Posted on 06/29/2022 6:06:12 PM PDT by marshmallow
An elderly Catholic sculptor in Nagasaki, Japan, is all set to complete and install the world’s tallest wooden statue of the Virgin Mary after four decades of time, energy and money.
Eiji Oyamatsu, 88, a Catholic from Fujisawa, Kanagawa prefecture, will unveil the 10-meter wooden statue of Mary with the child Jesus at the end of June, reported Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun.
The statue pays tribute to thousands of Christian martyrs of Nagasaki in the 17th century.
The single-handed effort by Oyamatsu encouraged a group of volunteers to form the Citizens’ Association for Minami-Shimabara World Heritage in 2018. The group from Nagasaki prefecture has bought land to install the statue to honor the martyrs of the Shimabara-Amakusa Rebellion, aiming to turn the site into a popular shrine.
The revolt, mostly by local Catholic peasants, stemmed from grievances over excessive taxation and abuses by officials of the Shimabara peninsula and the Amakusa-retto islands. It was brutally crushed by the 120,000-strong army of the military government of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The suppression between 1637 and 1638 left about 37,000 Christians dead and effectively ended Christianity in Japan until its revival in the 19th century.
The purge forced all remaining Christians to renounce their faith publicly. However, many Christians continued to practice their faith secretly and came to be known in modern times as kakure kirishitan (hidden Christians.
(Excerpt) Read more at ucanews.com ...
That is an impressive display of discipline.
It’s incredibly beautiful. I just wish there were more pictures with the article
Just so you know this little tidbit. Miyamoto Musashi fought against the Christians in the Shimabara-Amakusa Rebellion.
http://www.miyamotomusashi.eu/battles/the-shimabara-rebellion.html
Just beautiful. Looks as if they’ll stir and walk around in a minute.
Gosh, it’s WOOD!
The faces are lovely.
Bttt.
5.56mm
Interesting...the Dutch even helped against the Christian rebels.
The carving of the faces is much more refined than that of the rest. I’m sure it’s deliberate ... I’d like to see more pictures to get a better handle on the effect.
40 years, eh. Significant number of years.
I guess we’ll have to wait.
https://en.harajo-maria.com/?page_id=383
(Seems to be some discrepancy as to how long he’s worked on it.)
Nice photo here: https://images.app.goo.gl/ubyPZ1BSWtj7Px2HA
Thank you. Beautiful, and interesting from an engineering point of view.
Found out a couple of years back that one of my great grandfathers was a full blooded Dutchman. Reading up on Dutch maritime trade history has convinced me they were the most evil of the 17th Century European colonial powers.
The Dutch were very aggressive Protestants back then and the Japanese rebels were Catholic. That, and the Dutch were rivals of the Spanish and Portuguese for trade with the Japanese.
The Tokugawas were suspicious of ALL foreigners. But because the Protestant Dutch were bitter enemies of the Catholic Spanish/Portuguese (the Dutch had to fight multiple wars to free themselves from Spanish rule), and since all Japanese Christians were Catholics who were converted mostly by Spanish Jesuit missionaries, the Dutch were therefore tolerated in limited numbers by the Tokugawas on the theory that "the enemy of my enemy..."
Two Dutch traders witnessed this persecution at its height as they roamed Japan with their travel hosts. One scene they described in a book they later wrote, was watching a number of Christians who had refused to publicly renounce Jesus, being led to their public execution.
Their eyes were gouged out beforehand, and as they were dragged off to the killing ground, they were forced to pass close to their young children who were being tortured in order to make them cry out to their parents in great pain and fear, begging them to renounce Jesus in order to stop the torture.
The thought of these martyrs dying with the screams of their children in their ears begging them to do something to stop the pain, has long haunted me since I first read it.
Terrible, as was the Boxer rebellion, as well as Rome requiring RC rulers to rid/exterminate all it deemed to be heretics, and the horrors of inquisitions, even though the scope of such has been exaggerated, and in general, the use of the sword of men to punish theological dissent, to "punish them by physical means, that is, coercive jurisdiction" (Catholic Encyclopedia Jurisdiction) by Protestants as well.
Valid separation of church and state - the latter of which is given the sword of men to punish law-breakers - excludes the state from requiring faith in a certain religion, though its laws and principals regarding morals flow from religion, that of the general Christians faith, and official affirmation of it is to be expressed, versus atheism which is what the absence of expressing dependence upon God and gratitude to Him implicitly promotes.
Oyamatsu has named the statue the St. Mary Kannon of Hara Castle. The name refers to Maria Kannon, the image of the Virgin Mary in the guise of Kannon, a deity of Buddhism. The hidden Christians in the area worshipped the Virgin Mary in this image when Christianity was banned in Japan from the 17th through 19th centuries.
How dare they use the word "worshiped!" Any Catholic apologist will deny this is what is fostered (by their hyper-exaltation of Mary far far far "above that which is written," 1 Co. 4:6) and since Catholics do not use "latreia" in describing such then they deny doing so, as if worship is only described by the use of that word, rather than actions and other words as well.
One would have a hard time in Bible times explaining kneeling before a statue and praising the entity it represented in the unseen world, beseeching such for Heavenly help, and making offerings to them, and giving glory and titles and ascribing supernatural attributes to such which are never given in Scripture to created beings (except to false gods), including having the uniquely Divine power glory to hear and respond to virtually infinite numbers of prayers individually addressed to them.
Moses, put down those rocks! I was only engaging in hyper dulia, not adoring her. Can't you tell the difference?
Which manner of "adulation" could constitute worship in Scripture, yet Catholics imagine that by playing word games then they can avoid crossing the invisible line between mere "veneration" and worship.
Note that the Catholic Encyclopedia speculates that a further reinforcement of Marian devotion, “
was derived from the cult of the angels, which, while pre-Christian in its origin, was heartily embraced by the faithful of the sub-Apostolic age. It seems to have been only as a sequel of some such development that men turned to implore the intercession of the Blessed Virgin....Evidence regarding the popular practice of the early centuries is almost entirely lacking...,” (Catholic Encyclopedia > Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary)
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