Fumi-e

A fumi-e (踏み絵, fumi "stepping-on" + e "picture") was a likeness of Jesus or Mary onto which the religious authorities of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan required suspected Christians (Kirishitan) to step, in order to demonstrate that they were not members of the outlawed religion; otherwise they would be tortured or killed.

[2] Their use was officially abandoned when ports opened to foreigners on 13 April 1856, but some remained in use until Christian teaching was placed under formal protection during the Meiji era.

Eighteenth-century Europe was aware enough of e-fumi for authors of fiction to mention it when alluding to Japan, as in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726),[6] Oliver Goldsmith's The Citizen of the World (1760), and Voltaire's Candide (1759).

[7] Allegations published in Europe during the late 17th and early 18th century that Dutch traders at Dejima were required to undergo the e-fumi are thought by modern scholars to be propaganda arising from the Anglo-Dutch Wars.

[8] In modern Japanese literature, treading on the fumi-e is a pivotal plot element of the novel Silence[9][10] by Shūsaku Endō and the 2016 film of the same name.