Shugembo

Shugembo, n. Takasagonese. A Franciscan friar.

Oyashima has no "folk Catholicism," because Catholicism in Oyashima is new, and the converts tend to be scholarly, educated, and individual. There isn't much room for popular distortions of the faith when the faith isn't popular to begin with.

But one thing about Japonic Catholicism is globally distinctive, and it's pan-Japonic.

Japanese pop culture holds that nuns are mikos. This trope doesn't exist in Andalusada, for a number of reasons (most notably that Great Japan is a little more aware of Catholicism, what with it being the faith of their Takasagonese overlords) - but it's been replaced by a world-specific trope. Written out in TV Tropes format, it would be something like Friars are Yamabushi.

The etymology of shugembo

The character shu  connotes study and practice; in various forms it's part of most Japonic words for (Christian) monks.

More interestingly, though, is The proper term for a Franciscan friar (at least in Takasagonese) is shugendai, "little brother of shugen." The vocabulary associates them, not with shutai, but with the (Kannagaran) concept of the shugenja.

The early history of the shugembo

One of the iconic works of Takasagonese literature, the Greyfriars' Congress, was a (hagiographized) retelling of the Japanese friars' debates about how to handle the situation. In the end, the Friars Minor took all three approaches:

• A plurality of the Friars Minor - in particular the foreign ones - opted for martyrdom, and are still celebrated to this day (filling the same basic niche as the Twenty-Six Martyrs.)
• A somewhat smaller number opted to accept exile. (This acceptance helped establish that exile was an option for the Japanese Christians, some of whom followed the Friars; without it, there would be no Japonic diaspora, and in all likelihood Japan would've been colonized by England-Scotland or Russia by now.)
• A third camp, slightly smaller than the exiles, made the difficult choice to go underground and resist the shogunate.

Crypto-Catholicism survived fairly poorly under the shogunates. While the Takasagonese did send a certain number of missionaries back to Oyashima to reinforce their struggling brethren, it was understood that this was a form of martyrdom, and by the 1800s the hidden friars had turned into a Japonic Prester John myth.

(Incidentally, Saint Sakura represents an interesting variation on the trope: a female shugembo. Friars may be yamabushi, but Clarisses are not miko.)

Shugembo diverge from Franciscans elsewhere in the world on a specific cultural concession: very much like Sino-Japanese Buddhist monks (and very unlike the Christian tradition, at least as we think of it), unarmed combat practice is a regular part of their lifestyle. Under and alongside their Franciscan spirituality, the Provincial Directors of Takasago (and, through them, of East Asia) are formidably dangerous people; popular culture places them somewhere between "36th Chamber of Shaolin" and "Fist of the North Star."