However, it was not easy to spread Christianity in Japan.
Before and during the war, Christianity was considered a foreign religion and was under strict surveillance. In that situation, Father Cimatti showed deep respect and understanding for Japanese culture and ways of thinking,
and was able to win the hearts of many people.
Beyond the limitations of language, he made use of his musical talent to hold concerts in many places and strived to cultivate favorable feelings toward the church.
It is said that he held around 2,000 concerts (link), traveling from Amami Oshima to Sapporo, and also to northeastern China (then Manchuria),
North Korea and South Korea. The museum preserves many concert programs and newspaper articles.
He always included religious songs in his concerts and conveyed his teachings while explaining their contents.
Father Cimatti also understood the characteristics of Japanese music well and incorporated them into his compositions. It was Father Cimatti who composed the first mass music in Japanese in 1940.
During his first year studying Japanese, he composed 31 songs using lyrics from elementary school Japanese language textbooks (link),
and also composed many songs related to Japanese nature and history, such as the opera "Hosokawa Gracia" and "Song of the Arrival of Firearms."
In 1940, instructions were given to foreign heads of the church to resign, Father Cimatti being the first to do so, and he left Miyazaki and moved to Tokyo.
Fr. Cimatti's greatest sadness was that most of the Japanese members he had raised were drafted and died in the war. He wrote biographies of four of them.
The missionaries endured the hardships of the war and did their best to rebuild after the war.
The Salesian Society decided to focus on educating war orphans and the new generation.
Most of the current Japanese Salesian work in Japan was started under the direction of Father Cimatti shortly after the war.
