Kirishitan Bunko: A Manual of Books and Documents on the Early Christian Mission in JapanJohannes Laures

Excerpt

The title of this manual needs some explanation, for it is impossible to translate it directly into English without impairing its meaning. Kirishitan is nothing else but the Japanese approximation of the Portuguese Christan (Christam), i.e. an equivalent of the English ‘Christian’. The Chinese characters (吉利支丹 or 切支丹) are merely phonetical without implying nay particular meaning. In other words, the Portuguese Christan was taken over into Japanese Christian terminology like so many other religious terms and was also used by non-Christians to denote the adherents of the Western religion preached by Portuguese and Spanish missionaries in the 16th and 17th centuries. When this religion was proscribed and its adherents severely persecuted, the word Kirishitan came to acquire a rather odious meaning, viz the dangerous foreign religion which was believed to threaten the safety of the country. Today it has no longer this implication but is merely used in an historical sense, denoting the Christians or Christian religion from the beginnings of the mission until the granting of religious freedom in the early years of the Meiji period. Briefly, it has become a technical term in Japanese history.

Bunko literally means a store of documents or writings and is, more or less, an equivalent for library, archives, or also bibliography. Hence Kirishitan Bunko is a bibliography of Kirishitan literature, i.e. of documents (books, articles, manuscripts) relating to the Christian missions from their beginnings to the first years after the reopening of Japan to foreign intercourse.

1957. 536 pages. Paperback. [Out of print]