Seas of Fortune(174)

The next day, Daizo was dead.

* * *

The ojiyaku had arrived at the cemetery. His title literally meant “the grandfather official,” he was the leader of the local chapter of the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a Jesuit confraternity. As such, he outranked Takuma, who was merely a mizukata, a baptizer.

The ojiyaku held up a candle and slowly and reverently drew two strokes in the air with it, one vertical, the other horizontal. Then he lit it and blew it out, three times in succession, and each time cried, “The way is open!” He lit it a fourth time and placed it down beside the corpse of Daizo, the revered father of Yamaguchi Takuma. Hiraki held his mother’s hand.

He very carefully took out of a bag a small porcelain flask, kissed it, and removed the stopper. Inside was a small quantity of holy water. It was an extremely precious commodity in California. Since there were no priests to bless water locally, it had to be blessed by the imprisoned missionaries back home, and then shipped across the Pacific. The shogunate charged dearly for it. The First Fleet had nearly run out of its entire supply, but fortunately more had been brought over by the Second Fleet.

The ojiyaku dipped a piece of bamboo into the flask and then used it to sprinkle a few drops over the deceased. The mourners then joined him in prayer. They prayed that the man’s soul would go to heaven, and they prayed that the deceased’s ghost would not wander during the first forty-nine days after death, when it was most dangerous to the living.

At last, came the final “Amen!” The ojiyaku put an omaburi, a paper cross, into the deceased’s right ear, and then motioned for the coffin to be closed. There was, of course, a cross incised into the lid. Several strong men grabbed hold of the coffin handles and delicately lowered it into the grave.

The ojiyaku was handed a shovel, and he thrust its blade into the earth. He lifted, and upended the first, ceremonial dirtful onto the coffin. Then he handed the shovel to one of the younger men, and the grave was soon filled in.





Ninth Month, 13th day (October 23, 1635)





There was a long, slow procession to the cemetery outside the town. The colonists placed flowers and lit candles on the graves, and then sat down on the grass nearby and opened their picnic baskets. They spent most of the day “visiting” with (and sometimes toasting) the dead.

Their serenity was disturbed by the arrival of Franciscus and his followers, some of whom looked as though they had been doing some drinking of their own.

“Are you good Christians?” he asked the mourners. “It is good to pray, in church, for the reduction of the departed’s time in Purgatory. But I think that some of you have gone beyond that. How many of you keep ihai in your homes? Do you burn incense and kowtow to them, as if their souls were enshrined in them? Do you pray to your ancestors, asking them to aid you, as if they were the demons who masquerade back in Nippon as buddhas and kamis? Do you have butsudan or kamidana in your homes?

“If you have done any of those things, then you are not Christians at all, you are apostates. You should be denied all communion    s of the Church and when you die, you will go to Hell for all eternity.”

There was a stunned silence. It was Otomurai, the day for remembering those recently dead, and praying that if they were in purgatory, that their souls would quickly pass into heaven. Before Christianity was banned in Japan, there would have been a mass in church, at least in those towns that had a church. But a mass could only be celebrated with a priest. Now, the kirishitan had to make do with Otomurai, itself a fractured memory of the Catholic All Souls’ Day. To the mourners, there was nothing un-Christian about what they were doing.

Yamaguchi Takuma tried to intercede. “Please, Brother Franciscus, you are disturbing the harmony of the occasion. Let us have the leaders of the confraternities meet with you to discuss your concerns, and we—”

“Why should I consult with you? Are you my equals in Christian learning? I studied the faith in a seminary in Manila. You had what, ten days instruction in the catechisms, spread over as many years?

“And as for you, Takuma, you are one of the big offenders! You have a butsudan, wreathed in incense. Why, I think your father’s death is divine punishment for your family’s sins!”

Takuma’s eyes widened. “How dare you!”

“To Takuma’s house,” Franciscus shouted. “Smash the butsudan, burn the ihai! Set an example for the community; no backsliding is to be tolerated.”

Takuma tried to block them, but was knocked down. But Franciscus and his followers didn’t get very far, as Takuma’s friends slammed into them.