A Japanese lay Dominican of Nagasaki, martyred at Nishizaka in 1634 for practicing the Catholic faith under Japan’s persecution edicts.

Marina of Nishizaka was a Japanese laywoman of Nagasaki and a member of the Lay Dominicans, part of the broader Catholic community that continued to practice its faith in secret after Japan’s shoguns banned Christianity and expelled foreign missionaries in the early seventeenth century. She was arrested and executed at Nishizaka, Nagasaki’s execution ground, on November 11, 1634.

Quick Facts

• Died: November 11, 1634, Nishizaka, Nagasaki, Japan
• Feast Day: September 28
• Venerated as: Lay Dominican and martyr

Who Was Saint Marina of Nishizaka?

Marina of Nishizaka was part of the underground Catholic community of Nagasaki that persisted after Japan’s Tokugawa shogunate outlawed Christianity in 1614 and began systematically hunting down converts. As a member of the Lay Dominicans, she supported the sacramental and catechetical life of the hidden Church alongside Dominican friars working clandestinely in the region.

Historical Setting

By the 1630s, Japan’s anti-Christian persecution had intensified into one of the most severe in Church history, with believers tortured and executed at Nishizaka, the hill outside Nagasaki that became the principal site of martyrdom for thousands of Japanese Catholics and the missionaries who served them.

Why the Church Remembers Saint Marina of Nishizaka

Marina is remembered as one of many lay Japanese Catholics, often overshadowed in later accounts by the missionary priests they supported, who kept the faith alive at the parish and household level and paid for it with their lives, sustaining the underground Church that would survive, hidden, for over two centuries until missionaries returned in the nineteenth century.

Canonization and Feast Day

Marina of Nishizaka was beatified in 1981 and canonized in 1987 by Pope John Paul II among the martyrs of Japan associated with the Dominican missions. Her feast, shared with other Dominican-associated martyrs of Japan, is kept on September 28.

What Catholics Can Learn Today

Her lay vocation, exercised without ordination or vows in religious life yet still central to the survival of the underground Church, is a model for the many Catholics today whose faith is lived and transmitted primarily in the home and the local community rather than from a pulpit.

A Prayer to Saint Marina of Nishizaka

Saint Marina of Nishizaka, lay witness of the hidden Church of Japan, you supported the faith of your community even to the point of death. Strengthen the laity today in places where the Church must worship quietly, and give us your courage to hold fast when the cost of faith is high. Amen.

Sources

• Vatican.va (canonization of the martyrs of Japan, 1987)
• New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia
• EWTN