ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how women and the Jesuits crafted and used Kirishitan literature in households, which became a specific kind of “third space” where the text-creators crisscrossed between the foreign and local, public and private, communal and domestic, clergy and lay, and male and female spheres. It focuses on a range of Kirishitan texts and examines how they reveal traces of the collaboration between foreign and Japanese-born Jesuits and women. The chapter explains the basic doctrines of the 12 schools of Buddhism, Taoism, Shinto, and Confucianism and defend the Kirishitan religion. In 1612, Tokugawa Ieyasu reissued the ban of Christianity and began arresting clergy and Kirishitans. The “Christian Century” was a period when rapid political and social changes took place in Japan. The Hosokawas were a powerful and savvy clan and remained so throughout the many political power shifts.
