Description
The Centre for Japanese Research (CJR) at the University of British Columbia presents a series of online book launches to celebrate recent publications about premodern Japan. For our September event, co-authors Fumiko Miyazaki and Kate Wildman Nakai will be discussing Christian Sorcerers on Trial: Records of the 1827 Osaka Incident in conversation with Jolyon Thomas, with a message from co-author Mark Teeuwen.
• Kate Wildman Nakai, Professor Emerita, Sophia University, Tokyo.
• (Facilitator) Jolyon Thomas, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Time
Thu, Sept 24, 2020 5-6:15PM in Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Thu, Sept 24, 2020 8-9:15PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Fri, Sept 25, 2020 9-10:15AM in Japan TimeRegistration
Zoom Webinar access will be provided a few days before the event. If you do not receive an email with access details by the day before the event, please email bianca.chui@ubc.caFor disability accommodations, questions, or concerns, please either email bianca.chui@ubc.ca.We can also be reached via Twitter @ubcCJR
About the Book
Christian Sorcerers on Trial: Records of the 1827 Osaka Incident
Published by Columbia University Press
In 1829, three women and three men were paraded through Osaka and crucified. Placards set up at the execution ground proclaimed their crime: they were devotees of the “pernicious creed” of Christianity. Middle-aged widows, the women made a living as mediums, healers, and fortune-tellers. Two of the men dabbled in divination; the third was a doctor who collected books in Chinese on Western learning and Christianity.
This was a startling development. No one in Japan had been identified and punished as a Christian for more than a century, and now, avowed devotees of the proscribed sect had appeared in the very heart of the realm. Just decades before the arrival of Perry’s black ships and the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate, the incident reignited fears of Christians as evil sorcerers, plotting to undermine society and overthrow the country.
Christian Sorcerers on Trial offers annotated translations of a range of sources on this sensational event, from the 1827 arrest of the alleged Christians through the case’s afterlife. The protagonists’ testimonies relate with striking detail their life histories, practices, and motivations. The record of deliberations in Edo and communications between Osaka and Edo officials illuminate the operation of the Tokugawa system of criminal justice. Retellings of the incident show how the story was transmitted and received. Translated and put in context by Fumiko Miyazaki, Kate Wildman Nakai, and Mark Teeuwen, the sources provide students and scholars alike with an extraordinarily rich picture of late Edo social life, religious practices, and judicial procedures.
For more information on the book, please click here.
Interested in learning more, visit this blog post on the Columbia University Press Blog!