S P O T ／ SPOT-316

The Weeping Madonna of Akita (Seitai Hoshikai Convent)

秋田の聖母マリア像（聖体奉仕会）あきたのせいぼまりあぞう（せいたいほうしかい）

On a quiet wooded hillside on the outskirts of Akita stands the chapel of Seitai Hoshikai — the Handmaids of the Eucharist, a Catholic secular institute — and within it, a single wooden statue of the Virgin Mary that the world came to know for crying. Beginning on the morning of January 4, 1975, the statue is said to have wept human tears 101 times over six and a half years, ending on September 15, 1981, the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. Each time, the sisters gathered before the image to pray the rosary, and a priest wiped the tears away; the cotton used was reportedly examined at the forensic laboratories of Akita University and Gifu University and identified as human bodily fluid. The statue itself was carved in 1963 by a local Akita sculptor, Saburo Wakasa, and the austere, wholly Japanese-style chapel that houses it was built over seven years by a master shrine carpenter from Gunma — Mary in the left cloister, Saint Joseph in the right. In 1984 the Bishop of Niigata declared that the supernatural character of the events could not be denied and permitted pilgrimage; in 1988 the statement was received by the Vatican's doctrinal office under the future Pope Benedict XVI. It remains one of the very few modern Marian phenomena to draw a measured nod from Rome — and pilgrims still come, from Japan and far beyond, to sit in silence before a statue that is said to have grieved.