Post 16th century Japan.
Provocations
- planned subversion [SP],
- selling Japanese into slavery [H],
- rabid conversion [H],
- conversion for money [N]
- forcible conversions of the populace by Christian daimyo.
Iconoclasm
- “The balance sheet for the three months spent by Valignano in Arima was as follows: All the temples of their camis and fotoques (gods and Buddhas) were broken up and destroyed - more than forty of them, large and small, among them some of the most beautiful and renowned in all Japan; and all the bonzes either turned Christian or left (Dom Protasio’s) lands. And apart from those who newly came to Holy Baptism, there rose again in these lands of Arima more than seven thousand souls, those that had either fallen in the persecutions of the previous years or had been living without Padres, without churches, and without doctrine. … The bonzes were married, the idols were broken up, and the number of converts grows day by day…. As Frois notes additionally, from this destruction of Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples “there were salvaged some remnants for the profit of the church,” because Dom Protasio, “in accordance with a request” from Valignano, donated “the most important temples and their sites for Jesuit projects. The buildings of one such temple were converted into the Jesuits’ first formal educational institution in Japan, the boys’ preparatory school known as the Arima seminario, which Valignano called into existence some time before the end of June 1580. By October, the school had enrolled twenty-two pupils, children of noble houses from all over Kyushu; most of them were eventually to enter the Society of Jesus.”
- “As Omura Sumitada had gone off to the wars, it so happened that he passed on the way an idol, Marishiten by name, which is their god of battles. When they pass it, they bow and pay reverence to it, and the pagans who are on horseback dismount as a sign of their respect. Now the idol had above it a cockerel. As the daimyo came there with his squadron he had his men stop and ordered them to take the idol and burn it together with the whole temple; and he took the cockerel and gave it a blow with the sword, saying to it, “Oh, how many times have you betrayed me!” And after everything had been burnt down, he had a very beautiful cross erected on the same spot, and after he and his men had paid very deep reverence to it, they continued on their way to the wars. " - Luis Fróis (1532 - July 8, 1597), a Portuguese Christian missionary giving an eyewitness description of non Christian shrines being destroyed by Japanese converts.
Innate resistance
- Filial piety helped. SP_T1.
Tactics
- Initial identification and treatment:
- Watching for reversion
- domestic surveillance of descendants for many generations, (“After the examination was fully institutionalized in 1687, direct descendants of discovered Kirishitan were carefully supervised for seven generations for men and four generations for women.” - Ikuo Higashibaba)
- public awareness through anti-christian events (which involved Public testing)
- Guarding against repeat ignitions from outside
- closing the country,
- Isolation and monitoring of the dutch.
- controlling borders against infiltrators,
- Information gathering
- Book censorship.
- closing the country,
Christian resistance
Cross-generational memory
- Remarkable cross-generational memory among the elite and continued external vigilence [T1]
- “after getting rid of xtians japan adopts a closed door policy in 1630s to west except for dutch who werent in2 proselytism but they r kept confined a small artificial island off nagasaki with severe restrictions on display of their xtian beliefs, that way they wud trade with japan. every yr they were required to submit details of major world events to shogun esp any catholic plots. from mid 1700’s though forbidden some j intellectuals began to study dutch texts for medical knowledge and began translating them into japanese, soon dutch studies (called rangaku) acquired a following, and thru this japanese intellectuals had acquired some knowledge of outside events including western expansion. .. by 1790’s russians reached far east of siberia and close to japan, rus ships began calling for trade, followed by other western ships including brits intruding, so j intellectuals including aizawa began intensifying their study of the west even though it was largely forbidden by the shogunate”
- A clear undestanding of the barbarian use of Christianity and Islam to inspire extra-territorial loyalty.
- Aizawa Seishisai [T1, T3, T4]
- “Our way of virtue and their deceitful techniques are as incompatible as fire and ice. The universe is not enough to contain us both.”
Post-Meiji Japan, Pre-WW2
An early step of Meiji leadership was a conference on measures to stop spread of Christianity.
Also see Professor Inoue Tetsujiro’s pamphlet on Christianity.
Anti-Missionary activity
- Many remarkably accurate anti-christian pamphlets surfaced in the wake of renewed missionary incursion.
- Sources: History of Christianity in Japan (arch)
“the French built a ranch, and five or six priests took up their residence there. They gave waives of a hundred or two hundred rios annually to about twenty Japanese readers and sent them out in the disguise of traders or travelling students to Hirado, Shimabara in Hizen, to Fttkabori and to Amakusa. To the poor they gave money, and to the superstitious they exhibited prodigies in order to proselytise them, or worked upon their feelings by conventicles. (A conventicle is a meeting of both sexes at night in a secret diamber for pleasure.) In a short time, therefore, one or two hundred fellows sprang up who disregarded the most stringent injunctions of the lords of the districts, and neglected the social relations and the five virtues— a most fearful state of things, indeed.”
“The Jesus of Protestant Doctrine” -
“These priests of the Jesus doctrine live mostly in private houses, and under pretence of teaching astronomy, geography, and the use of fire-arms, and medicine desire in actual fact to spread about the abominable poison of Jesus. Compared with the Roman Catholic religion this is a very cunning doctrine indeed. Although they try to make out that there is nothing abominable in it, they are really foxes of the same hole, and it is really more injurious than the Roman Catholic doctrine. … But in the matter of abolishing Shinto and Buddhism and of treating prince and father with contempt it does not differ from the Roman Catholics, for which reason it is very hurtful to the state. "
“There is another poorly known aspect of the war which is the role of the Christian missionaries. They were key in spreading anti Japanese propaganda back home in mleccha lands. In the 1930’s Inazo Nitobe gave some speeches here in North America and in one of them he warned the missionaries to stay out of the war between Japan and China.” [T1, T2]
Geopolitical disadvantage
- As a ganging-up tactic in international policy and cooperation
- Chiang (he was a methodist) used his Christian outer cover to get the mlecchas to back him.
- “just read the war letters or war propaganda & u will see the heathen angle played up while chiang was presented as a god fearing christian. 1 american woman wrote a letter during the war saying how she wud rather be ruled by the germans for they were at least xtians unlike the heathen japs. Even during the russo-japanese war, count cassini’s campaign in US was to plead that unless the heathen japs were defeated by his rus, xtianizing asia would be impossible.”
- “After the war the settlement negotiations happened at portsmouth in US with teddy roosevelt as negotiator. 1 of the tricks the rus delegation adopted was to play up their xtianity to get a better settlement (which they did considering they lost) like attending church regularly, the japanese delegation had to follow suit so that public opinion wouldn’t be too against them.” [T1, ]
Post WW2
- Mc Arthur attempted christianization.
- “THE ARM OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER Once again it is raised on high in fight against Japanese paganism LIFE 27 Jun 1949 " [T]
- Mc Arthur was scared of communists, so he wanted to keep the emperor.
- Non-aggression was accepted mostly to ensure that Hirohito would not be tried as a “war criminal”.
- Secularism was accepted into the constitution deference to the occupying forces.
- Public education was revised to inculcate secular and such values.
- Many reverted.
- The Imperial family pretence [T1]
- Rice christian effect. [IMG, T2]
- “tht only brought bak xtians to pre war levels because the war killed j Christians disproportionately, for e.g. they were conc in cities which got bombed more and nagasaki was center of xtianity in japan ever since portuguese contact in 1500’s”
- Attacks in modern Japan: Oil attack 2015.
Current status
This challenge was heightened on a recent visit to Japan when I toured the ancient city of Kyoto for the first time. In that city, which is said to be the core from which Japanese culture radiates, the beauty of the formal gardens enthralled me. Their entire landscape is a magnificent work of art. I was also impressed by the pervasive idolatry throughout the whole city, and began to suspect that Kyoto might be not only the seat of Japanese culture but also the seat of satan, much like ancient Pergamos, where satan’s throne was located (see Rev. 2:13). It could be that powers of darkness, directed and coordinated from Kyoto, have succeeded in blinding the eyes of the Japanese people to the gospel of Christ.
For some reason, the investment in Christian missionary personnel, time, energy, and money in Japan has produced perhaps the lowest return through the years of any nation of the world. Who knows how many conferences have been held to devise new strategies? Who knows how many theses and dissertations have been written to address the problem? Who knows how many prayer meetings have focused on Japan? And still far less than 1 percent of Japanese are practicing Christians, while just across the Sea of Japan churches are multiplying in South Korea and China with minimal missionary investment. I cannot help but feel that large-scale spiritual warfare could be a key to bringing Japanese people to Christ. I wouldn’t be surprised if satan knows this also, and has combated it in part by erecting a formidable barrier between evangelicals on one hand and Pentecostals and Charismatics on the other.
We have tried almost everything else. Why not try spiritual warfare? If God had called me to be a leader in the evangelization of Japan, I believe I would (1) seek God’s power to tear down that barrier between the Christian factions; (2) train Japanese pastors and lay leaders in personal deliverance ministries; and (3) look to God for directions as to how to identify, engage, and break the power of the territorial spirits that have had Japan in their clutches for centuries. I mention Japan simply as an example that I am personally acquainted with. I suspect that similar experiments could be attempted in other parts of the world. - GB