The collection

File A15 is comprised of reports regarding descendants of former Christians submitted to the Usuki Domain’s Office of Religious Affairs by village power-holders, temple head priests, heads of samurai family units, etc., under the domain’s rule. On one of the bags is written “Bag of documents regarding children born” and on 4 others “Births to descendants of former Christians.” The vast majority of documents in the bags are related to birth. However, some of them are related to death, marriage in which the wife join’s the husband’s family, adoption, divorce, moving, working for others, and so on. There are also some documents sent from officials and temples in other domains related to, for example, descendants of former Christians who had died while living outside of Usuki Domain. As can be clearly seen in the lower row of Table 1 “Documents Unrelated to Birth,” in A15.4–6 there are some documents not related to birth. While on the A15.6 bag appears the date Kyōhō (1732), no documents from this year can be found. The documents contained in the bag are from various years.

In A15.4, there are 18 documents unrelated to birth: 10 related to marriages in which the wife joins the husband’s family, 6 related to marriages in which the husband joins the wife’s family, and 2 related to adoption. They do not appear to be directly related to this subfile’s birth notifications. In A15.5 there are 19 documents unrelated to birth: 10 related to deaths, 7 related to adoption, and 2 related to marriage in which the husband joins the wife’s family. Some are closely related to the birth notifications: the 10 death notifications are all about people born within the time period written on the bag (Table 2). In A15.5.1.1.4.1–2 and A15.5.1.1.7.1–2, we find birth and death notifications for the same individuals folded together. In this bag there are birth certificates for all of the individuals appearing on death certificates.

In A15.6 there are 408 documents unrelated to births, and only 25 birth notifications. Also, all of the documents in the bag are from years different than those indicated on the bag. Some of the 25 birth notifications (Table 3) are from years following the time period written on A15.2: “21st day of 11th month of Genroku 11 to 20th day of 6th month of Genroku 12.” This means that the storage and management of even documents from neighboring years related to birth notifications differed greatly. Furthermore, in A15.6 all birth notifications are together with death notifications, as is the case in A15.5. There are no stand-alone birth notifications like in A15.2 (Table 3). Non-birth documents are as follows: 397 death documents, 1 divorce document, 2 documents about going to work for someone, 2 religion oaths, and 6 moving documents. It appears that majority of documents in A15.6 were replaced at some point with others.

On the other hand, at the beginning of the text on the underside of the right edge (hashi uragaki　端裏書) of some documents in A15 one finds “◯” (A15.5.1.15, A15.6.74.1, A15.6.103.4.1, A15.6.115.2, A15.6.154.1), “◯三” (A15.5.2.36.1, A15.59, A15.6.73.1.1, A15.6.105, A15.6.108.1), and “△” (A15.6.61.1). These were probably written by Usuki Domain’s Office of Religious Affairs. The meaning of these and other marks should be analyzed while referring to other files.

Also, on birth notifications from 1698 (Genroku 11), 1699 (Genroku 12), and 1702 (Genroku 15) one finds writing in red (Photograph 1). This writing, which appears at the beginning of the documents, indicates the source of information—for example, “Birth Record Book 1”—and often appears at the beginning of the document. This probably indicates that the information comes from the first volume of the birth record book managed by the domain’s Office of Religious Affairs. Based on these red notes, it appears that there were at least 16 volumes of these birth records. In A15.2 documents with this birth record note were arranged almost entirely in order, from 1 to 16. In 1687 (Jōkyō 4), the Usuki Domain informed the domain’s major officials of the shogunate’s order banning Christianity and began surveillance of descendants of former Christians. This might be related to the presence of this red writing. While one does not find this red writing on documents from this year, this is probably because they are all death notifications; in A15 this red writing is only found on birth notifications. This red writing ceases to appear after 1702 (Genroku 15). One then finds some documents with red marks at the beginning of the hashi uragaki (Photograph 2). On birth notifications from 1726 (Kyōhō 11) to 1729 (Kyōhō 14), as well as 1753 (Hōreki 3; the latest document year in this file), this red mark appears. There were no documents in this file with both the red mark at the beginning of the hashi uragaki and the red writing near the main text’s title starting with “birth record”.