DEDICATION
To all, of whatsoever church or nation, who with love for the Lord Jesus Christ are trying to give His Gospel to Japan, I dedicate this book.
Differing as we do upon so many points, it is easy for us to see what we deem defeats in one another’s belief and practice; but if He to whose pure eyes all men must seem so imperfect" is not ashamed to call them brethren" whom He is sanctifying, let us not withhold the name from any that love and follow Him.
May He prosper our work so far as it is in accord with His truth.
May He overrule our mistakes. May His Kingdom come to Japan. May He grant that we, whose notes have now too much of discord, may all at last find ourselves in harmony as we join with the ten thousand times ten thousand and the thousands of thousands in singing:
“Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power, and riches, and wisdom, and might, and honour, and glory, and blessing.”
FOREWORD
THE definitive history of Christianity in Japan may never be written. Despite the relatively small number of formal believers—less than one per cent of the total population—Christianity has become and is likely to continue to be an important strand in modern Japanese culture. The eager response to Christianity by young intellectuals of samurai background in the second half of the nineteenth century has worked itself deep into the continuing intellectual life of the nation. The Christian social message of the early decades of the twentieth century has become a lasting part of social welfare attitudes and a still perceptible influence in the Socialist political movement. The strong emphasis on education of the Christian missionary movement has left a visible legacy throughout Japanese education, particularly in higher education for women. The international contacts of Christianity and the supranationalism and pacifism of its fundamental teachings are ongoing forces in contemporary Japan.
Otis Cary lived and wrote at a time when such aspects of the history of Christianity in Japan would have seemed somewhat secondary. His two volumes, entitled A History of Christianity in Japan, were concerned basically with the missionary movement itself, the churches it founded, and the converts these gathered in. All this, of course, is a very essential part of the story. In Japan, the history of Christianity inevitably begins with the history of Christian missions.
The missionary movement still continues in Japan, though in different form from the days of Otis Cary. From the present perspective, the history of Christian missions in Japan might be divided into four major epochs. The first was the introduction of Catholic Christianity in the sixteenth century, its remarkably rapid spread, and its almost complete extirpation during the first half of the seventeenth century—a fascinating story of great meaning for the time but of little continuing influence on later ages. Next came the period of the reintroduction and early success of Christianity, Protestant and Orthodox as well as Catholic, in the second half of the nineteenth century. This was the golden age of the missionary movement in terms of lasting significance. The third period, from the 1890’s up to World War II, saw continued but less dramatic success for the missionary movement under increasingly complex and adverse conditions, while the main story of Christianity in Japan moved away from the missionary effort to the Japanese churches and individual believers. The last period is the postwar phase, in which the missionary movement, though still relatively large in numbers, is only a small peripheral element in Japanese Christianity.
The career of Otis Cary started in the key second period and continued into the third. Writing in 1909, he covered the first phase of the missionary movement in the first half of the volume “Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Missions” and dealt with the second phase in the remainder of that volume and in the second volume, “Protestant Missions,” but he made only a tentative start on an analysis of the third phase.
The first period, which lay far back in history, Cary could treat with much of the same historical perspective possible today. The second and most significant period of the history of Christian missions in Japan, he knew as an eyewitness and participant himself. While more recent scholarship has dealt with much of his subject matter in greater detail, with new materials, and from differing angles of vision, it is a tribute to his thoroughness, careful scholarship, and sense of balance that his two volumes should still be in strong demand more than six decades after their first publication. In fact, since he himself was a major participant during the latter part of the nineteenth century, his judgments and evaluations on this phase of the story are not merely secondary materials but in a sense a primary source on this significant period in the history of Christian missions in Japan.
Otis Cary was succeeded in the missionary movement in Japan by his son Frank during the decades before World War II, and Frank’s son, the present Otis Cary, who is largely responsible for this republication of his grandfather’s famous work, is on the Amherst College faculty on leave as a professor at Doshisha University in Kyoto, where he directs Amberst House, and is a part-time lecturer about Japan in the United States. The focus has shifted and broadened with time, but the family tradition of intercultural work between the United States and Japan continues.
Edwin O. Reischauer
May 14, 1975
Cambridge, Massachusetts
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
IT may seem odd to republish a work in two volumes long since in the public domain. However, if the requests, and even supplications, from individuals and from libraries are any indication, there is a void that this original work fills in the spiritual history of the inroads of the Christian faith in the older religious fabric of the East. My grandfather was invited to give the Hyde Lectures at Andover Seminary soon after it united with Harvard in 1908. As he notes, these lectures formed the basis of the present work. His was a modest and meticulous approach, bred in the small towns of Congregational New England. Inbred in him was a faith in and concern for records and the written word. Although he would have been glad to use as many other sources as he could, he labored under the “disadvantages” of being a member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which kept unusually complete records for each station and combined them for full reports to headquarters. These volumes have been criticized for this imbalance. He knew, as he put it together, that he would be faulted, and he would have welcomed more material from other denominations.
Fifty years after the introduction of Protestantism to Japan was a most fortunate time, indeed, to make an accounting of the record. With the advent of the Taisho era and after World War I, the Christian spectrum expanded and fragmented astonishingly. The first volume, dealing with the older branches of Christianity of the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches, has been received by them over the years with considerable respect and appreciation. It is difficult to find anywhere else as many direct quotations from the actual participants. References in recent scholarly literature testify to this.
It was my father, Frank Cary, who had the ambition to write the third volume, bringing the work “up to date.” This was not merely an expression of filial piety as exemplified in crates of collected periodicals, tracts, reports, and communications around the house. Instead he was dispatched to spend his final active years on the mission field after World War II recouping, reconstructing, and reconstituting American Board affairs and properties for the new United Church of Christ of Japan. On the one-hundredth anniversary of the introduction of Protestantism in 1959, he consented to remain an extra year to make available some of the record of former years with which he had such a fond familiarity dating from boyhood years.
It was my grandfather’s firm conviction that retired missionaries should leave the field, for if the seed was to take root, this could finally be accomplished only by indigenous believers. “Devolution” (a somewhat un-Darwinian if spiritual phrase) was an original and constant concern of the American Board, its headquarters in Boston, and its missionaries, It went much against Frank Gary’s grain to stay an extra year after his seventieth birthday to put these materials together, for it was his father who chaired the mission committee on retirement policy and procedures, which clearly established that “old wood” could be “dead wood” and should not continue on the field to get in the way of the ongoing work.
Otis Cary returned to active work with Japanese communities in California and Utah and helped establish a church in Ogden. He finally retired in the mid-1920’s but vigorously continued his historical and theological research.
It is hardly in the range of my ability or intent as Otis Cary’s namesake to undertake the task of “completion” of the original work. Not only has scholarship rushed on, but also the very temper of the religious scene is so different, multidenominatioal, and evolving that it defies any attempt of a junior and imperceiving latecomer.
Revell originally published 2,000 sets of the volumes. After several years, the author was asked what he would like done with the more than one thousand sets still unsold. Missionary salaries being what they were, he bought up only a few sets, and the remainder were turned back into pulp. The demand since then from libraries, which tend to lose the second volume, has been forcible on the descendants! It is hoped that this reprinting will not only fill library holes but will also provide a solid basis for new scholarship in a world at sea in its search for values in a fragmented and turbulent time. Certainly this is in the spirit of the author and of the manner in which he treated these often exciting historical materials. He would have claimed little for his part in the work. The significance of the indefinite article at the beginning of the title was intentional.
Otis Cary
July 18, 1975
Amherst House
Doshisha University
Kyoto
PREFACE
IN this volume and one dealing with Protestant Missions in Japan the attempt has been made to write impartially concerning the three great divisions of the Christian Church. Probably, however, complete success has not been attained, for a writer is unconsciously affected by his own prejudices. I will not deny that certain doctrines and practices of the Roman and Greek Churches seem to me gravely erroneous. Members of those churches have the same opinion of what I believe and do. It will be well, however, for all of us to remember that Christ rebuked His disciples for unworthy feelings against those who, though not walking with them, yet cast out demons in His name. If we belong to the Church Universal, we must recognise some degree of fellowship with all followers of Christ and must acknowledge their work for Him as a part of that in which we are engaged. The great missionary to the Gentiles wrote to those that by emphasising differences were in clanger of cutting themselves off from joy in the labours of persons not belonging to their own party: “All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas. . . all are yours and ye are Christ’s.” While writing of Xavier, Fernandez, Takayama Ukon, Petitjean, and Dominic Senemon; of Archbishop Nicolai and those of his converts who were so earnest in giving the Gospel to their countrymen; I have said: “Yes, if I am Christ’s, these men too are mine. I ought to rejoice in what they have accomplished in His name.” I am sorry for any person claiming to be a Christian who can read of Verbeck, and Sawayama, and Neesima without a desire to claim them as his brethren. We see defects in others. Alas! is our own work so perfect that we can point the finger of scorn at theirs? Even the best workers upon God’s temple have sometimes intermingled grass, hay, stubble with the gold, silver, and precious stones; but we may well take heed lest we become so occupied with criticising the former that we cannot rejoice in the strength and beauty of the latter.
Notwithstanding what has just been said, the honest historian cannot conceal the faults of those concerning whom he writes. Cromwell’s face must be painted with the wart The artist need not, however, write beneath the picture: “Please notice especially the wart,” and so I have not specifically drawn attention to what seem unfortunate features in the methods of any Christian workers, but have simply told the facts, usually in the words of the workers themselves or in those used by writers belonging to the same communion.
It will, after all, be evident to the reader that this book has been written by a Protestant. This will explain why some matters that occupy considerable space in such writers as Charlevoix receive but slight notice here; why, for instance, little is said of the miracles ascribed to Xavier and his successors. Even the diction will be found to have something of a Protestant tinge, I am aware that the term Roman Catholic is displeasing to some members of the Church to which it is applied. As a rule, it is desirable to speak of a religious body by the name of its own preference; but I trust that in this case the failure to do so will not be regarded as a discourtesy, Some that do not acknowledge the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome make or desire to make the word “Catholic” the title of their own division of Christianity, and the recognised name of one of the leading denominations in Japan is Seikokwai or Holy Catholic Church. Such facts seem to make necessary the use in this book of the term Roman Catholic, The name Greek Orthodox has been chosen as conveying to many readers a clearer idea than would that of Holy Orthodox Church.
Those acquainted with the Japanese language may criticise my way of writing some words. I have omitted the marks that designate long vowels, because they are misleading to the general reader and because it is difficult to secure such accurate proof-reading as would ensure against mistakes. Again, though Japanese nouns have usually no distinction of number, it has seemed best for the sake of clearness to use such plurals as daimyos, etc.
As many bibliographical lists have been published there is no necessity for mentioning all of the books consulted in the preparation of this volume. For the early missions, chief reliance has been placed on Charlevoix Crasset, Steichen’s “The Christian Daimyo,” Cros’s “St. François de Xavier,” Murdoch and Yamagata’s “History of Japan,” and papers in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan. Special obligation is acknowledged to Murdoch and Yamagata’s work for its help in connecting events narrated by European writers with those found in Japanese records. In several cases its translations have been adopted in this book. The intensely interesting work of Abbé Marnas, “La Religion de Jésus Ressuscité? au Japon,” and the letters of Mgr. Forcade published under the title," Le Premier Missionnaire du Japon an XIXe Siècle," have been the chief sources of information concerning the earlier years of the modern Roman Catholic missions. For more recent years I have depended on the “Annals of the Propagation of the Faith,” the reports of the Société des Missions Etrangères, and various periodicals.
The first part of a history of the Greek Orthodox Mission has been published in the Japanese language under the title “Nippon Seikyo Dendo Shi.” In English, there is nothing available except a few articles in magazines; and I am informed by Archbishop Nicolai that, even in the Russian language, little has been published concerning the mission of which he is the head.
A considerable portion of what is found in this book was used in the Hyde Lectures on Foreign Missions, given at Andover Theological Seminary in December, 1908.
CONTENTS
PART I THE ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONS
CHAPTER I. The Call to Japan
II. Francis Xavier in Japan. 1549-1551
III. Work of the Early Missionaries. 1551-1570
IV. Rapid Growth of the Church. 1571-1582
V. Hideyoshi and His Edicts Against Christianity. 1583-1598
VI. Increased Persecution Under Ieyasu. 1598-1616
VII. Apparent Extirpation of Christianity. 1616-1715
VIII. Japanese Traditions of the Early Missions
IX. Loochoo. 1844-1853
X. The Resurrected Church. 1855-1867
XI. Persecution. 1867-1873
XII. Development of the Church. 1873-1900
XIII. The Missions in the Twentieth Century. 1901-1909
PART II THE GREEK ORTHODOX MISSION CHAPTER
XIV. The Beginning of the Mission. 1861-1872
XV. The Expansion of the Church. 1873-1882
XVI. Recent History of the Mission. 1883-1909
Index
PART I
ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONS