Fumi-e (stepping on images)

Timeline

1. 1629Nagasaki · NagasakiNagasaki was the port where Catholicism and Portuguese trade were most concentrated. In Kan'ei 6, the magistrate's office began sending bronze images of Christ or the Virgin to each town and household, ordering residents to tread on them with their feet, called e-fumi. Those who refused were arrested and tortured; hot-spring torture at Unzen Hell was used in the same period to force apostasy. Fumi-e thus went from interrogation tool to the core object of the city's annual screening.
2. 1638–1640Nagasaki · NagasakiAfter the 1637–1638 Shimabara-Amakusa uprising was suppressed, the shogunate concluded that Catholicism remained a hotbed of rebellion and extended Nagasaki's e-fumi experience to Kyushu and domains nationwide suspected of Catholicism. Each first month or in spring, village officials and temple monks jointly supervised residents queuing to step and recorded their names. Fumi-e, temple certificates (tera-uke), and the five-household group's denunciation rewards formed the everyday triangle of the Christian prohibition.
3. 1641–1850Nagasaki magistrate's office · NagasakiFumi-e copper plates were cast into fixed patterns through repeated use, kept by the Nagasaki magistrate's office and lent to each town. Hidden Christians made do by touching lightly with their toes or praying silently in their hearts, making the object both a symbol of state violence and, conversely, shaping the ritual strategies of underground faith. Dutch factory personnel were also required to attend the ceremony, and e-fumi became a scene for displaying the sakoku order to outsiders.
4. 1856–1873Nagasaki · NagasakiAfter the Ansei opening of ports, the shogunate stopped compulsory e-fumi in 1856 to avoid conflict with Europe and America. The prohibition placards were removed in Meiji 6, and the remaining screening lost its legal basis. Copper plates formerly used for stepping entered museum and church collections, becoming material evidence of religious persecution and cross-cultural conflict in early modern Japan.