After well more than 4 centuries of evangelization, less than 1% of Japan is Christian; and that figure may be inflated. Thirty years ago I regularly heard the figure "less than one-tenth of one percent," although that probably didn't include Catholics. Still, the statistics are dismal. I've always attributed this to several factors, including the Buddhist doctrine of "no soul" or "non-self" (Pali, anatta; Skt., anātman), the trickle-down of this Buddhist outlook into the general culture, as witnessed in the language, which one can speak endlessly without the use of personal pronouns, implicitly submerging the person into an ultimately impersonal environment called the "void," "emptiness" (Jap. ku) or "nothingness" (Jap. mu).
Further, there is the inherent acceptance of contradictions in the logic of "is-and-is-not" (Jap. soku-hi), which, maddeningly to a western Christian, makes a hash of the principle of contradiction, and explains why Japanese families have no trouble accepting Shinto rites of passage for their children, both Shinto and "Christian" wedding rites, Christmas trees and Christmas hymns, and Buddhist funeral rites -- all without blinking an eye. I was at a Japanese wedding a few years ago where the bride and groom were married in a Christian chapel, with hired Christian hymn singers, a faux-priest vested in what could have been Catholic vestments, who preached what for all intents and purposes was a fairly orthodox-sounding Christian marriage homily. Yet neither the bride nor groom were believers, nor probably hardly anyone in the gathering, and I think the "priest" may have been an agnostic Jew. It's all about form, you see: there is no underlying substance to anything at all -- least of all this thing we call "reality." So let's just get used to it, the attitude seems to be.
Another factor is the latent Confucian ethos, in which strictly defined social roles and morals are decisively separated from any religious commitments (Confucianism is a social ethic, not a religion, if by "religion" you mean more than a social ethic). Hence, the Japanese historically embrace a moral code that has nothing to do with any sort of religious or metaphysical commitments.
In light of this, I was pleased to see a robust and articulate confirmation of these convictions, with many other notable insights, in a recent exposition on this matter posted on Sandro Magister's blog entitled, "Why Christianity Is 'Foreign' to Japan" (www.chiesa, August 19, 2010). His summary reads: "Annihilation of the "self," divinization of nature, rejection of a personal God. The cornerstones of the Japanese culture, explained by the ambassador of the Rising Sun to the Holy See." The post, which includes an essay by Mr. Kagefumi Ueno, the Ambassador of Japan to the Holy See, is well worth reading. Originally delivered as a lecture at the Circolo di Roma, Ambassador Ueno's essay was first published in "L'Osservatore Romano" on August 14, 2010.
5 comments:
The fact that the U. S. atomic bombed the center of Christianity in Japan, Nagasaki, probably had as much to do with the dearth of Christians there as anything. That and the earlier systematic persecutions of Japanese Catholic Christians by their non-Christian overlords for centuries. And yet Catholic Christianity survived for several centuries until Japan was forcibly opened to the West. May God preserve us in the West from undergoing what the Japanese Catholics have had to go through. I wonder if Catholicism in the West would survive if subjected to the same things as the Japanese.
"May God preserve us in the West from undergoing what the Japanese Catholics have had to go through ...."
Amen to that. The story of Korean Catholics and other Christians is even worse, as well as better (they ultimately prevailed); but that's another story.
I'm doubtful, however, that U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki (and Hiroshima), or the persecution of Catholics for political reasons from the Shogunate of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1587) to restoration of Christianity in Japan under the Emperor, Tenno Meiji, with the economic and cultural open door policy forced by Commodore Matthew Perry, has much to do with the lack of Christian success in Japan.
Granted, the persecution under Tokugawa Ieyasu's successors, Tokugawa Hidetada and Tokugawa Iemitsu, were severe -- notably after the predominantly Christian population of Kyūshū had risen in the Shimabara Rebellion against the shogunate in 1637, and more than 40,000 Christians were killed when the uprising was brutally crushed. Yet there is little in the way of a cultural memory of these events anymore, such that it would inspire fear or alienation in the Japanese, anymore than the much nearer events of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor inspire fear and alienation of Japanese people among Americans who frequent sushi bars.
As to the atomic bombings of Japan, I must say that the really remarkable thing is that the memory of that event -- and there are still members of that aging generation who bear scars from that event -- seems to have left virtually no residue of bitterness or animosity among the Japanese people as a whole.
If there was a prejudice towards Americans during the first twenty years of my life, which were spent in Japan, it was not one animated by any enmity or hatred towards Americans and things American, but rather the opposite: an irrational infatuation with Americans and everything American. That, in any case, was my personal experience.
I think that Christianity would have fared no differently had there been no period of persecution of Christians in Japanese history, or had the U.S. not bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I think the reasons are more endemically cultural.
Please don't misunderstand me concerning the atomic bombing of Japan. I have worked with that problem since I was in the military and visited Hiroshima in the '60's. I don't know how the atomic bombing could have been avoided, given the costs in American lives at the battle of Okinawa and the retaking of the Philippines, not to mention Tarawa, Iwo Jima and Pelilieu. So I am not taking an anti-bombing approach here. It's just the fact that the U. S. avoided atomic bombing Kyoto for cultural and historical reasons but had to know there was a Catholic Cathedral in Nagasaki and yet went ahead. This worries me on several counts and I can't help but wonder what would have happened to the Japanese Catholic community had Nagasaki not been bombed. (But then, what other site would have been a better?) I'm still not entirely sure that the outcome for the Japanese Catholics would have been the same had another city been designated. The fact that the Japanese endured so much for so long and still kept the Faith in small pockets - and I recall that the Japanese/American Nisei combat troops were magnificently heroic in Europe in WWII - and who would have thought that, especially after what Roosevelt, and Calif. Gov. Earl Warren (yeah, that Earl Warren) put the Nisei through in this country at the beginning of the war? Well, have massaged this enough - it's just that for me, the Japanese are a remarkable, puzzling and unpredictable people. I appreciate your article.
I don't know. You may have a point. I would like to know what a fair sampling of Japanese Catholics thought. As for the Catholic presence in Nagasaki, I doubt that it had very much influence at all on U.S. military decision-making, which, as in the fire bombing of Dresden, has been generally animated by principles of strict ends-justifies-the-means utilitarian with very little regard for questions of religious conscience or natural law.
It's probably not opposition to meatless Fridays.
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