The collection

The majority of these documents are (1) memos (oboe 覚; see below regarding content) submitted to religion magistrates from various individuals in Usuki Domain, and other (2) documents, booklets, etc. mixed in with these documents when they were being organized during the modern period and later.

(1) is comprised of documents (memos) and letters sent to the Usuki Domain’s Office of Religious Affairs by government offices, temples, village officials, town officials, etc. in Usuki Domain. There are twenty groups of several to dozens of items tied together with a twisted paper string. They were arranged as such during the Edo period for management purposes. There are thirty-five ungrouped items, twenty of which are from the eleventh month of 1733 (Kyōhō 18). These twenty documents were probably grouped together in the past. The number of items in each group is shown in the below table.

These groups have the following characteristics: (a) excluding some, generally the received documents (memos) are grouped by month, (b) the senders are diverse: local representatives (village unit heads, village officials, town elders, etc.), temples / shrines, parishioner temples (priests, etc.), various government offices (domain retainers, trading posts / kaisho 会所), other domains’ offices of religious affairs, (c) their content primarily relates to the management of relatives of former Christians: fumie, tonsure, death, marriage, adoption, name changes, moving, travel, etc., (d) they are grouped by month regardless of their sender, content, and area which they are from. There is document bag titled “Bag From First to Twelfth Month of 1723 ( Kyōhō 8 ) I for Various Records Created by Person in Charge Each Month and Paperwork from Village Units (Excluding Family Registries),” a group of historical materials upon which i イ is written on the back edge of the outer page, and a pasted paper slip upon which is written “Documents Finished [Copying] into Journal and Put in Bag.” These give us a glimpse into how these documents were managed.

In light of the above characteristics and the fact that Usuki Domains three religion magistrates alternated in monthly shifts, it appears that (1) religion magistrates bundled together (some) documents used in correspondence related to their duties with twisted paper string for each of their month shifts, (2) part of these documents were copied to some sort of journal, after which they were put in a bag, and (3) the katakana characters i イ, ro ロ, and ha ハ were used for document management and classification. While only a bag from Kyōhō 8 remains amongst these documents, the majority of these documents are from this year, and it thus appears that documents which were originally in this bag at some stage became scattered while leaving behind traces of how they were managed.

It is necessary to examine how groups of documents remain in the files up through A21 in order to determine to what extent (1), (2), and (3) can be seen as the way that original records were kept at the Usuki Domain’s Office of Religious Affairs.

The oldest historical materials in these documents are a group of seventeen of them from 1671 (Kanbun 11) to 1676 (Enpō 4), primarily proofs of membership to parishioner temples. 56 was originally stuck closed and could not be opened. After conservation work was carried out at the Vatican Library, it was discovered that it was comprised of eight groups bound together with twisted paper string.

(2) is comprised of correspondence, haiku, Chinese poetry, etc. that Marega appears to have sent and received while staying at the Catholic Church in Kon’yachō, Ōita City. It can be seen that he was in contact with Takayama Hideaki 高山英明, former Ōita City mayor and descendant of Takayama Ukon 高山右近, as well as Dai Nippon Butokukai’s 大日本武徳会Ōita branch. Based on the aforementioned clothing store boxes and the dates of the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun used for wrapping (1938–1940), it appears that A4 was put together around 1940, when Marega was posted at the Ōita Church. While the only trace of Marega organizing these documents (Marega numbers, written notes, etc.) is one picture postcard (A4-4), on it we find “Letters with i written on them are from Kyōhō (1716–1735),” and it thus appears that he grasped the content of these documents to an extent.