Anti-Christian Surveillance in Japan
In this blog post, James Harry Morris sketches the contributions of his article “Anti-Kirishitan Surveillance in Early Modern Japan,” which was recently published in Surveillance & Society.
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The paper “Anti-Kirishitan Surveillance in Early Modern Japan” emerged from my interactions with Dr. Eric Stoddart (one of the guest editors of the Surveillance and Society Vol. 16, №4 Special Issue) at the University of St Andrews. During my doctoral studies at the University, I had belonged to the Center for the Study of Religion and Politics of which Dr. Stoddart was the Associate Director. When listening to Dr. Stoddart’s papers on the topic of Surveillance and Religion, I couldn’t help but make links to my own field of research. It struck me that whilst many scholars had dealt with the persecution and hiding of Japan’s 17th Century Christian communities, few scholars had approached the topic explicitly from the standpoint of surveillance studies. Indeed, in most works references to surveillance never gleaned more than a passing reference. After several informal conversations with Dr. Stoddart over the period of my doctoral studies, I finally decided to sit down and write a paper that would seek to explore the surveillance of Japanese Roman Catholics (J. Kirishitan) in the 17th to 19th Centuries.
The paper can perhaps best be described as an introduction to the history and development of anti-Christian surveillance in Japan. After providing some general context to the religious and political background of Japan in the 16th and 17th Centuries, the paper chronologically explores the development of the anti-Christian policies of the Shōgun of the early 17th Century. These developments have been described in numerous works where they have primarily been viewed as sequential moments in the intensification of anti-Christian persecution. Whilst the paper does not dispute the fact that the development of anti-Christian policy led to the intensification of the anti-Christian persecutions, it seeks to link these developments to the construction of an anti-Christian, and later more general, surveillance system.
Following the above noted chronological exploration, the paper focuses on different facets of the system created in order to surveil Christians. The facets discussed include the use and remuneration of informants; surveillance through the family unit; the use of temple registration to confirm individuals’ religious affiliation; the creation of yearly census-like registers by the local secular authorities; the surveillance of and collection of information on the descendants of Christians; and systemized tests of faith. The collection of registers and the surveillance of the descendants of Christians has received little attention outside of Japan. These registers are not only historically important but foreshadow the modern-day creation of databases based on data collected through surveillance. As such, I chose to include some translations as examples for the paper’s readers. I hope that this part of the paper has aided and will aid in disseminating knowledge of these registers to English speaker readers. This section of the paper also sought to argue that the separate facets of the Tokugawa Shōgunate’s anti-Christian apparatus were part of a double system of surveillance based on both political and religious centers of power. This I hope will help to elucidate the way in which the Shōgunate, while building its own surveillance systems based on local and national centres of political power, also outsourced the responsibilities of surveillance to religious organizations.
The final part of the paper explores the limitations of the systems of surveillance built by the Tokugawa Shōgunate and their legacies. Here I sought to build upon the pioneering work of Peter Nosco, who has argued that:
1. The authorities recognizing that they could not control people’s beliefs, sought only to control their outward behaviour.
2. The authorities knew of hidden Christian communities but chose not to act against them.
Nosco’s thesis is convincing, and I sought to add to it by situating his arguments in the wider context of 16th and 17th Century Japanese religious and political policies, and the changing focuses and recommendations of the missionaries. Where appropriate I also sought to provide additional explanations and evidence for Nosco’s arguments. Finally, I briefly noted how the system of surveillance used by the Tokugawa Shōgunate have influenced post-Edo Period religious surveillance.
The surveillance of Christians and their descendants in Japan from the 16th Century through to the 19th Century is an important, though often-overlooked, topic. I hope that the paper will allow readers to become acquainted with the history and major facets of the surveillance system built by the Tokugawa Shōgunate.
