Kirishitan

The Japanese term Kirishitan (吉利支丹, 切支丹, キリシタン, きりしたん), from Portuguese cristão, referred to Roman Catholic Christians in Japanese and is used in Japanese texts as a historiographic term for Roman Catholics in Japan in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Modern Japanese has several ways of spelling Christian of which the most common are the noun form kirisuto kyôto キリスト教徒, and also kurisuchan クリスチャン. The Japanese spelling kirishitan キリシタン is used primarily in Japanese texts for the early history of Roman Catholicism in Japan, or in relation to kakure kirishitan, Hidden Christians. However English sources on histories of Japan generally use the term "Christian" without distinction.

History

Christian missionaries were known as bateren (from the Portuguese word padre, "father") or iruman (from the Portuguese irmão, "brother"). Both the transcriptions 切支丹 and 鬼利死丹 came into use during the Edo Period when Christianity was a forbidden religion. The Kanji used for the transcriptions have negative connotations. The first one could be read as "cut off support", and the second as "devils who profit from death".