Christianity in Japan
The Christianity , a religion of monotheism , playing in Japan a minor role, since the notion of a single omnipotent God with the traditional religious beliefs of Shinto and Buddhism shows little agreement. Today around 1% of the Japanese population, around a million people, profess Christianity in its various forms. The proportion of the population during the Roman Catholic missionary work in Japan in the 16th century has decreased to a very low value worldwide. A current Gallup poll assumes six percent of Christian believers in Japan. Seven of the Japanese prime ministers were professing Christians ( Hara Takashi , Takahashi Korekiyo , Yoshida Shigeru , Katayama Tetsu , Hatoyama Ichirō , Ōhira Masayoshi and Tarō Asō ).
Between the years 1614 and 1873, the spread of Christianity in Japan was forbidden and subjected to severe persecution and repression. Nevertheless, individual Christian groups remained in the underground, which are known as Kakure kirishitan ( 隠 れ キ リ シ タ ン ), as much as “hidden Christians” or Sempuku kirishitan ( 潜伏 キ リ シ タ ン ), “hidden Christians”. After the country opened up in religious terms, more Christians committed to the Roman Catholic Church, some remained underground and are occasionally called Hanare kirishitan ( 離 れ キ リ シ タ ン ), “separate Christians”.
The Roman Catholic Church in Japan currently has around 509,000 members (as of 2005). The Orthodox Christian Church in Japan, founded by Nikolai of Japan in the 19th century, has about 30,000 members. The evangelical parishes in Japan have about 650,000 believers. They were founded by missionaries from the United States of North America in the 19th and 20th centuries . They belong to the Methodist, Baptist and Calvinist Evangelical denominations, which are well represented in America. Christians in Japan have a high proportion of schools, universities and other educational institutions compared to their proportion of the population. No commitment to Christianity is required from pupils and students . In the 1930s, several hundred Japanese professed Jehovah's Witnesses . Their religious community was banned during World War II , when Japan and the United States of North America were bitter war opponents. Since the end of the war and Japan's surrender in the 1950s, the number of professing believers in Jehovah's Witnesses rose to around 219,000 (as of 2008).
Writing forms
Today's Japanese name for Christianity or the Christian faith is Kirisuto-kyō ( キ リ ス ト 教 ) and is made up of kirisuto (Christian) and kyō (teaching, doctrine). Until the second half of the 19th century, the term was Yaso-kyō ( 耶蘇 教 ), which means "Jesus teaching". Members of the teaching of Jesus Christ had the name kirishitan ( 切 支 丹 ) based on the Portuguese word Cristão .
The Chinese characters used to write the word varied according to the age of writing and the writing style of the author of the text, reflect the sound kirishitan and contain an expanded meaning through the characters used in each case. This changed negatively in the age of the persecution of the Roman Catholic Church in Japan and carried references that ( 切 死 丹 : 切 kiri = cut, 死 shi = die / death. 鬼 理 死 丹 : 鬼 ki = devil, 理 ri = Doctrine, 死 shi = to die / death). The spelling 吉利 支 丹 was given up during the reign of the 5th Shogun Tsunayoshi ( 綱 吉 ), because the character 吉 'luck' also appeared in his name. Since his reign, the writing form developed to 切 支 丹 . The spelling of the word kirishitan is now spelled キ リ シ タ in katakana, meaninglessly .
Roman Catholic Church in Japan
The time of the Christian century
The history of the Roman Catholic Church and thus of Christianity in Japan began in 1549 when a member of the Jesuit order , Father Francis Xavier (Francisco de Xavier y Jassu), landed in Japan. The following period of the mission , which lasted until the first half of the 17th century, is referred to in church history as the "Christian century" of Japan based on a book by Charles Ralph Boxer The Christian Century in Japan (1951). This epoch in the religious history of Japan ended in 1639 after the suppression of the Shimabara uprising with the expulsion of the Portuguese merchants and the missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church.
At the beginning of this time, in December 1547, the co-founder of the Jesuit order Xavier met the Japanese Anjirō in Malacca , from whom he received more detailed information about the Far Eastern island kingdom. Up until that time, the island kingdom of Japan in Europe was only known from Marco Polo's stories as the gold country "Zipangu", which Christopher Columbus intended to visit under the Spanish flag on his journey to India and China across the Atlantic Ocean. Since his sea voyage had undergone an astonishing historical development with the discovery of the intervening land areas of America, the Jesuit Xavier had the opportunity to reach this fabulous "land of gold". In August 1549 he landed with three religious and the Japanese Anjirō in Kagoshima on the southern island of Kyushu . The local prince Shimazu Takahisa gave him support. Xavier was deeply impressed by the country and its people and in enthusiastic letters solicited personal and financial support to bring the country to Christianity. During his missionary trips to Kyushu and western Honshu, he had initial successes in winning over believers. In 1550 he traveled to Kyoto , asked the Tenno for an audience, but was refused. In 1551 he reached Goa , one of the mission bases of the Order of the Jesuits in India. In the years that followed, religious moved to Japan and expanded the mission that Xavier had started. Among these, João Rodrigues, Luís Fróis and Luís de Almeida made lasting achievements in church history.
The Roman Catholic mission in Japan was accompanied by trade policy efforts in the countries of origin. The Portuguese and Spaniards , the dominant colonial powers at the time , tried to exert their influence and fought for trade profits. Through these Europeans, among other things, the technical innovation of the firearm came to Japan, which was to influence the course of the following decades of the time of the warring empires , in which Japanese regional rulers ( daimyo ) fought for supremacy in the island kingdom. Good relations with the Catholic missionaries and the Portuguese merchants who followed them brought economic advantages. Some of the daimyo were baptized. In the historical tradition they are called kirishitan daimyō ( キ リ シ タ ン 大名 ). With the toleration or promotion of Christianity, an attempt was made to establish a counterweight to the Buddhist monasteries, which with their own troops were political, religious and economic centers of power and impaired the interests of the profitable regional rulers.
In the course of the bloody unification of the empire under Toyotomi Hideyoshi , the power of the Buddhist monasteries was broken. As a result, the reassurance and pacification of the country gained in importance. The theological exclusivity claim of the Christian missionaries and the dominant and price-determining behavior of the Portuguese merchants when importing raw silk and silk fabrics stood in the way. In addition, with the unification of the Japanese empire, the regional rulers based in the south-western parts of the country were to be kept away from long-distance trade, the horrific profits of which made it possible to buy firearms and raise troops in order to implement their own plans.
In 1587 Hideyoshi issued the "Pater Expulsion Edict" ( 伴 天 連 追 放 令 , Pateren [= from port. Padre ] tsuihōrei ), the first of a series of edicts to suppress the Roman Catholic Church and curb the mission in Japan. For a long time this was not the result of a long-term strategy, but an ad hoc reaction to opposition from the missionaries and traders. The possibilities of enforcing the edict were limited in space and time. Gradually, the persecution of Roman Catholic believers in Japan was intensified and systematized. On February 5, 1596, 26 Christians, nine missionaries, including six members of the order of the Franciscans and three of the order of the Jesuits, as well as 17 Japanese lay people ( Franciscan Tertiary ) were crucified in Nagasaki . The Japanese Paul Miki was among those executed . These martyrs of Nagasaki , the first Roman Catholic martyrs in Japan, were appointed by the Vatican in Rome under Pope Pius IX in 1862 . canonized. During further persecutions, members of the Roman Catholic faith were thrown into boiling hot springs ( 地獄jigoku , "hell") in the volcanic region of Unzen . An illustration based on letters from Japan can be found in Montanus (1669). The ruler Hideyoshi demanded that his vassals turn away from Christianity. Most of them followed his request. The daimyo Takayama Ukon refused, lost his rank and was banished from the country.
The 1602 Tokugawa Shogunate in Edo retained the same negative behavior towards Christianity . At that time members of the order of the Franciscans, Jesuits and Dominicans did missionary work in Japan, after all all foreigners, mostly Europeans, were expelled from the country as part of the closure policy ( sakoku ). Members of the Dominicans in Kyushu were arrested in 1609, taken to Nagasaki, some publicly executed and the rest expelled from the country. Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu forbade the spread of Roman Catholic teaching in 1612, first in the area directly ruled by the shogunate ( Tenryō ) and finally in 1615 by the buke shohatto , a collection of ordinances for the daimyo throughout Japan . In 1623 nine missionaries, including three Dominican religious from Manila , came to the southern Satsuma Province . Until 1634 they were arrested and executed, or missionaries arriving after the country was closed in the Kirishitan Yashiki .
All Japanese of humble origin had to be registered in Buddhist temples during this time. In order to find hidden Christians, the population was forced to step in front of witnesses on small relief tablets with Christian symbols, the fummies (step pictures). Those who refused were identified as Christians. Especially in Edo (today's Tokyo ), Osaka and the former Roman Catholic stronghold of Nagasaki , this was a life-saving duty that city dwellers had to fulfill every year.
When someone was identified as a Christian, they had two options. Professing Christians were crucified or burned. However, those who renounced their faith as apostates stayed alive and were considered korobi kirishitan ( 転 び キ リ シ タ ン, 転 び 切 支 丹, 転 び 吉利 支 丹 , "fallen Christian"). The entire family of the so-called fallen Christians was monitored by the state and religious authorities for seven generations.
In 1637 there was an uprising among the predominantly Christian rural population in the Amakusa / Shimabara area, who had been squeezed out to the last by the tax burden. Around 27,000 insurgents holed up in the fortress of Hara and defied the attacks of the regional ruler's samurai troops. During the protracted fighting, the Dutch in the Hirado trading post were forced to bombard the ramparts with their ship cannons. After a long siege, troops loyal to the shogunate, increased to 120,000 men, captured the fortress. None of the insurgents survived. This Shimabara uprising was the decisive factor in the expulsion of the Europeans from Japan, with the exception of the people from the Western European Netherlands , who were Christians but, as members of the Low German Protestant church, followed the teachings of the reformer John Calvin . For two centuries after 1640, no one in Japan publicly professed the Roman Catholic Church.
Kakure Kirishitan
Kakure Kirishitan ( 隠 れ 切 支 丹 or 隠 れ キ リ シ タ ン , "hidden Christians, crypto Christians ") describes Japanese people who, despite the prohibition of the shogunate, had adopted Catholic Christianity as a religion from the beginning of the 17th century and developed it into their own form of belief without external influences. However, this no longer corresponded to the original Catholicism.
The Kakure Kirishitan no longer had Bibles or other written sources because they had been burned on the orders of the Shogunate. In inconspicuous places, however, they had objects with more or less distinct cross shapes or Buddhist Kannon figures ( Maria-Kannon ), which they used in secret for their sacred acts. The prayers spoken, the Orasho or Oran'yo (from Latin oratio , prayer), were a mixture of Latin , Portuguese and Japanese , which over the decades was no longer understood by the faithful. One of Ikitsuki at Nagasaki handed down Orasho begins with the words deusupaitero, hīriyō, superitosantono ( でうすぱいてろ,ひーりょう,すぺりとさんとの ) and originated from the Latin Trinitarian formula Deus pater, filius, spiritus sanctus ( "God Father, Son, Holy Spirit ”).
In 1853, when industrialization was beginning, the USA forced the opening of Japan . Three years later, the first trade agreements were signed with the United States of America and European countries, and Japan opened five ports ( Hakodate , Niigata , Yokohama , Kobe and Nagasaki ) to foreign ships.
On January 22, 1863, after the ban of 1613, the construction of a Christian church ( 大 浦 天主堂 , Ōura tenshudō , the " Basilica of the twenty-six holy martyrs of Japan ") began in Nagasaki for the first time after the ban of 1613 for the French present there was completed. On March 17, 1865, Bernard Thadee Petitjean, the Church's pastor, received a visit from fifteen Japanese. A woman by the name of Yuri Sugimoto informed him that they were Christians - more than 250 years after the official ban and more than 200 years after all external contacts were lost.
After the ban on Christianity was lifted, numerous Kakure Kirishitans returned to the Roman Catholic Church . Today, the number of Japanese who practice the ancient kakure rituals is several hundred.
The Catholic Church after opening
Since May 1, 1846, there was an Apostolic Vicariate in Japan, which was only open to foreigners. After Japan opened up to western states in the middle of the 19th century and the still existing Christian community of Urakami in Nagasaki became known, about half of the Kakure Kirishitan returned to the Roman Catholic Church, whose religious reorientation was not easy at first. The then imperial Meiji government initially forbade the Japanese from accepting Christianity. Under diplomatic pressure from abroad, Christianity was officially re-approved in Japan in 1873. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Tokyo was established in 1891 and was handed over to Japanese clergy in 1937. When the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, 8,500 of the 12,000 Catholics in Japan's largest Christian community, Urakami, were killed.
The Catholic metropolitan in Tokyo has been Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi SVD since October 2017 ; Auxiliary Bishop of Tokyo is James Kazuo Koda .
List of dioceses
The Orthodox Church in Japan
The Orthodox Church in Japan ( 日本 ハ リ ス ト ス 正 教会 , Nihon Harisutosu seikyōkai , literally "Japanese Christian [here from Russian Христос Christos ] Church") is represented by an arch eparchy .
The parish was founded after 1861 by the Russian monk Nikolai (1836–1912), who as Nikolai of Japan is one of the historical figures of the Russian Orthodox Church. Based on his work as a pastor of diplomats and employee of the embassy of the Russian Empire in Hakodate , he founded parishes and became the first Russian Orthodox bishop of Japan. He held services in Japanese and involved Japanese who had accepted his faith and been ordained as priests in the church leadership and the pastoral care of the communities. Nikolai of Japan published a translation of the Bible of the New Testament and the parts of the Old Testament read in the liturgy in Japanese, which is of linguistic and religious importance due to its classical-literary Japanese. Nikolai was canonized in 1970 by the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow as Nikolai, Illuminator of Japan , and has been the country's Orthodox patron saint ever since. His feast day is the day of his death on February 16.
The Orthodox Cathedral in Tokyo is formally called the Resurrection Cathedral Tokyo ( 復活 大 聖堂 , fukkatsu daiseidō ) and is also called Nikolai-dō ( ニ コ ラ イ 堂 , House of Nikolai ) on city maps . It was the first building in Tokyo to be taller than the Imperial Palace, which was remarkable at the time and underscores its importance. The Russian Orthodox churches in Hakodate and Tokyo are recognized and protected as "significant state art treasures".
- The Orthodox Church in Japan consists of three dioceses
- The archbishop of Tokyo is metropolitan of Japan
- 1906–1912 Nikolai
- 1912-1945 Sergio
- 1946-1952 Beniamino
- 1952-1952 Ireneo
- 1962-1964 Nikon
- 1964–1970 Vladimiro
- 1970-1999 Teodosio
- 2000 Pietro
- 2000– Daniel
The current dignitary since May 2000 has been Archbishop Daniel Nushiro . 30 priests and five deacons look after around 150 Orthodox parishes, most of which are located on the island of Hokkaidō .
This Japanese Orthodox Church is an autonomous church with links to the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow, has a say in the election of the head of the church and other internal affairs.
Evangelical Churches in Japan
The evangelical mission began with the opening of Japan at the time of the Meiji Restoration in the 1850s. The first missionaries, mostly from the United States, began primarily with missionary work aimed at leading Japanese people to the Christian faith. One way of reaching out to the people was by building educational institutions.
The second generation of missionaries and pastors began to emphasize the denominational character of their church, which was received negatively by many Japanese Christians. Among them, for example, Kanzō Uchimura , who then initiated his own, genuinely Japanese Mukyōkai movement. The Protestant United Church of Christ has existed since 1941, but today it has a negative trend in its membership. This is due, on the one hand, to an aging population and a small number of new entrants.
German missionary work did not begin until some time later in the 1880s and became known for introducing (German) liberal theology , which was in contrast to the conservative theology of the Americans.
Today there are 7,000 congregations of different Protestant denominations in Japan . Evangelical mission societies from Europe and North America are the main missionaries to this day.
Well-known Japanese Christians are:
- Inazō Nitobe , author of the book Bushido: The Soul of Japan
- Kanzō Uchimura , founder of the Mukyokai movement and pacifist
- Naoe Kinoshita , author and pacifist
- Makoto Tanabe , former leader of the Social Democratic Party in Japan
- Sakuzō Yoshino , Japanese political scientist, historian and author
- Masaaki Suzuki , Japanese conductor and church musician
Jehovah's Witnesses
Before the Second World War, the Jehovah's Witnesses ( エ ホ バ の 証人 , Ehoba no shōnin ) in Japan only had a few hundred followers.
On June 21, 1939, 130 employees of the Tōdaisha ( 燈台 社 ), the Japanese branch of the Watchtower Society at the time , were arrested, which brought the activity of Jehovah's Witnesses in Japan to a virtual standstill until the end of the war.
When the Jehovah's Witnesses missionary work was legalized again after the end of the war in 1945 and American missionaries came to Japan, the number of followers increased again and exceeded the thousand mark in the mid-1950s. In 1972 there were about 14,000 members, and by 1998 the number of Jehovah's Witnesses in Japan had grown to 222,912. In 2018 there were 212 802 members.
Since 1980, Jehovah's Witnesses in Japan have had their own complete translation of the Bible , the New World Translation in Japanese , of which over 100,000 copies are distributed in Japan each year.
See also
- Anglican Church in Japan - Nippon Sei Ko Kai
- Religion in japan
- Persecution of Christians
literature
- Roland Habersetzer : The Warriors of Ancient Japan - Famous Samurai , Rōnin and Ninja . Palisander Verlag, 1st edition 2008, ISBN 978-3-938305-07-2 . Contains an extensive account of the persecution of Christians in Japan in the early 17th century and the Shimabara uprising .
- Charles Ralph Boxer: The Christian Century in Japan 1549–1650, University of California Press, 1951.
- Mark R. Mullins (Ed.): Handbook of Christianity in Japan. Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 5 Japan, 10 . Brill, Leiden (et al.) 2003, ISBN 978-90-04-13156-9 .
- Heinz Brunotte & Otto Weber (theologian) (Ed.): Evangelical Church Lexicon. Ecclesiastical-theological concise dictionary, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht publishing house, 1956
- Richard H. Drummond: A History of Christianity in Japan . Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1971.
- Scott W. Sunquist (Ed.): A Dictionary of Asian Christianity . Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2001.
- Berislav Župarić: The Japanese Orthodox Church: Orthodoxy in the Far East . In: Thomas Bremer , Hacik Rafi Gazer , Christian Lange (ed.): The orthodox churches of the Byzantine tradition . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2013, ISBN 978-3-534-23816-3 , pp. 107-110 .
- Tsuneaki Kato: Practical Theology in Japan Today. In: International Journal of Practical Theology. 22 (2), 2018, pp. 273-294.
Web links
- Japanese Journal of Religious Studies : "Christians in Japan", 2007, 34/1. (English; individual articles can be downloaded in PDF format)
- Jackie Fowler: Christianity in Japan. In: Religious Movements Homepage Project. University of Virginia , archived from the original on November 23, 2007 ; accessed on April 2, 2018 .
- History of the Catholic Church in Japan from the perspective of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Japan - English
Individual evidence
- ^ Catholic Hierarchy Directory
- ↑ Paul Ham: Hiroshima Nagasaki . Transworld, 2012, ISBN 978-1-4481-2627-9 , pp. 367 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed August 14, 2015]).
- ↑ Tsuneaki Kato: Practical Theology in Japan Today . In: International Journal of Practical Theology . tape 22 , no. 2 , 2018, p. 281 .
- ↑ Watchtower Bibel and Tract Society (ed.): Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses 1998 , pp. 70ff
- ↑ Jehovah's Witnesses Worldwide: Japan . Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. Retrieved March 11, 2018.