Abstract
There are still thousands of so-called Hidden-Christians (Kirishitan) and their villages in north-western part of Kyushu today. They originate in the tradition of the 16th century's Christian Church in Japan.
A very paradoxical fact concerning these people, in the first place, is that they have strongly persisted in being “hidden”, even when they have got freedom to believe their religious value at the beginning of Meiji Era. But it is a more paradoxical fact that the religious communities and groups of the same people have been rapidly disorganizing, or disorganized already in recent decades. During the same years, capitalistic progress in Japan has promoted a large scale of social mobility, and these people were also under this turn over, as labor forces or army forces.
This is no doubt a major external factors of the social disorganization in the case of Kurosaki. However, the catholic people who live in the same village under the same conditions, who have converted to the R. C. Church at that time, have kept strong religious, social integration. We have to examine, therefore, another internal factors, that is, factors concerning characteristic social structure of the Kirishitan village, in order to interprete the paradoxical phenomena properly.
In this paper we assumed 4 hypothesis, constructed on nativity, social moblity, religious leadership, and power structure of the community, and then presented related survey data.
