Christianity in Japan

[BullGod]

I wonder if someone could enlighten me on the subject. I know that Christianity was introduced to Japan in 1542 by Portuguese Jesuit missionaries, and I know they were quite successfull in converting populace, including some of the ruling class, but I wonder how successfull exactly.
I mean, the game suggest that christianity was so welcomed in Japan, that it spreads like a plague. How eager exactly were people to abandon their old, traditional ways and convert to foreign religion? Was this influence really so great?

[rekishiotaku]

I'd say it was never above 1% of the total population. But it was concentrated primarily in Kyushu. According to Wikipedia, there was "over 100,000" converts, during the height of missionary activities there was approximately 130,000. Between 1553 and 1620, 86 daimyos were officially baptized (a few on the eves of major battles, probably as a way of hedging a bet with multiple gods).
But these numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt, some daimyo converted only to get better trade deals, since it was from them that saltpeter and other materials needed to make guns came from. And some strict Christian daimyo forcefully converted their populations, so can you really call those peasants Christian?

[♔The Black Knight♔]

Most japanese in history didn't cope with change well. There were some that converted but it wasn't nearly as extreme as in shogun 2.

[Captain Arrrgh!]

I've had some Christian missionary friends who reported little to no success in modern Japan.
Good.
It's been a major contributor to ignorance and loss of a people's culture and value of their history.\
Great for the Japanese for seeing it for what it is. I love that country.

[alexanderswift]

Christianity was treated rather harshly in some parts of Japan as well. It varied a bit from place to place but generally was never too friendly.

[O'Hea]

The highest estimate I've ever read for Christian converts in Japan was 300,000 (in a population of over 25 million). Christianity was seen as very destabilizing, not because very large numbers of people were converting to it, but because converted daimyo like Otomo Sorin persecuted the Buddhist and Shinto clergy and destroyed temples, shrines and artifacts.

[BullGod]

Thanks for answers all!
O'Hea, you've hit the spot, answering all my additional questions in those two sentences just before i've asked them
That's what I was wondering about - if the conversion wasn't so high, then why were the missionaries banned, prosecuted and crucified- meaning why was it perceived as such a threat, that it required taking those decisive actions against - especially if there were business benefits in there.

[rekishiotaku]

Japanese Buddhist daimyo also burned Buddhist temples and killed monks. During the sengoku-jidai some monks and some sects were causing trouble.

The expulsion of Christians is not unique to Japan, Korea also had a similar policy, as did China for awhile. The reason why they didn't like it were a few reasons, Christianity went against Confucianism, specifically Neo-Confucianism, which took a strong hold in Korea (really interesting essays from the 18th-19th century bashing "Christianity superstition" )and later Japan by the 17th century. Christianity was also alien, and it couldn't mix like Buddhism and Shinto could. For Christianity its all or nothing. And that was creating tensions. Moreover for Catholics the leader is the Pope in Rome. That didn't sit well with the established powers in Japan. Hideyoshi had also heard that the Portuguese had begun to lay claim to Nagasaki, which was a direct result of the missionaries. The Portuguese had also begun shipping Japanese slaves to SE Asia, Hideyoshi was not happy about that one either, probably not because of slavery, but because they were Japan's slaves.
Probably one of the largest problems for Christianity in Japan was the Catholic missionaries never really put Japanese into high positions in the church, so it always seemed more alien.
Once Tokugawa took over that was it. The Tokugawa shogunate were strict Buddhists, the number of Buddhist temples in Edo more than tripped, it was illegal to eat meat due to Buddhist restrictions in Edo. In fact once the emperor was restored there was a backlash against Buddhism.

After the war Japan like Korea and China wanted to go back to the gold old days, and that meant a traditional Confucian society, they felt the Westerners were barbarians who would disrupt the peace, and Christianity went hand 'n hand the West. So they both had to go. And just because the numbers were small that didn't mean they couldn't spread, they were therefore snuffed out.

[O'Hea]

Japanese Buddhist daimyo also burned Buddhist temples and killed monks. During the sengoku-jidai some monks and some sects were causing trouble.

It's true that there were frequent political conflicts between temples or between monks and samurai, but the way these things were handled by the Otomo struck me more as religious persecution than the same old power struggles. After centuries of coexistence between Buddhist, Shinto and neo-Confucian ideals, a new foreign religion actively seeking to stamp out other faiths must have been pretty disturbing for the average Japanese.

[american samurai]

From what I have read, the ruling samurai were not unaware of the role Christianity played in the take over and down fall of other countries and regions of the world that had not previously been Christian. It is no wonder that they took such drastic steps to root it out as though it was a cancerous disease as soon as they realized what was in store for them if their country was allowed to be taken over by Christians as well.

[BullGod]

Now I remembered reading something about Portugal and Spain dividing newly discovered lands between themselves. To tell you the truth, I think I remember it from James Clavell's "Shogun", which I've read quite some time ago, but there really was Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, and wikipedia states that :"The turning point for Catholic missions was the San Felipe incident, where in an attempt to recover his cargo, the Spanish captain of a shipwrecked trading vessel claimed that the missionaries were there to prepare Japan for conquest. These claims made Hideyoshi suspicious of the foreign religion." and I think there was a lot of competition between european powers regarding trade with Japan, so English and Dutch claimed that while Spain and Portugal were trying to take control over Japan using missionaries, they offered only to trade and not interfere.

Thanks rekishiotaku for taking time to answer me.

[rekishiotaku]

Portugal and Spain competed for power even after the Iberian Union of 1580. The primary agents of Portugal were the Jesuits, which for a long time had a monopoly in Japan. In the 1590s Spanish Franciscans based in the Philippians began to preach in Japan. The Jesuits claim that the "fervency with which the friars proclaimed their faith amounted to recklessness." The Franciscans and the Jesuits preached against each other in Japan. The bickering was so great that some feared the Portuguese or the Spainish would send military aid to secure their interests.
The San Felipe was a Spanish galleon that crashed and Hideyoshi ordered that the contents be divided between himself and the local daimyo. The captain tried to change Hideyoshi's mind and impress him by telling him of Spain's power and world empire. But information also reached Hideyoshi that Spain sends missionaries to soften the people and make them sympathetic to their Christian conquerors. The Franciscans blame the Jesuits for slandering them to the authorities.
I don't know if there is any truth to it. You'd think after Japan basically stole Spanish cargo that they'd launch an attack then with justification. But I guess Spain was used to losing its cargo. Ironically the idea of sending missionaries to campaign for Christianity, as well as the European power, was a tactic used by the Portuguese in the Kongo/Angola.

[fkizz]

Iberian Union is a politically correct name that gives the wrong impression of what happened - in truth it was just Portugal under the vassalage of Spain, having to give most of Portuguese ships, manpower and money to Spain to wage war with Netherlands, South Italy, Flanders, England (England being an ally of Portugal to top it, and Portugal was not at war with any of those countries previously). Naturally, strong serious rebellions against Spain started in Portugal, a long war ensured, ending in restoring Portuguese independence.

Spanish Empire was an European-American one, Spain as a country/empire was never much interested in trade with Oriental Colonies, mainly a very far away like Japan, Spain interest was to conquer (wage war) on american colonial subjects until their last man and take resources (like the Aztecs and the Aztec gold example, Francisco Pizarro).

So examples of Portuguese/Spanish "competition" for Japan are mostly isolated cases, the exception that confirms the rule, and not the typical usual picture of what usually happened in those times.

[shikken]

As an added note if this discussion is still open while Japan only had less than 1% of its population Catholic converts this still represented close to 200,000 Catholics the greatest number of non-European Catholics in the world at the time and that's even of several non-European countries put together. At this time Portuguese and Spanish missionaries had presences in South America, South-East Asia, India and China, but even if you combined most of those they didn't meet the Japanese numbers. Thus Japan was seen as the best country to go to for converts. It was also richer, more advanced and more open to trade than other countries too. A lot of terrible atrocities were committed there however and converts were almost always forced. For instance in Goa India missionaries would have negro slaves force Hindus to eat beef just to make them convert so overall conversion rates were not great.

[rekishiotaku]

As an added note if this discussion is still open while Japan only had less than 1% of its population Catholic converts this still represented close to 200,000 Catholics the greatest number of non-European Catholics in the world at the time and that's even of several non-European countries put together. At this time Portuguese and Spanish missionaries had presences in South America, South-East Asia, India and China, but even if you combined most of those they didn't meet the Japanese numbers. Thus Japan was seen as the best country to go to for converts. It was also richer, more advanced and more open to trade than other countries too. A lot of terrible atrocities were committed there however and converts were almost always forced. For instance in Goa India missionaries would have negro slaves force Hindus to eat beef just to make them convert so overall conversion rates were not great.

Well I've read it was 150,000 but thats not a huge difference, but lets look at other regions/states in the 16th century
-The Kingdom of the Kongo (Later Portuguese Angola) 500,000, most of whom were Catholic
-Spanish East Indies (principally the Philippines) 4 million, most of whom were Catholic
-New Spain (Spanish North and Mezo America) 20 million, nearly all by this time were Catholic
-Missionaries were also in China, and if just .2% of the population converted it would be around 250,000

[shikken]

Well I've read it was 150,000 but thats not a huge difference, but lets look at other regions/states in the 16th century
-The Kingdom of the Kongo (Later Portuguese Angola) 500,000, most of whom were Catholic
-Spanish East Indies (principally the Philippines) 4 million, most of whom were Catholic
-New Spain (Spanish North and Mezo America) 20 million, nearly all by this time were Catholic
-Missionaries were also in China, and if just .2% of the population converted it would be around 250,000

Oops I'm erred in what I read and wrote, sorry. Japan did not have the largest non-European Christian community at the time but rather the largest non-European Christian community that "wasn't controlled by Europeans". Other places were controlled by Europeans including Goa and Macau thus Japan represented the next pagan country they sought to colonize.

[rekishiotaku]

I'd add to that one of the largest that wasn't currently controlled by Europeans, since the Ottomans surely had a larger Christian population.
China may have rivaled it although a much smaller percent of the total population, and then the Nubian Christian kingdom fell to the Muslims during the 16th century, and of course the Ethiopians had/have a large Christian population despite never being colonized.

[shikken]

I think I've moved away from the question of this topic which I believe is "What was Christianity's influence on Japan?" to "What was Japan's influence on Christianity?" Should I start a new topic? I would like to discuss more where Japan stood in the Christian community of the 16th century.

[rekishiotaku]

I am not sure what the question is but, Japanese themselves stood very low in the Catholic world, they were not able to move up the hierarchy, but laymen* in Japan were sometimes given permission to baptize or give other rights. These laymen were often brothers, which in the Catholic clergy hierarchy is the lowest, they basically make all the vows of a monk, celibacy, poverty, obedience, but are not ordained, ie still laymen. This was probably due to the question the Catholics were facing at the time of whether natives could/should be ordained, a question that was not really solved until, I believe, the late 19th or early 20th century. The Vatican was very unaware of the situation in Japan, and thought that Nagasaki as simply a Portuguese colony. This was because the Jesuits there were given a lot of autonomy, and were basically independent from Portugal, and also they may have exaggerated their situation to their headquarters to get more financial support. The government in Portugal gave them little funding, however because of the Jesuits connections, they were fully able to carve up a niche in the market trading silks, and other Japanese wares, and not to mention gold and silver, for European goods most importantly saltpeter.
An interesting thing was when the missionaries were trying to translate the bible into Japanese there were two schools of thought, should they write it in the vernacular to make it more acceptable to the masses, or write it in the classical script to give it provenance like the Japanese classics.
As for Protestants, they did not play an active role in the conversion of Japan, which is one reason why the Dutch were allowed to stay in Dejima.
Japan did not really produce writings on Christianity that would have been read by others in the Christian world. Its not as if there were great Japanese Christian theologians that the West would have known about.

[shikken]

First of all please change all my uses of Christian to specifically Roman Catholic.

Didn't Otomo Sourin send an embassy that met the Pope? Surely the Vatican had been appraised by them, then again maybe not. I am considering that those Japanese ambassadors were probably favorable enough to the European presence to make helpful exaggerations of their own. I'm also aware about the problem natives faced with being ordained but that wasn't actually my question which I apologize for being vague on. What I'm trying to work out was Japan's importance to the missionaries as well as European colonial powers, did it rank particularly high to either of them or was it just another average new world to them. And by this I mean did European powers see Japan as a major trading partner while the missionaries saw Japan as an eager nation for conversion or just an average nation in these regards? I read that at the end of the 16th century the Japanese mission had become the largest Christian community not ruled by a European power and comprised of native Catholics but now you've told that this is incorrect.

So thus I feel inclined to disagree with the numbers you've raised. With China I'm sure that it was mostly in Portuguese controlled Macau where there were only around 20000 Chinese but apparently there were only some 2000 Chinese converts. Either way they weren't very successful, as I understood it a permanent mission wasn't successfully established until 1601 by Matteo Ricci but even he only apparently converted 2000 Chinese. There were however 6000 to 30000 converts by 1300 most of whom I believe disappeared during Mongol rule. Ethiopia was only briefly and unsuccessfully Roman Catholic and nominally Orthodox. I also question the sizes of Ottoman Christian populations if only because of probable persecutions. Nubia I believe was already in Christian decline and Muslim ascent long before the 16th century until the collapse of the Nubian Kingdom in 1504 thanks to Arab immigrants that slowly Arabized the population.

Also New Spain wasn't nearly as big as you've said. From what I've read it was only 8 to 20 million before Spanish settlers but dropped to less 2 million due to epidemics of small pox, measles and typhus. Due to significant language barriers it took a lot longer to establish native Christians until at least the 17th century.

On another note did Japan make any of its own saltpeter or was it all imported? I've read some articles on Japanese sanitation that said they did but also a lot of other articles that said saltpeter as all imported. Sorry to get off topic.