The priests of the Paris Foreign Missions Society, who appeared in times of hardship for Christians in Nagasaki, became "more than God".

"Mission" released in 1986.
This work depicts the Jesuit mission to South America and the conflict with colonization. I wanted to see this movie again and watched it online.

At the time of the release, I was in Tokyo and had just quit my job, but somehow I was attracted to it and watched it in a small movie theater.

This time, I felt that I finally got the essence of this movie.
It has taken 35 years.

The theme of this movie is not religion, colonial rule, or human drama.
I think that the important thing for a person is to respect life, and that life (existence) should not be discriminated against by any person.

"Mission" is a fiction based on a true story. However, the missionaries who came to Nagasaki have achieved "superhuman deeds" as a historical fact.

In particular, it can be said that the way of life of the priests of the Paris Foreign Missions Society who came to the mission from the end of the Edo period to the Meiji era "influenced people as being more than God" or "lived the supreme way of life as a person". ..

Speaking of the Meiji government, it is a modern government that leads to the current administration, but discrimination is unlimited, and when Christians are arrested and sent to exile, they are counted as "one beast, two beasts". Officials are not treated as humans.
The officials gave the Christians various horrific tortures, only from an enjoyable point of view, "how to prolong the suffering."
Officials stuffed the Christians into an immovable prison for months. Eventually, infants and children died and corpses fell at their feet, but officials left them alone. The drunken samurai also tried and killed a pregnant Christian woman with a baby in her womb with his sword. Officials and rural samurai have repeated atrocities that do not treat Christians as humans.

Infanticide and abandonment were also common among the locals. Children with disabilities and sick children would have been abandoned immediately.

Even if an ordinary child can grow up luckily, the parents do not have the money to raise it, so they left the child as a causative to another house.
In the case of young daughters, parents sometimes sold them to foreign brothels in order to get some money.
This kind of thing is totally unacceptable in the current moral view.

French priests who came in such an era gathered and raised infants and toddlers who were abandoned in the field.
The priests also provide medical care to those who have been most discriminated against, such as leprosy patients.

Especially in Nagasaki, Father De lots, who is still familiarly called "Doro-sama," has achieved far beyond the original category of missionary work. 

I'll itemize some of them.

* When dysentery spread in Nagasaki after the typhoon that struck Kyushu in 1897, De Rotz formed a rescue team and treated them. De Lots, who has studied medicine and pharmacy in the French era, can imagine the Japanese medical system at that time, such as rapid detection of new patients, isolation, preventive measures, disinfection, treatment of sick people, prevention of infection by nurses, etc. I had a very thorough nursing system. It was 23 years before Shigella was discovered in the world.

* De Rotz gathered women who lost their husbands and fathers in a marine accident and daughters who did not have a job, and set up a vocational workshop for bread, macaroni, somen noodles, soy sauce, and textiles.
After that, the vocational workshop developed as a rescue center, and it became a place for secular nuns to live and to promote social welfare for the relief of the poor.
De Rotz taught techniques such as weaving, dyeing, sewing, milling, and oil squeezing, as well as lectures on reading, writing, and arithmetic.
He ordered 20 weaving looms from France, knitting looms from Germany, and knitting calculators from the Netherlands, and he calculated and drew his own drawings to practice weaving.

* De Rotz did not force women to become nuns. Whether or not women became nuns was decided by their free will.
Also, for nuns who wish to marry, De Rotz prepared them for marriage and married them from the monastery.
De Rotz never imposed religion. In this respect, Maki Iwanaga's cross religious order had the same attitude. If they had pushed Catholicism against the people, they would have been rejected immediately.

* De Rotz, who was thinking of fostering local industries, set up a youth education center to help poor farmers.
He taught there not only how to use farming tools and farming methods, but also about well moats and civil engineering work.

* He started clearing the nearby wilderness and cultivated cotton and tea. He also ordered wheat and potato seedlings, which are superior to France, and tried to cultivate and disseminate them.

* He built a hand-made sardine net factory to grow the industry, but when it became unprofitable, he closed it and improved it to a nursery school, where he took care of about 200 children.

* De Rotz, who had a deep knowledge of the movement of sardines and squids due to changes in tidal currents, instructed sardine net fishing and also raised pigs.

* He bought land in Tabira-cho, Kitamatsuura-gun and Himosashi-mura on Hirado Island, and settled and relocated the congregational family. (Currently, both areas are big cities with fine churches)

* Regarding the construction of the church, De Rotz was not bound by the traditional Catholic style, but flexibly responded to the local climate and materials.
The Ono Church architecture in the Sotome region was shaped like a flat face to cope with strong winds along the sea. During his construction, he used stones excavated from nearby areas to build stone walls. These stone walls and structures still remain in good shape.

De Rotz is a mischievous and playful person who often skips jokes with the Nagasaki dialect.
The existence of De Rotz must have been "more than God", who did not discriminate against the Japanese and even reached out to those who discriminate severely.

The humanity of De Rotz has been inherited by women such as Maki Iwanaga and the Cross Monks who were suppressed as Christians.

I am convinced that this "aspiration" and "humanity" are the essence of World Heritage Sites.
The record that has sublimated to such a high level is unlikely to be found even if we unravel the long world history.

Churches and village ruins are registered as important landscape assets in the "Hidden Christian Sites in Nagasaki and Amakusa Region" registered as a World Heritage Site in 2018, and many people will continue to visit the area in the future. 

We must not use the historic sites and buildings as just tourism resources, but inherit the achievements, "aspirations" and "humanity" of the missionaries in our daily lives. 

For me, who was born and raised in Nagasaki, my kindergarten was Catholic and the teacher was a sister.
I was not a believer, but sometimes I sat in front of the chapel and prayed. 
As Sister says, I thought that the container placed on the altar contained the true blood of Christ.

From that pure time, the teachers should be repeatedly told me, "Any life must be cherished in yhe world" and "You must not bully someone who is different from others."