ABSTRACT
The Society of Jesus decided early that they would perpetually forgo the establishment of a second order for women.2 Yet, beginning with Isabel Roser and her companions, women found meaningful vocation in the Jesuit way of “helping souls.”3 Wherever the Jesuit mission went, women responded to their active apostolate. Women pursued their vocations, often forming their own societies on the Jesuit model, and were successful in their ministries.4 In Japan, too, women catechists preached, taught catechism and other Christian literature, translated and wrote Christian literature, persuaded women and men for conversion, baptized, heard confessions, disputed with the Shinto-Buddhist opponents, and cared for their flocks pastorally in various places. With a sense of professional identity as Jesuit “coadjutors,” the women catechists carried out significant apostolic works of the kerygma, sacraments, and mercy.5 They functioned very much as the men catechists, but without receiving the title and benefits of dōjuku and kanbō.6
