Kirishitan Women in Bondage Defying Persecution in Japan, 1625-1630

Abstract

This article inspects cases of three Kirishitan (Christian) women servants in the Jesuit accounts of Shimabara, Japan, between 1625 and 1630, arguing that global and national changes resulted in the worsened enslaving conditions for servant-class women in Japan. The arrival of Portuguese traders and the Jesuit mission in the mid-sixteenth century, the Jesuits’ initial engagement in the slave trade, the ongoing civil wars, Japan’s invasion of Korea, the shogunate’s total ban of Christianity and Iberian commerce, and its consolidation of patriarchal structures by the 1640s accelerated the decline of women’s status. The sources, read in this context, show that under severe religious persecution, these women’s Kirishitan identity was crucial in their resistance to the multiple systems of oppression. This article is part of the special theme section on Women, Children, and Enslaved People in the Portuguese Empire in Asia, 16th-18th Centuries, guest-edited by Rozely Vigas and Rômulo Ehalt.

Keywords

• slavery
• Kirishitan
• maidservants
• prostitution
• Jesuits
• Japan