Disability history of the early Catholic mission in Japan: the case of visually impaired bards from the Buddhist tradition

Abstract

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Catholic missionaries in Japan employed men with visual impairment to serve the church. These men had previously been active within the Japanese Buddhist tradition of itinerant lute-playing priests (biwa hōshi). The article compares different disability history approaches to the Japanese Buddhist tradition of blind bards, and examines material first discussed in the Jesuit scholar Ruiz-de-Medina’s (2003) seminal article on the Kirishitan (Japanese Christian) biwa hōshi. The article applies a disability history perspective to reflections on their portrayal. A close reading of contemporary Jesuit sources on Kirishitan biwa hōshi reveals how the latter’s embodied difference is contrasted with their ability and usefulness as instruments for the mission. In the sources, zealous and dedicated people are depicted as doing well in the mission’s work despite their visual impairment and lack of scholarly education, but also, and at the same time, because of this impairment.