A research on the indigenization of Catholicism in Nagasaki prefecture and the Amakusa island.

本研究是日本人对天主教的理解和接受研究的一部分。我在日本进行了20多年的Kakure-kirishitan研究，同时利用历史文献研究了日本从16世纪到地下时代的基督教历史。本研究试图厘清日本江户时代传统的旧基督徒和新近皈依天主教徒的新基督徒(大多生活在大城市)在性格上是否有不同。由于Kakure-kirishitan对许多日本本土宗教的吸收如此之多，我认为旧的世袭基督徒的信仰已经变成了非常日本人的信仰。然而，令我惊讶的是，我无法认识到他们之间的显著差异。首先，我们可以指出，其中一个原因是全球宗教的普遍性，这种宗教被称为天主教。从明治时代开始，巴黎使团的传教士就对日本人进行了严格保守的天主教教育。现在，这种影响仍然很强。日本信徒也顺从了外国传教士，但他们的指示非常严厉，这与其说是为了报答远道而来的日本人，不如说是为了相信基督教本身。

This study is a part of the research of the Japanese understanding and acceptance for Catholicism. I am pursuing my studies on the Kakure-Kirishitan in Japan for more than 20 years and at the same time, on the Christian History from the 16th century to the underground era in Japan by using historical literature. This study tries to clear up if there is a difference of the characters between the old Christians who has traditions of the Edo period and the most of them live in rural area in Japan and the new Christians recently converted into Catholic who mostly live in big towns.Because the Kakure-Kirishitan assimilates so much into many Japanese native religions, I imagined that the old hereditary Christian's faith has been transfigured into very,Japanese like one. Yet to my surprise, I couldn't recognize the significant differences between them.First of all, we can point out that the one of the reasons is the universality which has the global religion called Catholic. From the beginning of Meiji era, the Paris Mission's missionaries very strongly gave strict and conservative catholic education to Japanese. The influence still now strongly remains. The Japanese believers also obeyed submissively to the foreign Missionaries, however their instructions were very much severe, and that was rather to remunerate the devoted efforts to Japanese coming from a long distance than to believe the Christianity itself.