differ in our views, he thought to himself. He had not come to Nagasaki for the benefit of the various foreign representatives who would live here temporarily with their families. He had received permission from his superiors to come to Nagasaki to seek for … them.

  Them …

  Four years ago, he had endured a protracted ocean journey from France to come here to the Far East so that he could preach the Gospel in Japan. Two years ago, when at last he had settled in Naha to learn Japanese, he and Father Furet, along with others of their company, heard a remarkable story.

  The story was related to them by a Chinese sailor. The man told them he had been to Nagasaki four or five times. He was missing one ear, and at midday he was already drunk on Naha’s strong liquor.

  “So listen to this. There’s still some fellers in Japan who are hidden followers of Christianity. There was a fisherman from near Nagasaki who drifted here in a storm … and he would cross himself just like you men do.”

  Father Furet and his comrades laughed off the story as the drunken delusions of a Chinese sailor. Such a story simply could not be true.

  But one priest received a powerful shock from the story, so severe he could not sleep that night.

  While he was still living in Paris he learned that more than two hundred years earlier, nearly 400,000 Christians converts had been won in Japan. The Société des Missions-Étrangères de Paris had been organized to bring together priests who had decided to labor in foreign lands. The society’s headquarters building had on display relics of their predecessors who had proselytized in various Asian lands, along with items that memorialized their sufferings. The building also had a library of books dealing with Asia.

  In that library, Petitjean read the diary and letters of Saint Francis Xavier. Xavier, of course, was the first father to preach Christianity in Japan. It was he who had written, “The Japanese are the finest, wisest people we have yet encountered in Asia.”

  In addition to Xavier’s writings, the library holdings included books contai
ning the blood- and sweat-bathed reports of priests who came later to Japan from such distant lands as Spain, Portugal, and Italy.

  From these books, the priest learned that Japan, where Christianity had flourished for a time, had abruptly slammed its doors shut, isolating itself from the rest of the world, and had also relentlessly banned the practice of Christianity and worked all manner of tortures on the believers.

  He learned that when the 400,000 Christians were compelled to decide whether to die for their faith or to abandon it, more than half of them apostatized against their wills.

  Not one Christian is left in Japan. That was the conventional wisdom in the Parisian missionary society. That had also been his conclusion.

  All the more reason why the drunken Chinese sailor’s story came as such a shock to him.

  It might just be true. Perhaps the descendants of the original Christians in Japan continue to secretly preserve their faith.

  Unable to sleep, he arose from his crude bed and set a match to a dish filled with lamp oil. Outside it was raining, and he could hear the raindrops slapping the leaves of the hardy banana trees in the garden. Nights in Naha were muggy. Geckos clung to his ceiling.

  If it’s true, I must find them.

  He obtained permission from his superiors to spend a half year required to travel from France to India, from India to Indochina, and then on to Japan. He now had been living for several months in Naha, along with companions who shared his determination. He had achieved the first of his goals.

  Because the Japanese government still strictly prohibited its people from believing in Christianity, he was able to enter Japan only under the severe limitations that the shogunate had placed on priests, who were allowed to minister only to the foreign populations in Yokohama and Nagasaki.

  But if there were a group of believers among the Japanese, despite the proscription on their faith …

  I shall seek them out.

  From that day forward, this became his solitary quest.

  As they approached the crest of the hill, they saw a small light moving ahead.

  “Ah, it’s Okane-san and her husband.” Father Furet raised a hand and waved to them. “This couple are Japanese who take care of our cooking and laundry. They aren’t Christians, of course. In fact, they’re fervent followers of the Oinari faith.”

  “Oinari?”

  “It’s a Japanese religion that worships foxes. In this country they believe that foxes have been given special powers by the gods….”

  The light drew near. It was a short Japanese couple carrying a lantern.

  “Okane-san, Mosaku-san—this is Father Bernard Petitjean.” Father Furet patted his shoulder as he introduced him to the couple.

  “Yes. My name is Petitjean. Very pleased to meet you.” He gave the sort of Japanese greeting that had appeared in his language textbook.

  The couple bowed humbly, their backs bent so politely that it almost seemed too polite. This was how the Japanese always behaved.

  “Has his trunk arrived?”

  “It has,” the husband answered. “A carrier just brought it a few minutes ago from the wharf, along with some other packages.”

  The scene was just as Father Furet had described it. Atop the hill was a wooden building designed somewhat in the Western style. It was still only a frame, but a tiny, bluish-purple Gothic-style steeple soared overhead.

  “Bernard, this is the first house of God to be built in Japan. The very first church!” Father Furet’s voice brimmed with emotion. “You could see it more clearly if it weren’t nighttime. But tomorrow you’ll be able to savor the beauty of the harbor view from up here.”

  There was certainly a commanding view of the harbor from where they stood. But the harbor was now shrouded in the dark of night, and the green vegetation was only faintly visible because of the moonlight, not because of lights from the houses.

  “It’s still primitive here compared with Yokohama. They have no gas or electric lights. They make paper lanterns. They set a flame to vegetable oil and use that as a light in the darkness. When I first got here, they didn’t have any candles, and it was quite perturbing.”

  “How is the food?”

  “We get only Japanese food. That’s all Okane-san knows how to make. But now that you’re here, perhaps we can begin to teach her how to prepare something we’ll find edible.”

  “Have you made any Japanese friends?”

  “Friends? Well, if you’re talking about detectives from the magistrate’s office, I’ve gotten to know a number of them. But they’re wary of me. Because I’m a Kirishitan.3 The officers here detest Kirishitans even more than do their counterparts in Yokohama.”

  A thatched farmhouse beside the partly built church was quarters for Father Furet and Petitjean.

  As the days passed, Petitjean recognized that Okane-san and her husband were certainly faithful servants, but with his halting command of Japanese he often couldn’t understand the Nagasaki dialect they spoke.

  The lively noise of construction filled the air each day. Generally when Father Furet had finished saying Mass and had had his breakfast, he would head for the building site to discuss various aspects of the construction with the carpentry foreman. From time to time the foreman would cock his head, scribble a diagram on the ground, and then stare at it in deep thought. In a way, the look on his face reminded Father Petitjean of an image of some Asian philosopher.

  But the Japanese were certainly fond of their tobacco! When their labors for the day were finished, everyone from the foreman down to the carpenters would pull a slender bamboo pipe from a pouch hung round his waist and pop it into his mouth. He was even more surprised to see even Okane-san smoking through her blackened teeth.

  As the construction progressed, spectators began to gather. Nursemaids carrying infants on their backs, children, and even some adults went out of their way to climb the hill and assemble near the construction site, gaping at the partially completed structure.

  “Please come closer. It’s OK to come have a look.” Even though Father Furet extended the invitation in their peculiar Nagasaki dialect, not one person made a move. They would never come even a single step closer. They knew that police from the magistrate’s office could show up at any time.

  And from time to time, a detective with several companions would arrive from the magistrate’s office.

  “Go home! Go home!” they would brusquely order the spectators. “This isn’t a carnival show. And you know you can’t have anything to do with the Kirishitans.”

  At that the crowd would scatter like baby spiders, but the next day, a new flock of spectators would materialize.

  One day, after making sure no detectives were around, Petitjean quietly approached the group.

  “What do you call those?” he asked purposefully, pointing toward the cicadas emitting their stifling cries from the gigantic trees. He hoped, of course, to create a friendly camaraderie with the Japanese. The adults said nothing for a moment, so a child responded, as though speaking to a dimwit, “It’s called a semi.”

  Petitjean, hoping to elicit a laugh, mimicked the shrill cry of the cicadas. “Many semi. Jii! Jii! Jii!” It was true that swarms of cicadas here in Nagasaki screeched throughout the day.

  The children snorted at his silly imitation.

  Then he pointed to his head and quietly said, “I am Kirishitan. Do you know any Kirishitan people?”

  At this point, the spectators clammed up, with the same frightened look on their faces he had seen just days before among the peddlers on the tiny boats.

  But obviously these Japanese were filled with the same curiosity, industry, and intelligence that had impressed Saint Francis Xavier more than three hundred years earlier. That was evident from watching how the carpenters worked. The workers here could finish in only three days tasks that would take carpenters in Petitjean’s homeland of France a week to complete. They worked assiduously, the only exceptions being during lunchtime and their midday break.r />
  And how deft they were with their hands! Petitjean could watch them move their hands every day without tiring of it.

  “What is this?” He would point one after another at the tools the Japanese carpenters used and be impressed by their replies.

  The spectators who hovered around the construction site similarly eyed him with curiosity, but keeping an almost self-conscious distance from him, in subdued voices they discussed his pocket watch or the shoes on his feet.

  The Japanese were amiable toward him so long as he did not ask that one certain question. But should he venture to bring it up, their countenances would change, just as though a clear sky had suddenly clouded over, and they would lapse into an ill-humored silence.

  The question was the short, casual inquiry, “Do you know any Kirishitans?”

  When he described this standoff to Father Furet, the priest responded, “Well, what did you expect? For a very long while they’ve been ordered to report to the police any friends or neighbors who are secretly practicing Christianity. A man will be punished if he’s even aware of the existence of a Christian believer and doesn’t report it, so these people certainly consider it an insult that you’re even asking that question.”

  “Then there’s no way to locate the descendants of the first Christians in this land,” Petitjean said with a defeated look.

  “Now, don’t give up. I’m putting all my energies into the construction of the church, so why don’t we make it a competition to see who achieves his goal first?” Father Furet grinned like a boy trying to encourage a younger brother who was stuck on a baffling homework problem.

  But when he learned that Petitjean continued to badger the spectators with his questions, Father Furet had to say something to his colleague, and with some degree of awkwardness he reported, “Actually, I hadn’t wanted to tell you this, but I’ve received a complaint from Itō Seizaemon, one of the magistrate’s officers. He wants to know why you’re asking that particular question of the Japanese, and he suspects you’re harboring a secret desire to spread the Gospel among them.”