Kate Wildman Nakai - Christian Sorcerers on Trial: Records of the 1827 Osaka Incident

The idea for this book originated when one of the authors, Fumiko Miyazaki, came across a facsimile manuscript titled Record of the Case of the Pernicious Sect at the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo. What immediately drew her attention was the wealth of details that this judicial record dating from 18271829 had to offer about the lives of a group of people in Osaka and Kyoto who were accused of engaging in subversive religious activities. The prominent place of women in the incident added to the fascination of this material, and it struck us as a compelling candidate for a new translation project.

This volume is a sequel to Lust, Commerce, and Corruption: An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard, by an Edo Samurai, on which the authors collaborated together with Anne Walthall and John Breen (Columbia University Press, 2014; abridged paperback, 2017). That book presented a translation of a comprehensive critique of Japanese society as it appeared to an Edo warrior in 1816. Like the vast majority of Edo-period sources, the critique projects a male and upper-strata perspective on the circumstances of the time. The author undoubtedly would have felt that the 1827 incident confirmed his conclusions about the sorry state of contemporary society, particularly as regards the activities of the marginal floating population of urban residents whom he condemned as idlers. At the same time, the records of the case offer a view from a quite different angle into the world of such idlers. This second translation thus complements Lust, Commerce, and Corruption while also opening a window into corners of late Edo society rarely visible in a manner this direct.

We have received advice and assistance from numerous people and organizations in preparing this volume. We are indebted to the institutions holding the two manuscript copies of the judicial record on which the translation is based: the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo and the Center for Modern Japanese Legal and Political Documents attached to the University of Tokyo Graduate School for Law and Politics. We would like to express our gratitude especially to Yabuta Yutaka, professor emeritus at Kansai University, who offered his expertise on matters related to the Edo-period administration of Osaka. The maps were produced by Sat Hirotaka of Ritsumeikan University; the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages of Oslo University provided funding for them. The illustrations were edited for this publication by Chiba Azusa. Shimura Kiyoshi kindly allowed us to use his redrawing of the Tobita execution grounds.