SHIKOKU, APOSTOLIC PREFECTURE. — Situated on the island of the same name, it comprises four civil provinces, namely Kagawa, Tokushima, Kochi, and Ehime, whose total area is 18,250 sq. km., with a population of 4,219,044 inhabitants, for the most part Buddhists and Shintoists. It was erected on 27 January 1904, by separation from the diocese of Osaka.
The beginnings of evangelization on the island of S. date back to the sixteenth century and are due to several Jesuit fathers. Among them, Fr. Francesco Cabral deserves mention: in 1575 he converted the daimyo of Tosa. This mission too had its martyrs, including St. Paul Miki, martyred in 1597. The Dominicans of the Province of the Most Holy Rosary in the Philippines began their work at S. in 1903 and retained the mission until 30 November 1950, when it passed to the Japanese secular clergy, with the appointment of an apostolic administrator.
In 1949 the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, of American nationality, arrived there. For the purposes of missionary activity, the island of S. is divided into three vicariates forane, namely Kagawa, entrusted to the secular clergy; Kochi-Tokushima, to the Oblate missionaries of Mary Immaculate; and Ehime, to the Dominicans. At the end of 1951, several priests of the Spanish Institute of St. Francis Xavier of Burgos joined the two groups of foreign missionaries; they exercise their ministry in the district of Marugame, in the province of Kagawa. The island of S., an eminently Buddhist region, has no fewer than 88 Buddhist temples, to which the Japanese people made pilgrimages before the war. In the postwar period, however, the moral force of both Buddhism and Shintoism seems to have weakened among the people.
There are 1,300 Catholics, 3,000 Protestants, and 100 schismatics. There are 23 priests, 4 of them nationals. There is no seminary, but the young men are sent to the minor seminary of Osaka and the major seminary of Tokyo. There are 15 Dominican sisters and 4 Japanese Sisters, Daughters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus; 5 catechists and 20 teachers; 1 middle school; 1 orphanage; 5 kindergartens; 10 churches; and 10 quasi-parishes.
BISL.: Arch. della S. Congr. di Prop. Fide, Relazione quinquennale, pos. prot. n. 2807/51; ivi, Prospectus status Missioiis, 1949-50, pos. prot. n. 1895/50; ivi, pos. prot. n. 1873/52; MC, 1950, p. 413. Edoardo Pecoraio