Today we invite you to join us on a very special pilgrimage — to the heart of Japan, to Yatsushiro, in the prefecture of Kumamoto on the island of Kyūshū.
No need to pack a suitcase or check the expiry date on your passport: simply settle into your favourite chair with a cup of tea, and let words turn into images.
The Canossian Sisters of Japan will guide us on this journey of memory, faith, and gratitude.
Our route will take us to a Jubilee church, to a memorial park built on the site of a seventeenth-century martyrdom, and to the church of Shimazaki, whose architecture evokes a ciborium, where a great canvas portrays the final prayer of the martyrs.
It is a quiet pilgrimage, woven with encounters — with Irish and Italian missionaries — and with local stories that intertwine the long history of Japanese Christianity with the rhythm of everyday life today.
Are you ready to follow them?
At the Threshold of the Jubilee
As you step out of the station, the air of Yatsushiro carries the scent of sea salt and rain-soaked wood.
In a silent neighbourhood, the church glows softly: sliding doors, discreet footsteps, a slight bow of greeting.
It is one of the churches designated for the Jubilee of 2025.
Here the Canossian Sisters pause in prayer, united with pilgrims who have travelled from every corner of Japan, breathing that universal atmosphere which stretches from Rome to even the most distant communities.
After prayer they share a simple meal with the parish priest — an Irish Comboni missionary — and a few parishioners who, in their calm, gentle way, speak of family life, work, and school.
The path then leads to a quieter yet precious place: the site of the martyrdom, now a small memorial park.
A stone, a few trees, a plaque — just a handful of visible signs of the fidelity that, in the seventeenth century, cost men and women of Kumamoto their lives.
In those early years of the 1600s, this region of Kyūshū was among the most vibrant centres of Christianity in Japan.
In Yatsushiro, the benevolence of certain local lords allowed a brief flowering of faith before the persecutions began.
Among the martyrs remembered stands the samurai Adam Arakawa, beatified in 2008 and commemorated here in this very park.
A Light that Endures
The pilgrimage continues.
Later, the Sisters reach the church of Shimazaki, where another samurai and his family were executed in 1636.
They are welcomed by the parish priest — an Italian Xaverian — who guides them through the building, designed in the form of a ciborium.
A great canvas depicts the martyrs gathered in prayer before death: clear faces, hands joined, light trembling across the floor.
Throughout the diocese the memory of these witnesses is alive.
In November 2008, Pope Benedict XVI approved the beatification of a large group of Japanese martyrs, placing the stories of Kumamoto within the wider map of the nation’s sanctity.
Memory and Hope
Japan guards its traditions with quiet grace.
Religious life here is expressed through gestures of simplicity and symbol — the soft glow of paper lanterns, the cleansing water at a shrine, the bow at the threshold.
Alongside these, small yet steadfast Christian communities continue their journey of faith, interwoven with the fabric of local history.
In Yatsushiro, for instance, each November the Myōken Festival is celebrated: horses, mikoshi (portable Shintō shrines) and traditional dances animate the streets.
This ancient festival, now recognised as part of Japan’s intangible cultural heritage, reminds us that faith, memory and place can live together in harmony.
Pilgrims of Hope
For the Canossian Sisters of Japan, this pilgrimage was far more than a journey.
It became a way of walking through memory — of drawing strength from the courage of the martyrs and from the quiet fidelity of those who, four centuries ago, refused to renounce their faith.
To enter a church that welcomes, to linger in a park that remembers, to listen to stories of missionaries from afar and of families who still bear witness to the Gospel in daily life — all this became prayer in motion, faith on the move.
As the Sisters make their way home, the light of evening settles gently over the rooftops of Yatsushiro.
The wind carries the scent of cooking and of home.
In the hush that follows, one truth remains:
Hope grows whenever memory becomes a path.
And so the Sisters give thanks to God for the wonders He continues to work in Japan, and pray for the grace to be living witnesses of His Provident Love — even here, in this Land of the Rising Sun
