And then there was that whole fumi-e thing - pretty effective.
If Trump wants a test for immigrants, how about an American fumi-e? Step on a Koran, you’re in :)
If you go to http://kyoto.asanoxn.com/places/murasakino/zuihoin.htm and look at the pictures, you will see hidden references to Christianity throughout. The Dokuza-tei (first row, third picture) is meant to be a representation of the Sermon on the Mount, with the crowds going up the mountain to see Jesus. The Kanmin-tei (third row, first picture) has a hidden cross defined by seven stones, which is only recognizable with you sit in the spot where the picture is taken.
What the website doesn't tell you is that if you sit on that spot, then turn around 180 degrees, you are facing the stone lantern shown in the third row, second picture. Buried beneath that lantern is a statuette of the Virgin Mary, a secret that would have bee kept between the temple handlers and those who remained underground Christians during the Shogunate, so that a Catholic could sit at that spot and pray the Rosary, looking to everyone else like a Buddhist with his prayer beads.
To this day, the Zuiho-in is associated with the Omotesenke school of Japanese tea ceremony, which is one of the three schools directly descended from Sen Rikyu, the man who designed tea ceremony in its present form, during the mid-to-late 1500s. There is some speculation that he was a closet Christian himself, for which there isn't enough historical evidence either way, but of his seven disciples, three of them are known to have been Christian, which leads to more speculation as to how much of the tea ceremony was influenced by the Mass, again not provable either way. Two died before the persecution became strong, but one of them, Takayama Ukon, lost his fiefdom when Christianity was first outlawed, moved to Kanazawa in the hinterlands where he essentially lived in exile for 15 years, and then was forced to leave Japan, going to Manila, where he died in 1615. He is to be beatified in Osaka next year.
Later