Our Lady of Akita

Patroness of Akita

The devotion to Our Lady of Akita refers to a Marian image linked to events reported at Yuzawadai, in the area of Akita (Japan), between 1973 and 1981. According to the account handed down by the religious community and by devotional tradition, Sister Agnes Sasagawa is said to have received messages through a statue of the Virgin, with insistent calls to prayer, penance and the praying of the Rosary.

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Origin and history

The devotion to Our Lady of Akita refers to a Marian image linked to events reported at Yuzawadai, in the area of Akita (Japan), between 1973 and 1981. According to the account handed down by the religious community and by devotional tradition, Sister Agnes Sasagawa is said to have received messages through a statue of the Virgin, with insistent calls to prayer, penance and the praying of the Rosary.

The documented history usually cited in the available sources is that on 22 April 1984 Bishop John Shojiro Ito authorised the veneration of the Holy Mother of Akita in his diocese, after a prior investigation. Some later Catholic sources add that in 1988 the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, gave a favourable judgement on the messages, although this detail does not appear in all the references consulted. The figure of 101 lacrimations between 1975 and 1981, on the other hand, belongs to the widely circulated account of the Akita phenomenon.

The image and the shrine

The image venerated at Akita is a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary, of Japanese carving, associated in several descriptions with oriental features and a simple Marian iconography, though the sources consulted do not record all its iconographic attributes with precision. Devotional tradition presents it as a miraculous image connected with tears and, according to some accounts, also with blood and perfume.

The veneration is centred on the Redemptoris Mater Shrine of Our Lady of Akita, at the convent of the Handmaids of the Holy Eucharist (Seitai Hoshikai), in Yuzawadai. The sources consulted identify it as a shrine belonging to the religious community, but they do not record that it is a minor basilica, nor that it holds an official designation as a national or diocesan shrine in the strict canonical sense.

Patronage and coronation

Our Lady of Akita is presented in several devotional sources as patroness of Akita, Japan. Beyond that local attribution in popular and devotional materials, no broader canonical patronage of a city, municipality, diocese or nation can be stated with certainty from the sources consulted.

As for a canonical coronation, no documented canonical coronation appears in the sources reviewed.

Feast and devotion

The date most widely given as the principal feast is 12 June, linked to the first manifestation of 1973. Other sources also mention the memorial of 15 September, the date of the last recorded lacrimation in 1981, which coincides with the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.

The devotion of Akita is marked by its emphasis on conversion, reparatory prayer and penance. The sources consulted also note the interest of pilgrims and faithful in the convent chapel and in the testimony of the reported phenomena, although no reliable and consistent attendance figures appear in the materials at hand. In popular tradition Akita is often presented as a kind of “Fatima of the East”, a devotional expression spread by the Catholic press, though it is not an official liturgical title.

Bond with the Rosary

The link with the Rosary is indeed attested in the content of the messages attributed to Akita: several sources note that special insistence was placed on the recitation of the Holy Rosary as the heart of the prayer asked of the faithful. For this reason, this devotion finds its natural place within a Marian spirituality of intercession, penance and contemplation of the mysteries of Christ with Mary, which is the very soul of the Rosary.