'The Beginning of Heaven and Earth': The Biblical Story as told by the 'Hidden Christians'

[patrick457]

The Hidden Christians considered themselves to constantly live a life of sin, something they perpetually tried to atone for. Some people might have heard of the fumie, a likeness of Jesus or Mary people were required to trample yearly in a formal ceremony in order to prove that they were not Christians. While at first, Christians refused to step on the image and were tortured and martyred as a result, as time went on the Hidden Christians realized that they would die out if they continued to refuse. So they did the unthinkable: they began to step on the fumie, had themselves registered to local Buddhist temples (as per government policy), made written assurances of conversion to Buddhism, and even held Buddhist funerals. An outsider would have no way of knowing that they were secret Christians.

This actually gave rise to interesting customs where the Hidden Christians would try to ‘purify’ their dead who had received traditional funerals. Japanese funerals involve the chanting of sutras (Buddhist scriptures) by a Buddhist monk. It became customary among the Hidden Christians to give the dead at least a brief Christian funeral (really just a recitation of certain prayers and maybe a few rituals) somewhere before, during, or after the ‘official’ Buddhist one.

In Goto, for example, the custom was that at around the same time the corpse was receiving Buddhist funerary rites, Hidden Christians in a separate room or in a house nearby would recite prayers which ‘nullified’ the rites the dead was receiving at the moment (経消しのオラショ kyo-keshi no orasho ‘the sutra-extinguishing orasho’ - actually the Rosary or some other prayer), the belief being that the soul of the dead would not be able to enter (the Christian) Heaven unless the Buddhist rites were counteracted in some way. Sometimes a jar or basin (the ‘sutra-extinguishing jar’) thought to ‘trap’ the Buddhist sutras were used as well in this ceremony. In other occasions, little could be done beyond concealing a Christian symbol or item in the coffin with the deceased (for example, a piece of a venerated local martyr’s clothing or another sacred object) or surreptitiously placing a Christian symbol such as a cross into a tombstone.

 

[patrick457]

We get to the Hidden Christian version of the Great Flood.

Agriculture spread at this time through fields and up into the hills until the food supply became abundant. But the world took a turn for the worse since evil and greed held sway. Three beings were unleashed and entered the world at this time Ambition, Covetousness, and Selfishness. To satisfy their greedy desires, they stole food from righteous people.

Deusu, despising those three, bound them together into a single into a single bundle that bore three faces, and horns sprouted from all three. They were dreadful to look upon, and Deusu said to them, “You selfishly grabbed things that grew in the rice paddies and the fields all for yourselves. I, Deusu, have therefore come down from heaven in order to make you demons of a lower heaven.” So saying, he kicked them to the bottom of the sea. These three scoundrels, by the way, were also the doing of Jusuheru.

As the population grew again gradually, people followed the evil precedent set by these three wicked ones Ambition, Covetousness, and Selfishness. Everyone stole and people were relentlessly greedy and inclined toward evil. Although evil deeds increased by steady degrees, Deusu took compassion on the people and sent an oracle to Pappa Maruji, the ruling monarch of that land:

WHEN THE EYES OF THE LION-DOG OF THE TEMPLE TURN RED, A GREAT TSUNAMI WILL COME AND DESTROY THE WORLD.

Since the time that the monarch Pappa Maruji received this oracle from Deusu, he visited the temple every day to pay his respects to the lion dogs.

One day while Pappa Maruji was making his customary temple visit, a group of young children gathered around him and one asked, “What’s the reason you worship these lion dogs?” Another child, hearing his reply, relayed it to the others: “When the eyes of the lion-dogs turn red, this world will be swallowed up by a big wave.” On hearing this, one of the children laughed his head off, saying, “What kind of silly business is this? We could easily paint them red ourselves, but it’s too dumb to think the world will be destroyed.” Thus the children went ahead and painted the eyes of the lion dogs red.

As was his custom, Pappa Maruji set out to visit the shrine the next day. When he saw the vermilion eyes of the lion dogs, a shock ran through his body. He brought out the canoe he had prepared in advance, and made his six children get into it. But because his eldest son was lame, with remorse he nevertheless left him behind. Then suddenly a huge wave shook both heaven and earth, and within a blink not a spot of dry land could be found, only the surface of the vast sea was visible as far as the eye could see. But over the surface of the sea one of the lion-dogs came running, and on its back it was carrying the lame son who had been left out of the canoe.
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The ‘lion-dogs’ are the so-called komainu, a statue pair of lion-like creatures that adorn the entrances of Shinto shrines and in the past (back when Buddhism and Shinto were still practiced in a syncretized form), Buddhist temples. The komainu are basically the Japanese version of the Chinese ‘foo dogs’, which have a nearly similar function.

The story is highly similar to other Japanese folktales which involve a statue’s face or eyes turning red as a sign of danger. (This tale is also attested in China BTW.) Let me give one example.

Once upon a time, there was a turtle-shaped island a few kilometers off Tokushima Prefecture, where a bustling fishing town was located. The settlement boasted a thousand houses, which led to the island being given the nickname Okame-senken (お亀千軒, “Thousand-House Turtle (Island)”). Now in the island’s local shrine, there was a statue of a komainu (or a deer, in another version). There was a superstition among the inhabitants of the island that the island will sink when the statue’s eyes or face become red.

In one version, the statue’s eyes and/or face were painted red by pirates who wanted to scare the locals away and then loot the abandoned town; in another, it was painted by young ruffians simply to prank the townspeople. The end result is however the same; as soon as they discover the statue’s eyes were red, the inhabitants of the town go into a panic and flee as soon they could using their fishing boats, ending up in what is now Tokushima City. The old saw does prove true: Turtle Island sunk into the sea, drowning the pirates or the pranksters who were still in it. (There’s also a version of the story where only an old couple and/or their families survive the catastrophe, the other inhabitants of the island ignoring their warnings to their peril.) According to legend, a promontory where a lighthouse currently stands is all that was left of the island.