歴史と永遠のあいだ : カトリック長崎司教・山口愛次郎の決断と祈り

In 1958 Bishop Yamaguchi Aijiro of Nagasaki made the controversial decision to remove the ruins of the old Urakami Cathedral destroyed by the atomic bombing of August 9, 1945. The bishop insisted on having a new cathedral built on the same site, a highly historically significant site where Christians had been repeatedly forced to renounce their faith and had been persecuted from the seventeen century until the end of the nineteenth century. The bishop’s decision went against the popular wish of the citizens of Nagasaki to preserve the ruins as a symbol of peace. In this article, I revisit Bishop Yamaguchi’s decision by contextualizing it in a series of complex decisions the bishop made during and following the Asia-Pacific War. In particular, I consider the bishop’s international connections and relationships as context for these decisions, as well as the bishop’s practice of prayer that routinely accompanied the decisions. The goal is not to speculate on political or religious motivations behind these decisions, but to illuminate the tension between history and eternity embedded in the bishop’s decisions.