Kiku's Prayer Part 11

"Tomorrow in the early afternoon, we'll wait for you at the entrance to the Suwa Shrine at the base of Mount Kompira." He quickly went outside.

When the officer appeared, Pet.i.tjean was nonchalantly tidying up the altar. There was no sign of any other person in the sanctuary. His contact with the Kiris.h.i.tans had been handled prudently, and the spectators simply pretended to be observing the church from afar.

He could hardly wait for the next day. It took a disquietingly long time for the sun to set that evening.

Pet.i.tjean wrote a letter to his superiors in Yokohama, reporting the miraculous discovery of some j.a.panese believers. His hand occasionally paused at the joy of his news, leaving an ink smudge on the paper.

The next day Pet.i.tjean lied to Okane and her husband to keep them offguard. "I'm off on one of my long walks."

"Long walk? You haven't taken one of those for a long time!" Mosaku laughed.

Pet.i.tjean planned to stroll down the hill as he always did, pa.s.sing between fields and coming out on the road near the ocean. When he stepped out of the church, the startled spectators bowed their heads to him, and It Seizaemon, who was standing in front of the church, blinked his eyes with curiosity and asked, "Lord Pet.i.tjean, where are you off to?"

"I'm going to learn more about kite flying." With a lighthearted look on his face, he mimed the pulling of a kite string with his right hand.

"Excellent." Seizaemon nodded, appearing quite relieved. He knew that Pet.i.tjean had engaged in the kite battle with the Dutchman.

Pet.i.tjean came out onto the coastal road that was separated from Dejima by a ca.n.a.l, then strolled leisurely in the direction of Mount Kompira-just as he always had on his long walks. So seemingly carefree ...

His diversionary tactics were supremely successful. Because everyone knew about Pet.i.tjean's "long walks," not a soul was even the least bit suspicious seeing him unhurriedly climbing the slope leading to the Suwa Shrine.

The spring sun illuminated the stone steps of the shrine. A young man was sitting on the sunny steps, a scale set down next to him. It was the young man who had promised at the ura church to meet him here today.

The young man was equally cautious. Even though the only people in the vicinity were two children kicking rocks, he gave no sign of recognition when he saw Pet.i.tjean, but merely stood up, hoisted the scale onto his shoulder, and began walking. Pet.i.tjean realized at once that he was meant to follow along.

The young man walked along beside the shrine and headed toward the mountain. The mountain was Kompira, famous for kite flying. On the other side of this mountain were the villages that made up the Urakami District, including Nakano and Magome.

The cherry trees were in bloom. Somewhere on the mountain a bush warbler squawked. These two peculiar men acted like total strangers to each other and maintained a gap between themselves as they climbed the mountain path. They saw blossoms along the path and heard birds crying overhead.

Eventually the young man stopped and turned around, appearing to think they were now in a safe location.

"We're OK here." He invited Pet.i.tjean to sit on a rock alongside the path, and he took a bamboo flask out of the basket he had carried on his shoulder. "Your throat's probably dry."

Pet.i.tjean greedily gulped down water from the bamboo flask. When he had finished drinking, he handed the flask back to the young man and asked, "What's your name?"

"Seikichi."

"I've been searching every single day for Kiris.h.i.tans. I've taken long walks, I've quizzed the children ... but all to no avail. Did you know I even went kite flying?" Pet.i.tjean muttered with some resentment.

"Yes, I knew."

"Then why didn't you identify yourself to me sooner?"

"Padre. It's dangerous." Seikichi shook his head in consternation. "The magistrate's office is keeping such close watch ..."

"Seikichi, please tell me," Pet.i.tjean almost choked on the words. "Are there Kiris.h.i.tans in places besides your village?"

"Not so many. Besides Nakano, a lot of the people in Ieno and Motohara are Kiris.h.i.tans. And I've heard there are Kiris.h.i.tans in Sotome and Hirado, and on Ikitsuki Island and the Got Islands."

Pet.i.tjean had no idea where Sotome or Hirado, Ikitsuki or Got might be located. But it moved him to the point of breathlessness to learn that in each of those places, followers of Christ had lived in silent fear for more than two hundred years.

"Miracle! C'est miracle!" Pet.i.tjean unexpectedly cried out in French. But how had these j.a.panese Christians maintained their faith undetected by others?

According to the piecemeal information he gathered from Seikichi- With no priests to teach them and no church to provide them a spiritual foundation, the people of Nakano and Ieno and Motohara Villages had no recourse but to transmit the teachings of their parents orally to their children and grandchildren.

But everything had to be done in secret. They must not ever let people from any other village know that they were Kiris.h.i.tan.

Under orders from the magistrate, every household became Buddhist. Once each year the fumie was set out, and they each had to trample on the face of Christ or the Blessed Mother.

However, they covertly continued to have their infants baptized as Christians, celebrated Christmas and Easter, and offered up their daily prayers.

Naturally, since they had no priest to perform their baptisms or offer their Ma.s.ses, they chose from among their group those who would perform those various roles.

The person who calculated the dates for Christmas and Easter each year and communicated them to the others was known as the Chkata, the "Register Official."4 The one who performed baptisms as soon as an infant was born was called the Mizukata, the "Water Official," because he sprinkled water on the infant's forehead at the time of baptism.

The individual who formed the line of communication between the Mizukata and the Chkata was known as the Kikiyaku, the "Listener."

Yet even though they had created these clandestine roles and maintained a strict sense of group solidarity, there was always the possibility that they might sometime be detected by the magistrate's office.

There had, in fact, been several crackdowns on Urakami by the magistrate's office-twice in the Kan'ei period (16241644) and once in the Temp period (18301844). Urakami was a problematic, untrustworthy village in the eyes of the magistrate of Nagasaki.

"But they haven't brought us down!" Seikichi smiled with the pride of youth. "We're being very obedient right now, so the magistrate can't clamp down on us. For one thing, they'd run into trouble with the higher-ups if they created a big incident right now, so they pretend not to see anything we do."

"Seikichi." With a sparkle in his eyes, Pet.i.tjean unexpectedly asked, "Will you take me to Nakano? I want to meet your people. Meet them and administer bautismo to their infants. I want to celebrate Ma.s.s for you."

With the cries of the bush warblers echoing over their heads, the two men parted by separate paths. Seikichi went over the mountain and returned to Nakano, and Pet.i.tjean went back to his church at ura, a look of sheer innocence on his face.

But Pet.i.tjean had not realized or been aware when he headed toward the Suwa Shrine, pretending that he was taking one of his "long walks," that a man was stealthily trailing behind him.

The magistrate of Nagasaki was not such a pathetic fool after all....

1. Built between 1618 and 1624, Shimabara Castle stood until the early Meiji period, when most of it was torn down to make way for a school and farmland. Restoration of the keep and towers of the historic castle began in the 1960s.

2. Joseph-Marie Laucaigne (18381885) was ordained a priest of the Societe des Missions-etrangeres de Paris in 1862 and became auxiliary bishop of j.a.pan in 1873. After nursing Bishop Pet.i.tjean through his final days, Laucaigne himself succ.u.mbed to a fatal illness.

3. The statue is still on display in the ura Church in Nagasaki.

4. I have adopted the translations of these roles from Stephen Turnbull, The Kakure Kiris.h.i.tan of j.a.pan: A Study of Their Development, Beliefs, and Rituals to the Present Day (Richmond, Eng.: j.a.pan Library, 1998).

SPIES.

AFTER WATCHING PEt.i.tJEAN disappear into the church, the man who had been following him returned to the Buddhist temple just down the slope from the church. The temple, which was serving as the locus of operations for the detectives, was called the Nikkanji and still exists today.

"Ah, you're back." An anxious It Seizaemon greeted the man. "So, where did the foreigner go?"

"He took a leisurely walk as far as the entrance to the Suwa Shrine. But I felt like there was something suspicious about the way he was behaving, and sure enough, a young man carrying a scale was waiting at the entrance...."

"Hmm."

"The two of them climbed up Mount Kompira. While I was watching them through the trees, they carried on some secretive conversation. I think the peddler was a young man from Urakami."

"So I was right. That foreigner says all the right things, but he's quite the charlatan." Seizaemon nodded and nervously batted his eyelids.

"What are we going to do?" the man asked. "Would you like me to rake the young fellow over the coals?"

"Hold on now! If things get more serious, we can always resort to that. This involves a foreigner. If we take matters into our own hands and try to deal with him, it could end up in a quarrel between countries. We'd better consult with Lord Hond."

It was not so much discretion that It was displaying as a fear that all responsibility might fall on his shoulders, so that afternoon when he returned to the magistrate's office he gave a report to the interpreter Hond Shuntar and then sought his advice.

Hond Shuntar had come to Nagasaki from Edo in order to learn Dutch, but he was also under orders to work as an interpreter at the Nagasaki magistrate's office. He was given the nickname "Stone Mortar" later in life, not primarily because his body was as ma.s.sive as a mortar, but because in all situations he was scrupulous and never made a careless move.

"Lord It, you did well to be patient. Rather than making the situation worse through a hasty decision, I think it's best to watch and wait for a time. If this becomes known publicly, the Nagasaki magistrate might well be accused by the shogunal authorities of turning a blind eye to the outlawed Kiris.h.i.tans.... That would be awkward."

Hond deliberately repeated the word "awkward" in a low voice while pretending to slit his own throat with his hand. "I think the best plan would be to pretend for a time that you're not aware of what is going on."

"But won't the Kiris.h.i.tan peasants and the foreigner end up going too far and make a fool of the magistrate?"

"No, when I said 'pretend that you're not aware,' I wasn't saying you shouldn't be watching them. In fact, you must keep a close eye on the Ieno, Kano, and Motohara Districts in Urakami. You should hire on a trustworthy peasant to be your spy."

"Hire a peasant?"

"That's right. Even if you send in an unarmed officer from the magistrate, they're eventually going to sniff him out. Meanwhile ... I will keep an eye on the foreigner's movements." Hond spoke confidently, though It did not know what he had in mind.

Unlike the other officials at the magistrate's office, Hond Shuntar had his own concerns about the future of j.a.pan because of his study of Dutch and his interactions with the Dutch at Dejima. The others in the magistrate's office were so caught up in issues concerning their own stipends and status that they accepted without question the shogunate's conservative closed-country policy, but Hond was a proponent of opening the country, believing that at some point j.a.pan would have to throw open its heavy doors and interact with the other nations of the world. But he was sufficiently shrewd to know he could not openly advocate such a position so long as he worked at the magistrate's office.

However- Though he favored opening the country, he found it hard to forgive the foreigner Pet.i.tjean for breaking his firm promise to the magistrate and covertly scheming to spread the Kiris.h.i.tan teachings.

A promise is a promise. The magistrate gave him a house in ura and allowed him to build the Nambanji on the condition that he would not advocate the Kiris.h.i.tan teachings. But the foreigner has treated that exceptional magnanimity with contempt and seeks to violate his promise even more blatantly.

It seemed to Hond that the foreigner considered the j.a.panese as fools.

But it would be a mistake to take the man into custody too quickly. In negotiations with foreigners, logic was more important than feelings. One must a.s.semble evidence to support one's logic. This he had been made fully aware of through his interactions with the Dutch.

Consequently- He had given orders to It Seizaemon to remain watchful while he himself would make a casual call on Pet.i.tjean.

As for the purpose for his visit, he had thought it through and decided to tell the foreigner that as an interpreter of Dutch, he also wished to learn French. That would leave no margin for suspicion.

"From me?"

Two days after his secret meeting with Seikichi, an unsuspecting Pet.i.tjean received a visit from a plump young samurai, but surprise filled his eyes when he heard the samurai's reason for coming.

"You say you work as a Dutch interpreter at the magistrate's office?"

"I do."

As his visitor nodded, Pet.i.tjean did a quick mental calculation, as he always did in such situations. This fellow seems fairly bright. He might be useful to me in following the magistrate's movements. He was convinced that as he taught the man French, he could elicit from him just how much the magistrate's office knew of his activities.

"All right. I'll teach you." Pet.i.tjean smiled as he nodded his head.

Beginning the next day, before lunch, this peculiar tutorial began. Although it was a teacherpupil relationship, the real focus of study for both of them lay in probing each other.

"C'est une table," Pet.i.tjean would recite, and Shuntar would respond, "C'est une table," though their motives were unrelated to these drills.

Because he already knew Dutch, Shuntar made far more rapid progress than he had antic.i.p.ated in his study of French-which had started with the ABCs.

Three hundred years earlier, Saint Francis Xavier, the first man to come to j.a.pan to preach Christianity, had been astonished at the quick minds of the j.a.panese, and Pet.i.tjean, too, could not help but be impressed with the intellect of this young man from the magistrate's office.

During breaks in the lessons, Pet.i.tjean would summon Okane to bring out the coffee she had prepared, and as he offered it to Shuntar, he made casual conversation. It was in casual conversation that he hoped to achieve his true goal.

"Is it bitter?" Pet.i.tjean laughed as Shuntar screwed up his face at the taste of the coffee.

"No. I want to experience everything from your country." The young j.a.panese man's face flushed as he tried to swallow the liquid.

"You want to experience everything from my country?" Pet.i.tjean pressed the question.

"Yes," Shuntar nodded, but he appeared to have understood Pet.i.tjean's true intention, because he corrected himself by adding, "Of course, only those things that wouldn't poison us j.a.panese ..."

Pet.i.tjean immediately went on the counterattack. "Poison? What is there from France that could be poisonous to the j.a.panese?"

Shuntar did not respond. Instead he sat holding his coffee cup in one hand and staring intently at the missionary.

Under that unwavering gaze, Pet.i.tjean understood precisely what this young j.a.panese from the magistrate's office was saying. In a voice laced with a trace of anger, he asked, "So do you think that the Kiris.h.i.tan teachings are poisonous to the j.a.panese?"

"I don't know ... whether they are a poison or a palliative. But for a long while we j.a.panese have avoided the Kiris.h.i.tan teachings as a kind of toxin. You mustn't forget that."

"I am well aware of the fact, Lord Hond."

"Then allow me to ask you a question.... In the Kiris.h.i.tan teachings, is the breaking of a promise considered righteous behavior or an evil act? Which is it?"

"It is, of course, evil."

"Then ..." Shuntar set his coffee cup on the table and quietly replied, "I would appreciate it if you kept your promises."

"My promises?"

"Yes. The magistrate gave you permission to build a Kiris.h.i.tan temple here in ura ... but only for foreigners, not for j.a.panese. You need to keep that promise with exactness." His voice was soft, but there was force in it. Pet.i.tjean was fl.u.s.tered and blushed.

"Now, then," Shuntar said, as if nothing at all had transpired, "shall we resume our lessons?" He adjusted himself in his chair.

Ichijir had been planning in the near future to run some errands to Nagasaki and to check up on his sister Mitsu and cousin Kiku.