Talk:Kirishitan

This article is not written from a neutral point of view
Especially the military activity section. This long section hardly gives any information about military activity of Japanese converts. Rather speculates about Spanish or Portuguese invasion of China. This invasion never occurred(and therefore should not be mentioned in military activity section). Also claims preparation for a Christian rebellion against Toyotomi Hideyoshi which also never occurred(this section is supposed to be about military activity, not intentions). Not to forget that the author is trying to prove his opinion that Christian daimyo is not less severe than a non-Christian daimyo by mentioning a massacre of Koreans by Japanese who had at least one daimyo(who happens to be Christian) in their rank. How come destruction of Buddhist temples(this is the first time a read about Christian minority destroying shrines of a majority religion in potentionaly hostile country) is mentioned in this section. It is not a military activity.

Also the "propagation strategy" section claims that number of Christians under Christian daimyo "drastically" increased. What does mean "drastically" in this context? Where the commoners drastically forced to accept Christianity? Or was the growth peaceful but just so high that it could be described "drastic" using slang language.

Early policy towards Catholicism section : "By 1579, at the height of missionary activity, there were only about 130,000 converts." I think that this is quite a large number regarding that there was no state support of Christianity or state forced conversions.

St.Francis Xavier as a slave trader - seems ridiculous. I never heard about Jesuits slave trading in Japan. I would like to see the source. Maybe some kind of nationalist propaganda book from Taishō or Shōwa eras.

There is no mention about insane violence towards Christians. The martyrs(including native Japanese) do not have a single section in this article.

The Japanese government responsible for persecution of Christians is being excused while Christians are blamed for the tragedy and evil which followed the ban on Christianity. I read about forced dechristianization and persecution of Christians in Japan from secular sources but never read about forced christianization in Japan, China or anywhere in the Far East.

This article is totally written from anti-Christian point of view. Worst NPOV violation I ever met on wikipedia. This article is trying to excuse the Christian holocaust in Japan.

Isidoros47 (talk) 10:32, 20 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, right. The number of people who were executed was relatively low, and the converts were given plenty of chances to recant (the missionaries to withdraw from the country). The importance of the "persecution" is played up in Eurocentric, anti-Japanese sources. The authorities were very slow to actually enforce their edicts. There were plenty of government-forced conversions, although few by the national central government (Nobunaga, through his pro-foreign policies, may have caused some) - they were instead brought about by individual daimyou who converted and forced Christianity on their subjects. This probably accounted for the vast majority of the conversions. If you want a source, try Japan: A Short Cultural History by Sansom, which is "still the best introduction to Japanese history" (Times Literary Supplement) and "remains to this day the standard work in the field" (World Affairs Quarterly). Japan - An Attempt at Interpretation (Hearn) takes the same view, and, although I would not consider it a particularly reliable source on history, is more highly regarded in Japan and elsewhere than most others. Clearly the "secular" sources you read were written by Christians with their own agenda, even if they were not in the direct employ of the Church. I rather think that thanks to anti-Japanese literature this is one of the worst NPOV-violations on Wikipedia in the opposite way. elvenscout742 (talk) 22:30, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Don't be silly. I never said that the secular sources I read were written by Christians. Claiming that every literature that does not excuse religious holocaust in Japan is anti-Japanese is paranoiac.

Isidoros47 (talk) 22:04, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * My personal feelings regarding this article is that it could do with alot of cleaning. The statement about Christian daimyos involved in massacres in Korea comes across as an almost adolescent "See! Christians are no better!". Really what should be said there is that the daimyos converted to christianity for practical and economic reasons and not usually out of any heartfelt change of faith or heart, hence their religion did not influence their behavior drastically.. or something. I think the article is just badly written and needs to be fixed up. Kamatsu (talk) 15:08, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I have finally removed the incredible allegation of Jesuits trading Christian Japanese virgins for gunpowder! It's been in the article months despite being unknown to normal histories and being based on a single extremely unreliable source. The action of removing the ludicrous 500,000 figure was insufficient, since by removing an obviously ridiculous figure that change almost makes the allegation more credible and less easily disproven. This allegation comes under the WP guidance that an exceptional allegation requires an exceptional source. This does not exist. The allegation would seem more of an internal Japanese propaganda "justification" for the subsequent repression and massacre of Christians.  Xan  dar  01:30, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Stumbled upon this after having my own run-in with that 500,000 statistic on different articles. Read in Talk:Martyrs_of_Japan for more info.  For what it's worth I do seem to recall that this statistic had been added by the same person to different articles.  I had a lot of fun trying to track down this claim :/ basically it seems like someone copy-pasted it from a blog citation of a sensationalist book and it spread from that. Joren (talk) 16:56, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
 * It is possible that 500,000 slaves are dealt during 50 years.

At that time, it is history recording that Japan slave is dealt all over the world —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ooggii (talk • contribs) 02:38, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
 * We need more than one person that says this happened, and it needs to be a first-hand quotation. Do you have other sources you can provide?  I'd love to find more information.  I got into this issue because I saw this claim somewhere else on Wikipedia and I was fascinated by it, since I've read plenty of history about Japan and had never heard this idea about 500,000 women before.  I searched everywhere and could not find anything talking about Japanese women being exported to Europe at all, let alone in such large numbers.  That is why I decided to remove it, because it seems unreliable to me - I can't find a single person anywhere that says this is true other than one single author.  If you can find a reputable first-hand source that states that 500,000 women were traded as slaves in exchange for gunpowder, please let us know - I'd love to put it on here, if it is true of course :)
 * I see you have replied on your talk page. I'll go read your reply now :)  Joren (talk) 03:19, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Sioraf (talk) 19:57, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Khh. I'll sort this.

Kirishitan crucifix
A Japanese Kirishitan crucifix, 17th century. Feel free to insert it in the article. Photographed at the Paris Foreign Missions Society. PHG (talk) 15:10, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ PHG Per Honor et Gloria 07:08, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Japanese Kannon/Virgin Mary
Here is an image of the Virgin Mary disguised as Kannon (Guan Yin) from 17th century Japan. Feel free to insert it in the article. Cheers PHG (talk) 09:04, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ PHG Per Honor et Gloria 07:08, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

How to resolve NPOV, reference concerns
Hey, anyone still here? I got to poking through the article, and I was curious where some of the text came from, so I dug through the edit history. It seems a lot of the unsourced material was added here, in two edits, with not a single source to support them. Furthermore, this was done five years ago. I am concerned that we have allowed unsourced claims to stand for this long... ?  That's disturbing.

Basically, there are two things hurting this article. One, most of the sections, while containing what would be useful information, do not have any sources at all. Two, there are concerns about POV, whether or not this article is slanted against Christians throughout Japan's history. If the article were sourced, it would be easier to evaluate for POV, but since it's not it just makes it even harder to tell what's real and what's not, let alone whether undue emphasis is being given.

Given the length of time involved, I don't think we are likely to get any followup as far as what sources could support these claims. What should we do about this material? Would anyone know of some good sources to buttress these claims, if indeed they are factual? I fear if we go through this article with a fine-toothed comb and just delete everything uncited, we may not have any article left! So I'd like to ask anyone who might be watching this article, is there's any way we can salvage/prune this and get some sources before we break out the weed whacker? Whoever wrote this gives the impression of having spent a lot of time studying the topic; seems a waste to just delete it all, but it really does feel like original research to me. I just wish they'd thought to tell us where they got this from so we could make an informed evaluation of it. Would appreciate ideas. Thanks,

-- Joren (talk) 11:38, 23 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I would love to contribute to this article, though I think the first step would be some carefully controlled pruning of any un-sourced claims, particularly statistical ones. By carefully controlled, I mean selecting individual sentences or paragraphs, posting/referencing them here at the talk page, and leaving them open for discussion and, more importantly, sources, before amendment/deletion. If, then, the article has to be built up from a relatively skeletal form again, so be it. I speak as a greenhorn Wikipedian; any alternative plans of action are welcome.
 * Personally, my instinct and own knowledge of the issue does seem to suggest that the editor had an anti-Jesuit or perhaps simply anti-missionary bias. On the other hand, it's possible that some of the information is correct and useful. I'm going to try and dig out some scholarly references and will be back here with further commentary ASAP.
 * Thank you everyone for your attention and assistance.


 * Edofmund (talk) 07:53, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Pro-Christian NPOV
This article does need a bit of touch up to take out some of the more opprobrious POV issues. But I'd like to put forward, for the record, that if anything it seems biased in FAVOUR of Christian interests. The most obvious example is the utterly ridiculous snipey-snit against "non-religious researchers" viz a viz martyrdom. But the article in general stresses issues, and even nomenclature, that assume a Christian reader. This may be unavoidable, as the topic at hand is likely to be rather more interesting to Christians. Indeed, far from "anti-missionary bias", several of the link "sources" are in Japanese, from decidedly non-scholarly, sketchy Christian missionary groups. Furthermore, if anything, I would hope the article examine in more depth the imperialism of the period and its use of the Christian church as an ideological vanguard in colonizing nations. (The Tokugawa's response seems rather reasonable, if heavy handed, in light of the geopolitics of the time.)

Whatever the stakeholders of this page decide, please remember that not all readers are interested in a paean to one cult's martyrs, but that wikipedia should strive for dynamic disinterest. --WuShufei (talk) 12:18, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Merge to History of Roman Catholicism in Japan
Apart from the POV issues, this page duplicates History of Roman Catholicism in Japan, a more normal title, and the word kirishitan is rarely used in English texts. Which is okay for Wiktionary, but not Wikipedia. In ictu oculi (talk) 11:46, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Support. Creating articles based on foreign words, instead of English-language concepts, is only justified when there is no English equivalent or when the foreign term has been adopted into our language as the usual name of a notable subject. Neither of those exceptions applies here. Moonraker (talk) 09:06, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Replete with Errors
This article is peppered with errors. For example, St. Francis Xavier never engaged in trading; he was frantically busy with evangelizing during his short stay in Japan. Juan Fernandes was a Jesuit brother, not a priest. Captured Kirishitan were not all sent to Nagasaki for execution, and the execution-ground in Nagasaki was not Mount Unzen but the slope called Nishi-zaka, which is on Mount Kompira. Some Catholics were indeed tortured (some to death) on Mount Unzen—which is on the Shimabara Peninsula, not in the city of Nagasaki—as well, but the main execution ground for Christians in the Nagasaki region was Nishi-zaka. It is also the place to which the Twenty-Six Martyrs were marched from faraway Kyoto to meet their deaths by crucifixion. All these errors I have gleaned from just a glance at the article; I have no time at present to read it in detail. Amakusaluke (talk) 19:24, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV
I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:
 * This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:
 * There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
 * It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
 * In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:34, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Well there's still a massive problem with this article. I have moved it to a more precise title Hidden Christians of Japan, which happens to also be justified per WP:EN and WP:CRITERIA but equally should help the purpose of such an article be clearer compared to other overlapping articles. And if not merge. Titling in Japanese is no solution to the overlap issue. In ictu oculi (talk) 08:23, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

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