ABSTRACT
From the Jesuit accounts one can reconstruct the story concerning Monica, who struggled for withdrawal from the world in favor of a religious life. Monica was born around 1549 as the first child to Hibiya Ryōkei Diogo and his Buddhist wife of the Naraya family whose Japanese first name is not known.2 No record shows when Monica became converted, but it is likely that she had been baptized with her brother Vicente and sister Agata in 1562 or with her father in 1564 by Padre Gaspar Vilela.3 Young Monica espoused her desire to be a virgem to serve God, which conflicted with her father’s wish to marry her to her uncle, a follower of Jōdo-Shinshū. Monica’s dream was violently broken when her uncle kidnapped and eventually married her. Monica fell ill after the birth of her second child in 1577. The story of her deathbed contains a dramatic scene of her confrontation with her mother and of her mother’s conversion from Jōdo-Shinshū to Christianity.
