Marian Images and Underground Christianity
Japanese Christians prior to and after the prohibition of Christianity worshipped bronze medallions of Christ, Mary, and the Pieta as European Christians prayed to them too. However, starting in 1629 in Nagasaki, the shogunate used these images, which they called fumi-e (踏み絵, “trampling-on image”) against Christians. Officials forced suspected Christians to trample on images of Christ or Mary to prove their lack of faith. If they refused, they were arrested. The face of this Madonna Immaculate has worn down to a smooth surface, irreproducible in Edo-period casting techniques, showing that numerous individuals trampled on it.[1]
[1] Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Toward a Geography of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 305, 312-315, 318-319, 337.
This bronze medallion presents the scene titled "The Madonna of Victory (Rosary)", in which the Madonna gives a rosary to Saint Dominic, the figure on the left. Its worn-down faces suggest that the shogunate also used this image in e-fumi (絵踏み, “picture stomping-on” ceremony) like the “Madonna Immaculate” medallion. While the “Madonna of Victory” is Dominican in origin, the simplified rosary that Mary hands to St. Dominic and the foreshortened mountains, an element of Japanese-style painting (大和絵, yamato-e), suggest that a Japanese-Christian artist copied the scene from etchings or copybooks. A metalworker cast the bronze medallion after the artist’s image.[1]
[1] Thomas DaCosta. Kaufmann, Toward a Geography of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 314-317, 330-334.
Gozensama (午前様) are hanging scrolls or banners that depict Mary, Jesus, saints, local martyrs, and beatified martyrs worshipped by underground and hidden Christians. Christian missionaries gave Japan’s first missionaries paintings like these to aid with their devotion.[1] The artist of this woodblock print of Mary and the infant Jesus, which was later attached to a hanging scroll, portrayed the figures in a Japanese style. However, Mary as represented here is likely not a Maria Kannon.
[1] Ann M. Harrington, “The Kakure Kirishitan and Their Place in Japan’s Religious Tradition,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 7, no. 4 (December 1, 1980), 319.
Tenchi hajimari no koto (天地始まりのこと, The Beginning of Heaven and Earth), the oral text used by underground Christians, relied on the recitation of the rosary: the fifteen narratives from the lives of Mary and Christ. The act of physically counting and reciting the rosary was the easiest way to remember and orally teach the narrations after Christianity was illegalized. Painted by a Japanese Christian artist in a European style,[1] Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary is an example of a visual aid used by underground Christians that features Mary as opposed to a “Kannonized” Mary.
[1] Junhyoung Michael Shin, “Avalokiteśvara’s Manifestation as the Virgin Mary: The Jesuit Adaptation and the Visual Conflation in Japanese Catholicism after 1614,” Church History 80, no. 1 (March 1, 2011), 17-19.