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Summary
Sister Agnes Sasagawa of the Handmaids of the Eucharist received visions of an angel and messages emanating from a wooden statue that wept 101 times.
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Timeline
1930 |
Agnes Sasagawa is born. |
1946 |
The institute of Handmaids of the Eucharist was founded after Sumako Sugawara settled in the city in 1946. |
May 12, 1973 |
Agnes enters the convent of the Institute of the Handmaids of
the Eucharist in Akita, Japan. |
June 12, 1973 |
Sr. Agnes encounters on several occasions a bright light emanating
from the tabernacle in the chapel and "spiritual beings"
worshipping the Eucharist. She reports these experiences to Bishop
John Ito. |
June 1973 |
Sr. Agnes begins to experience the stigmata. On Thursdays she
feels initial pain and on Fridays and Saturdays finds a cross of
blood on her left hand.
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July 6, 1973 |
Sr. Agnes encounters her guardian angel and subsequently a three-foot
high wooden statue of the Virgin (Our Lady of All Nations) ablaze
with light. The statue was created in 1963 by Saburo Wakasa, a sculptor based in Akita. The statue spoke to Agnes and asked her to pray for
the reparation of the sins of humanity and to follow her superior.
After the apparition, Agnes and the other nuns discover a bleeding
wound in the hand of the statue. |
July 26, 1973 |
The angel appears again and promises that the pain in her wound
would subside. |
Aug 3, 1973 |
The statue speaks again and warns of a great chastisement. |
Sep 29, 1973 |
The statue stops bleeding but tears start flowing down its cheeks. More than 2,000 people have since witnessed the statue weeping. |
Oct 13, 1973 |
Sr. Agnes receives her last message from the Virgin. She was
told that the Father would inflict a terrible punishment on humanity,
that fire would fall from the sky and wipe out part of the population,
and that the devil would infiltrate the Church. |
May 1974 |
The angel tells Agnes that her hearing will be temporarily restored
and then permanently cured later. |
Oct 13, 1974 |
Agnes temporarily regains her hearing. |
Jan 1975 |
The tears, sweat and blood from the statue
were sent for laboratory analysis. |
Dec 1975 |
The angel appears again. |
1975 |
Bishop John Shoojiroo Ito (1962-1985) of Niigata went to Rome to the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1975 where he consulted Archbishop Hamer, deputy secretary of this Congregation. He explained to the Bishop that judgment regarding such a matter falls under the jurisdiction of the local Ordinary (bishop) of the diocese in question. |
1976 |
Bishop Ito requested that the archbishop of Tokyo name the first commission of inquiry. (This first commission later declared that it was not in a position to prove the supernatural events of Akita.) |
1976 |
Bishop Ito publicly announced that it was necessary to abstain from all official pilgrimage and all particular veneration of this statue while the inquiry was underway. |
Sep 15, 1981 |
The statue weeps for the 101st and last time |
Sep 28, 1981 |
Her guardian angel shows her a vision of the Bible and asks her
to read Genesis 3:15: "I will place enmity between thee (Satan)
and the woman (Mary), between thy seed and hers. She will crush
thy head and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel." |
Aug 4, 1981 |
Theresa Chun is cured of a brain tumor after praying to our
Lady of Akita. |
May 30, 1982 |
Agnes' hearing is restored permanently in accord with the promise
of the angel. |
April 22, 1984 |
Approved by Bishop John Shoojiroo Ito of Niigata in a pastoral letter. |
March 9, 1985 |
Bishop Ito retires. |
June 1988 |
Bishop Ito brought his letter to Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger -- now Pope Benedict XVI -- who allowed the pastoral letter and its dissemination to the faithful. |
April 1990 |
The apostolic nuncio in Japan, Bishop William Aquin Carew in an interview with 30 DAYS, a Catholic Magazine, noted of Cardinal Ratzinger that: “His Eminence did not give any judgment on the reliability or credibility of the ‘messages of the Virgin.’ According to the transcription of the meeting, he simply affirmed that ‘there are no objections to the conclusions of the pastoral letter.’” |
July 1990 |
The president of the Japanese bishops’ conference, Peter Seiichi Shirayanagi, told 30 DAYS,” that, “The events of Akita are no longer to be taken seriously. We think they do not now have a great significance for the Church and Japanese society.” (30 DAYS Magazine, July - August 1990, “The Tears of Akita,” by Stefano M. Paci, p. 45). |
March 14, 1993 |
Bishop Ito dies. |
December 1999 |
The Apostolic Nuncio in Tokyo, Ambrose de Paoli, in response to a query from the editor of a British Catholic magazine Christian Order, stated: “The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has asked me to respond to your query re: Akita. ... The Holy See has never given any kind of approval to either the events or messages of Akita.” (Christian Order, December 1999, p. 610.) |
2002 |
The chapel building was rebuilt in the style of traditional Japanese wooden architecture by carpenters who work on temples. |
Photo Gallery
Our Lady of Akita (Japan 1973)
Our Lady of Akita (Japan 1973)
Our Lady of Akita (Japan 1973)
Our Lady of Akita (Japan 1973)
Our Lady of Akita (Japan 1973): Sister Agnes Sasagawa of the Handmaids of the Eucharist |
Description of the Virgin
In the events of Akita, there was no "apparition" of the Virgin.
Agnes reported the apperance of her guardian angel but the messages attributed
to Mary were said to emanate from a bleeding 3-foot high wooden statue.
The wooden statue in the convent at Akita was carved by a Buddhist woodcarver
from an identical image of The Lady of All Nations.
Messages
The Virgin delivered messages
3 times in 1973 (July 6, August 3, and October 13). Her guardian angel
appeared an additional 4 times.
"As for the content of the messages received, it is no way contrary
to Catholic doctrine or to good morals. When one thinks of the actual
state of the world, the warning seems to correspond to it in many points.
The Congregation of the Doctrine for the Faith has given me directives
in this sense that only the bishop of the diocese in question has the
power to recognize an event of this kind."
Bishop John Shojiro Ito, the Diocesan Bishop of Niigata
Click here to read messages.
Miracles, Cures, and Signs
The statue wept 101 times. Her guardian angel explained it with the following:
"There is a meaning to the figure 101 (the number
of times the statue wept). This signifies that sin came into the world
by a woman and it is also by a woman that salvation came into the world.
The zero between the two signifies the Eternal God who is from all eternity
until eternity. The first one represents Eve, and the last, the Virgin
Mary."
The actual weeping of the statue was not only witnessed by the local bishop
but was shown on national Japanese TV.
Theresa Chun, a Korean woman diagnosed with a brain tumor, placed an image
of Our Lady of Akita under her pillow and prayed to her for a miraculous
healing. On August 4, 1981, the tumor was found to have disappeared. This
healing was well documented by Fr. Joseph Oh of Seoul, S. Korea.
In May 1982, her angel told Agnes that her hearing would be permanently
restored that month, and on May 30 the deafness was cured. (Tests performed
on Agnes at the Akita Muncipal Hospital in 1975 had confirmed that she
was deaf and that her deafness was incurable.)
Approval
The first tests on the samples of blood, tears, and sweat from the statue
were performed by Professor Eiji Okuhara, a Catholic physician in the
Akita University Department of Biochemistry and a former Rockefeller Foundation
fellow. Professor Okuhara, who had witnessed the weeping statue himself,
also passed the samples on to a non-Christian forensic specialist, Dr.
Kaoru Sagisaka. The scientists confirmed that the samples were of human
origin- the blood was found to be type B and the sweat and tears were
type AB.
Initially the nun's claims were rejected by an archbishop, then accepted by the bishop of her actual diocese, Most Reverend John Shojiro Ito of Niigata, who on April 22, 1984, after years of extensive investigation, declared the tears to be of supernatural origin and authorized veneration of the Holy Mother of Akita.
"After the inquiries conducted up to the present day, one cannot
deny the supernatural character of a series of unexplainable events relative
to the statue of the Virgin honored at Akita (Diocese of Niigata). Consequently
I authorize that all of the diocese entrusted to me venerate the Holy
Mother of Akita."
Bishop John Shoojiroo Ito of Niigata (April 22, 1984)
Bishop Ito was apprehensive over the reaction of the Vatican to his pastoral letter, but when he brought his letter to Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger -- now Pope Benedict XVI -- in 1988, the cardinal, who was initially disinclined toward the revelation, allowed the pastoral letter and its dissemination to the faithful. The Vatican has never issued a formal statement.
Shrines

Our Lady of Akita Shrine
"Redemptoris Mater"
The Chapel of Seitai Hoshikai
Handmaids of the Holy Eucharist
Soegawa Yuzawadai 1
Akita 010-0822 JAPAN
Phone: 018-868-2139 / FAX: 018-868-4728
http://seitaihoshikai.com/us
As of 2017, the shrine receives about 7,000 pilgrims a year, and I think about two-thirds of them are from overseas according to Keiko Ogawa, the Mother Superior.
The Motherhouse of the Institute of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist stands atop a hill away from residential homes. It is located about seven kilometers north of Akita Station, which takes about six hours to reach from Narita International Airport in Chiba Prefecture, a major gateway into Japan, using express and bullet trains.
Prayers
Eucharistic Prayer of Akita
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, truly present in the Holy Eucharist,
I consecrate my body and soul to be entirely one with Your Heart,
being sacrificed at every instant on all the altars of the world and giving praise to the Father,
pleading for the coming of His Kingdom.
Please receive this humble offering of myself.
Use me as you will for the glory of the Father and the
salvation of souls.
Most Holy Mother of God, never let me be separated from Your Divine Son.
Please defend and protect me as Your special child.
Amen.
Books and Videos
Akita:
The Tears and Message of Mary
by Teiji Yasuda (Preface), John M. Haffert (Translator) (June 1989)
Akita: Mother of God As Coredemptrix Modern Miracles of Holy Eucharist
by Francis Mutsuo Fukushima (Queenship Publishing. December 2000)
Meetings
with Mary
Janice T. Connell
Divine
Mirrors: The Virgin Mary in the Visual Arts
by Melissa R. Katz (Editor), et al
The Meaning of Akita
by John M. Haffert
Akita - The Tears and Message of Mary and The Meaning of Akita
By Fr. Teiji Yasuda, O.S.V.
OUR LADY, AND ANGEL, AND SISTER AGNES
by Brother Craig Driscoll
Dee, Howard Q. Our Lady’s message the same from Fatima to Akita. Philippine Daily Inquirer 04/03/2011
Videos
Our Lady of Akita (Japan) 68 min 1993
The Messages of Our Lady in Akita 60 min 1994
A Hill of Redemption (Talk of Sr. Agnes, Fr. Yasuda and Bishop Ito ) 101 minutes
Links
The Work
of God
The Circle of Prayer
101 Foundation
Diocese of Niigata, Japan
Catholic Bishops Conference of Japan
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