The Catholic Church In Japan Since 1859

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Despite the relatively small number of formal Christian believers in japan—less than one percent of the total population—Christianity has become and is likely to continue to be an important strand in modern Japanese culture. The Christian social message of the early decades of the twentieth century has become a lasting part of social welfare attitudes. The strong emphasis on education of the Christian missionary movement has left a visible legacy throughout Japanese education, primarily in the teaching of women. Author, Otis Cary's impressive work, first published in two volumes, appears here in a convenient one-volume edition. The first part deals with Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox missions; the second, with Protestant missions. The story begins with the arrival of Francis Xavier in Japan in 1549, unfolds through the early successes of the Roman Catholic missions and the subsequent age of hideous persecutions and the virtual extirpation of Christianity in the seventeenth century, and moves forward to its revival in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is in many ways an absorbingly dramatic tale, and Cary tells it exceedingly well.

Japan has had three Catholic prime ministers, and its current empress was raised and educated in the faith. How did a non-Christian nation come to foster more Catholic leaders than the United States, particularly when Protestantism is said to define Christianity in Japan and Catholicism is believed to be but a fleeting element of Japan’s so-called Christian century? Far from being a relic of the past – something brought to Japan by sixteenth-century missionaries such as Francis Xavier and then forgotten – Catholicism offered, and continues to provide, an authentic way for Japanese believers to shape their cultural identities. This volume documents the appeal of Catholicism, not only among farmers and fishers but also among scientists, diplomats, novelists, and members of the imperial household who have found in Catholicism an alternative way to keep “tradition” and negotiate modernity since the late nineteenth century.