Praktyki magiczne w japońskich nowożytnych narracjach o chrześcijaństwie

In Japan, the beginning of the seventeenth century gave birth to a new type of literature – anti-Catholic fiction, which aimed at fostering hostility towards foreign missionaries among the mass reader. Late examples of such literature attributed to the apostles of the new faith several supernatural powers (i.e. the ability to fly, disappear, tell fortunes), that separated them from their human dimension. One of the common themes featured in eighteenth and nineteenth century works was a magical experiment which involved conjuring a ghost. Designed to attract the “Catholic sect”, it brought about a campaign of persecution from the authorities instead. Despite adopting a chronicle-like convention in the anti-Catholic fiction, as the paper indicates, it relied heavily on pre-existing legends about the Japanese sorcerer Kashin Koji. Finally, the experiment was most likely imitated in the real word and reused as a method of recruitment by the nineteenth century quasi-Catholic sect established by Mizuno Gunki.