Kirishitan Women in Bondage Defyi This article inspects cases of three Kirishitan Christian women servants in the Jesuit accounts of Shimabara, Japan, between and , arguing that global and national changes resulted in the worsened enslaving conditions for servant-class women in Japan. Erica Durham and the CTS librarians secured interlibrary loans.
The Jesuits also engaged in the Portuguese slave trade, triggering anger from the Japanese authorities. By the s, the Tokugawa shogunate founded in entirely rejected Christianity and the Iberian trade.
It also solidified patriarchal class structures, binding the servant-class women in enslaving conditions. In addition to the heavy social oppression, Kirishitan women servants suffered severe persecution. This essay examines how these global and national changes impacted Kirishitan women servants at a local level.
It argues that the women resisted the multivalent systems of oppression using their Kirishitan identity as the only weapon. She died during torture in After enduring numerous torture sessions, she succumbed to apostasy in Because the Portuguese empire never colonized Japan, but its influence significantly shifted the Japanese trajectory, the enslaved Kirishitan women of this essay, who lived in the liminal space between patriarchal powers under the overlapping shadows, require different sets of lenses.
First is the examination of the enslavement of women within Japan. The second aspect is enslaved women sold outside their native countries. He shows the development of the moral theological debates in the Salamanca school in Europe and the Catholic missions in Asia, laws issued by the Portuguese, Papal, and Japanese authorities, and the Jesuit initiative and eventual abandonment of the Japanese slave trade.
