Kagoshima, Prefecture of

KAGOSHIMA, PREFECTURE OF. - On the southern coast of the island of Kyūshū (Japan), erected on 18 March 1927, with territory detached from the diocese of Nagasaki. With an area of 7,883 sq. km. and a population of 1,800,000 inhabitants, it comprises 577 Catholics; 360 catechumens; 3 native priests; 7 native sisters; 5 catechists; 15 teachers; 5 stations; one church and 2 chapels; one middle school; an orphanage; a kindergarten.

This mission, since 1936, has been entrusted to the Japanese secular clergy and is currently governed by an apostolic administrator. On 13 Jan. 1947 the Ryūkyū Islands, having become in fact a domain of the United States of America, were detached from the apostolic prefecture of K. and entrusted to the vicar apostolic of Guam and subsequently placed under the care of an apostolic administrator.

K. is the principal city and the residence of the Ordinary. It was the first Japanese city to enter into contact with Christianity, since St. Francis Xavier landed there on 15 Aug. 1549, accompanied by two Spanish Jesuits, Father Cosme de Torres and Brother Giovanni Fernandez, and by the Japanese samurai Paul of the Holy Faith, who had been baptized by the Apostle at Goa. But the first nucleus of a Christian community subsequently disappeared without leaving a trace. In 1844 Msgr. Forcade, of the Paris Foreign Missions, vicar apostolic of Japan, succeeded with difficulty in reaching Naha, the capital of the province of Okinawa, in the Ryūkyūs, followed in time by other missionaries, but with negligible success in conversions. In 1890 Father Ferrier, after founding various mission stations, among them K., was able to set foot on the island of Oshima (Ryūkyūs), initiating there a consoling movement of conversions. In 1906, finally, the Franciscans arrived there and held the mission until its transfer to the local clergy.

Edoardo Pecorsio