Bones of 18th-century Italian priest shed new light on Japan’s Christian past
TOKYO: Disguised as a samurai in kimono and topknot, Italian missionary Giovanni Battista Sidotti stole ashore on a small Japanese island in 1708, daring to enter a land hostile to his Christian creed.
He was quickly captured by authorities, who saw the alien faith as a threat to national identity, and thrown in a prison for Christians, where torture was routine.
Now, more than 300 years later, researchers using DNA analysis have confirmed that remains unearthed from a Tokyo construction site almost certainly belong to Sidotti — and say they back up historical accounts of his treatment.
Sidotti helped shaped Japan’s view of the Western world with his knowledge after he won over the nation’s leading scholar of the day, historians say.
But he fell from grace after refusing to give up his faith and his final days and death have been shrouded in mystery.
Christian missionaries made aggressive inroads in Japan in the 16th and 17th centuries, gaining adherents among commoners and even powerful warlords.
But fears they were an advance guard for European colonialism spurred a brutal crackdown long before Sidotti arrived.
Three sets of bones were unearthed in July 2014 from land that now forms the parking lot of an upscale condominium but was once the site of the prison — the Kirishitan Yashiki, or Christian Mansion.
Its only reminder today is a stone marker commemorating the spot.
National Museum of Nature and Science researchers near Tokyo carefully cleaned the skeletal fragments before piecing them together like human jigsaw puzzles in a painstaking process that took more than six months.
Kenichi Shinoda, the museum’s chief of anthropology, analysed DNA from a tooth and concluded that one of them had the same genetic type as present day Italians.
Japan’s historical records show that only two missionaries from Italy had been held at the site, Sidotti and Giuseppe Chiara.
The latter was the model for the main character of a Portuguese priest in late Japanese author Shusaku Endo’s novel ‘Silence’, which director Martin Scorsese is turning into an upcoming film. — AFP