‘Konnichi-wa,’ said Father Léon Gracy.
The young man turned to Father Gracy, bowed his head slightly, smiled and said, ‘Good afternoon, Father.’
‘Good afternoon,’ said Father Gracy. ‘I do not wish to disturb you, however if there is anything I can help you with, I will be here.’
‘Thank you,’ replied the young man. ‘Actually, and please forgive my ignorance as I am a visitor from Tokyo, but is this the place where the hidden, underground Christians first revealed themselves to Father Petitjean?’
‘Yes,’ said Father Gracy. ‘According to the letter he wrote the next day, Father Petitjean came across a group of twelve or fifteen Japanese men, women and children standing outside the church – this was very soon after it had been erected in 1865 – and when he opened the door to the church, they followed him inside. He came to this spot, or one very near, and then, when he began to pray the Our Father, an elderly lady named Isaberina Yuri Sugimoto, placing her hand upon her heart, said to Father Petitjean in a whisper, The heart of all those present is the same as yours …’
‘The Miracle of Ōura,’ said the young man.
‘Indeed,’ said Father Gracy. ‘After some two hundred and fifty years of isolation, it truly was a miracle.’
‘But forgive me,’ said the young man again, ‘for in this miracle were not the seeds of a tragedy already sown? When one reads of the persecutions and deaths that followed, what we call the kuzure, or the Fourth Collapse? Sincerely, Father, should these Christians not have stayed hidden?’
Father Gracy stared down upon this young Japanese man in his Western suit, seated in the pew, and smiled and said, ‘May I sit with you a while?’
‘Of course,’ said the young man. ‘Please …’
Father Gracy sat down beside the young man, before the tomb of Father Petitjean and the statue of the Holy Mother and Child, and said, ‘Indeed, what you say is true. The Urakami Yonban Kuzure was most severe. Many of the once hidden Christians were tortured, and almost three and a half thousand were sent into exile and forced labour, and it is said at least six hundred of them died. Indeed, it was a tragedy. But that very tragedy, those persecutions and exiles, so shocked the world that the Meiji government was forced to repeal the ban on religious freedom, a ban that had stood for over two and a half centuries. May I ask, have you been to Urakami?’
‘Not yet,’ said the young man. ‘I hope to go tomorrow.’
Father Gracy smiled again. ‘That’s good, that’s good. For when you visit the magnificent new church at Urakami, one of the grandest churches in the whole of East Asia, I hope you will see, I hope you will feel the persecution the Urakami Christians endured, the suffering they bore, was not in vain.’
‘I’m sure,’ said the young man, his eyes fixed upon the statue of the Holy Mother and Child, and then started to say, ‘But …’
‘Please,’ said Father Gracy. ‘Please, do go on …’
‘Well,’ said the young man, ‘I have read that some of the so-called Hidden Christians are still not yet reconciled to the Church; that the beliefs and practices they had followed during their long time underground had become heretical, that they had veered from the doctrine of the established Church in Rome, and they are still now reluctant to renounce these beliefs.’
‘For some,’ said Father Gracy, ‘there has been a schism, yes.’
‘I am very interested in the history and stories of the Christian faith in my country,’ said the young man. ‘And I have read and collected many such stories and tales. But then I am often left feeling that the entire history of the Christian faith in Japan is one of a series of misunderstandings …’
‘Misunderstandings,’ asked Father Gracy. ‘In what way?’
‘A misunderstanding of God, the very meaning of God.’
Father Gracy glanced at the young man beside him in the pew, then turned his face back, back towards the tomb of Father Petitjean, as he asked, ‘Which particular stories and tales are you thinking of …?’
‘Well,’ said the young man, ‘and only if you have the time, there is one story which might serve to illustrate my point.’
‘I have the time,’ said Father Gracy. ‘And I, too, am interested in the stories of our faith in Japan, and have read and am familiar with a great many of them. Which story do you have in mind?’
‘The Faith of Genta,’ said the young man.
Father Gracy, his eyes still fixed upon the tomb of Father Petitjean, shook his head and said, ‘I don’t know this story. Please …’
‘Well, this happened in a time of persecution,’ began the young man. ‘And happened near to here. One day, on the banks of the Urakami River, close to its mouth by the bay and the sea, an old woman found a baby boy, abandoned in a bamboo basket, hidden in the tall reeds. The old woman was a servant in the house of the head of the village of Urakami, a man named Saburōji, and she took the baby in its basket back to her master’s house. Her master and his wife had many children of their own, and so had no need for an extra mouth to feed, an extra mouth whose hands could not yet work for its food. Yet the old woman had been a good and faithful servant, tending to the master since he was himself a child, then welcoming his wife, helping to raise their children as though they were her own, for the old woman had never married, and so had no children of her own. And so, seeing the old woman taking pity on this baby in its basket, the master and his wife took pity on their servant,
