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JAPAN'S HISTORY LIBRARY

 

 

 

 

RELIGION IN JAPAN

1 

THE BIRTH AND GROWTH OF BUDDHISM

 

 

THE development of Shintoism, the native religion of Japan, is recorded in the history proper of the country of which it forms an inseparable part. Buddhism and Christianity, having reached Japan from without, have individual histories of their own.

Buddhism has been to Japan what classical antiquity and Christianity were to the West; it brought with it Chinese civilisation, and a better religion than the native ancestor-worship.

Prince Sotoku, first royal patron of Buddism in Japan, in 537 BC he build the okdest temple still existing

The different accounts of the time and manner of its introduction are widely discrepant. The most probable story is that in 552 A.D. a king of Kudara in Korea sent pictures of Buddhist sacred history to the Emperor Kimmei (540-571), and that the new teaching fell upon fruitful soil. It does not, however, seem to have obtained a footing in the country entirely unopposed. In consequence of the outbreak of an under the epidemic, under the Emperor Bindatsu (572-585) it was persecuted and forbidden. Prince Shotoku a son of the Empress Suiko, seems to have materially influenced the extension of Buddhism. In 587 he built a great temple, and encouraged foundations and organisations for works of mercy and charity. The new doctrine obtained an informal official recognition from the Emperor Temmu (673-686), who ordered the erection of a temple in every province of the empire.

Japanese Buddhism, like the Chinese and Korean forms, and perhaps under their influence, was soon broken up into a number of sects (six); at the same time the antagonism and hostility between Buddhism and Shinto became strongly apparent. It is remarkable that the emperors generally accepted the new teaching, though it threatened from the outset to discredit their own divine origin. Thus on both sides the desire may well have arisen to incorporate the new belief with the old. In 794 the Emperor Kwammu changed his place of residence from Nara to the modern Kioto; at the same time the Japanese Buddhists began their journey to China, in order to seek information and enlightenment at the sources of the doctrine, which for Japan at least was new. Dengio Daishi went to China, and on his return in 798 founded the Tendai sect, and the monastery Enriaku-ji on Mount Hie as its headquarters.

 

THE OLDEST EXISTING BUDDHIST TEMPLE IN JAPAN Temple of Horyu, founded In 587 by Prince Shotoku, first royal patron of Buddhism in Japan, and completed in 607 A.D.

 

A yet more important influence upon the development of religion and of scientific life and thought was exercised by Kobo Daishi (774-834); he is also said to have visited China, and upon his return in 816 to have founded the Shingon sect. On the Koya Mount he founded the monastery of Kongofuji, which became, with the support of the Emperor Saga, the central point, in many respects, of Japanese Buddhism. Kobo Daishi, who was known in life as Kukai, invented the Japanese alphabet, the I-ro-ha, consisting of forty-seven signs, and also the first Japanese writing, the Katakana: hitherto only the Chinese characters had been known, and these continued in use for the writing of works of a scientific character.

But the greatest achievement of Kobo Daishi was his effort, which attained a great measure of success, to make a fusion of Buddhism and Shinto. The old divinities were received into the Japanese heaven and explained as incarnations of Buddha; while the demi-god heroes and warriors received general, or, at any rate, local, worship as "gongen". Thus he gave a Japanese colouring to Buddhism. To him it is undoubtedly due that the emperors gave their unconditional adherence to the foreign doctrine, which had now become national. During several centuries after his age most of the emperors resigned after a short rule, shaved their heads, and ended their lives as Buddhist monks. To him also is to be ascribed the introduction of cremation; in several cases even the emperors accepted this custom.

During the struggles between the rival families of Taira and Minamoto the prestige and power of the Buddhist priesthood steadily increased. With Yoritomo's victory over his rival in 1186, and the removal of the capital of the Shogun to Kamakura, near the modern Yokohama, begins the most brilliant age of Japanese Buddhism, as regards the number of its sects, their power, and their political influence. [The Shoguns were originally military commanders, four in number, ruling the four military districts into which the empire was divided. But in 1192 the title was given to a supreme military chief ; and from that date to 1868 there was an almost unbroken succession of Shoguns, whose importance will be seen in the later course of the narrative.] In 1191 Yeizai founded the Ruizai sect; and Shinran, in 1220, founded the Shin sect, the Nationalist Party of Japanese Buddhism. Shinran allowed the priests of his sect to eat meat and to marry; and in order to break down the barriers between priests and people, removed the temples to the towns from the mountains and desert places where they had previously been erected.

Contrary to the usage of other sects, the writings of the Shin sect are in Japanese characters. The sect is known by the names of Ikko (the first word of their most important work, the Book of Everlasting Life) and Monto (Servant of the Gate, referring to the unity of their organisation). They are spoken of, and with much reason, as the Protestants of Japan. They refuse to consider as obligatory not only celibacy and abstinence from certain meats, as we have already observed, but also the practices of penance and ascetic living, pilgrimages, and the monastic life. They teach that men are justified by faith in Buddha. Among them the priesthood is hereditary. In 1227 the Jodo sect was founded by Dagiu, and in 1261 Nichiren founded the sect which has been called after him, which may be considered as a counterpoise to the Shin sect, and perhaps owes its origin to a feeling that some such opposition was required. Like its founder, who escaped the death sentence pronounced upon him by the Regent Hojo Tokiyori, owing to the miraculous splintering of the sword upon his neck, this sect was invariably characterised by intolerance and fanaticism, and therefore played a leading part in the struggle against the Christians. One of its members was Kato Kiyomasa, that persecutor of the Christians who is a notorious figure in the Jesuit reports at the outset of the seventeenth century; and its motto was to be seen on the standards of many a general “Honour to the book Holy Buddha. In 1288 the last of the great sects, Ji (Seasons of the Year), was founded by Jippen.

During the civil wars which devastated the country between 1332 and 1602 the priests kept alive the study of science and literature ; but they also took a very definite part in the political struggles oi the time, and many an abbot, in full armour, charged into the fray at the head of his monks and vassals. Hence it was only to be expected that Ota Nobunaga, the first important personality who made it his object to restore peace and order throughout the country and to secure obedience to the emperor's will (though this redounded also to his own advantage), should have turned upon the monasteries.

In 1571 the worst of these spiritual strongholds, the monastery of the Shingon sect on the Hieizan, was destroyed by his orders and all its inhabitants slain. Some years later the same fate befell the great temple of Hongwanji of the Shin sect in Osaka. The priests of this latter had harboured robbers and also political opponents of Nobunaga. After weeks of fighting, three fortresses were captured out of the five which composed the monastery. Two thousand of the garrison are said to have fallen during the siege, and upon the entrance of the Mikado the survivors were permitted to depart. The Buddhist priesthood, however, never recovered from these two blows; and even though it was found necessary at a later period to break down one or another of the strongholds of political Buddhism, Nobunaga had already performed the hardest part of the task.

The Jodo sect was the most important under the Tokugawa rule. It is noteworthy that the Shoguns of this dynasty showed special favor to this sect, which certainly was less cultured than any other. Its priests followed the chief rules of Indian Buddhism, and taught that the welfare of the soul depended rather upon prayers, and upon the strict performance of external ceremonies and pious precepts, than upon moral purity and perfection. The Shogunate was therefore able to entrust to this low type of sect the religious guidance of the people without fear of any attempt to exercise an influence in opposition to its own plans. The Jodo priests also provided the services in the burial grounds of the Shoguns at Shiba and Nikko.

The Temple of Zojoji, situated in Shiba, which was burnt down in 1574, also belonged to them. The Buddhism which had become the State religion, at any rate of the Shogun bureaucracy, declined greatly in the later years of the Shogunate, as did all other branches of the public service. It failed completely in the final struggle of the Shogunate against the Mikado. After the Shogun himself had given up the contest, the adherents of the Shogunate made an attempt to set up an opposition Mikado in the person of Rinnoji-no Miya, an imperial prince and high-priest of the Tendai sect, with a residence in the Temple of Toyeisan at Uyeno. This proceeding had, however, nothing to do with Buddhism as such; it was little more than an historical recollection of the reasons which had induced the Shoguns of the Tokugawa dynasty to find an instrument for use against the Mikado in the chief of this sect, which the Emperor Kwammu had joined upon its foundation by a prince of the blood royal.

After the fall of the Tokugawa dynasty, the victors began to display violent animosity against Buddhism which resulted in persecution. This was the more natural as the literary activity of the Shintoists, and authors who gave themselves out to be Shintoists, materially contributed, from the eighteenth century onward, to bring about the downfall of the Shogunate in 1868. The Mikado then issued a decree making a sharp distinction between the Buddhist and Shinto forms of worship. Buddhist priests who had hitherto been allowed to perform Shinto ceremonies were now prohibited from doing so, and all temples m which the two creeds had been united were assigned to Shinto.

At the same time a special ministerial department (the Shin-gaikwan) for the support of Shinto worship was created, the object of which was to spread Shinto doctrines by means of missionaries educated for the purpose. In 1870 a new decree appeared forming these missionaries into a kind of political corporation, to which also prefects and other administrative officials might belong. In 1871 relations between Buddhism and the Government were entirely broken off. The Buddhist sanctuary in the palace was closed, the Buddhist festival of the Emperor abolished, and the statue of Buddha removed from the palace. The titles of honor given to the temples were annulled and their landed property was sequestrated. In 1872 the Government deprived the priests of their clerical titles and dignities and ordered them to resume their family names, the same time the prohibitions against marriage and the eating of meat were removed, all temples without priests and congregations were sequestrated, and the priests were forbidden to appeal to the charity of their believers. The importance of these rules can be easily understood if it be remembered that in 1872, in a population of rather more than 33,000000, there were 72,000 Buddhist priests and 9,621 nuns, to whom must be added about 126,400 novices, students, and priests' families belonging to the Shin sect, and that the number of temples in the possession of the seven chief sects amounted to more than 67,000.

These efforts of the Government to suppress Buddhism and to revive Shinto remained fruitless, as was bound to be the case, for the Shinto doctrine contains none of those elements which are essential to successful religious propaganda. The Shingaikwan was consequently dissolved, and religious affairs submitted to the ordinary ministerial department of public worship, which now laid three injunctions upon the State missionaries: they were to preach the fear of the gods and the love of the fatherland; to explain the laws of Nature and sound morals; to serve the Emperor and to obey his orders.

At the same time the Government appointed for every Buddhist and Shinto sect a chief of these official missionaries, and allowed the members of all Buddhist sects to preach when and where they would, provided that they taught nothing opposed to the three injunctions above mentioned.

As these measures did not produce the desired result, the Government abolished the official missionaries in 1884, and left the settlement of the missionary question to the heads of the different sects whom it was to appoint. Finally, in 1889, the new constitution recognised religious toleration as a cardinal point. Proposals for a law to settle the questions concerning the Buddhist, Shinto, and Christian sects were rejected by the first chamber in 1899.

The most obvious consequence of the Government's interference in religious questions and of the discouragement of the Buddhists may be said to consist in the fact that, with the exception of the Shin sect, which seems to have gained new strength in the struggle for existence, all the Buddhist sects have suffered financially to a greater or less extent, while their religion has emerged from the period of trial with advantage rather than loss.

 

THE CHOIR OF THE GREAT BUDDHIST TEMPLE OF THE FIVE HUNDRED SPIRITS IN OLD TOKIO Buddhism spread with marvellous rapidity after its introduction to Japan in the sixth century, and when the Government attempted to suppress the new faith there were 67,000 temples
INTERIOR OF ONE OF THE LARGEST OF JAPAN'S 67,000 TEMPLES IN THE EARLY DAYS OF BUDDHISM This temple is drawn after a Japanese painting, and that above alter an old Japanese engraving.

 

 

2

THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY IN JAPAN

 

 

IT was at the close of the gloomy Ashikaga period that Europeans first came into contact with the Japanese. The actual date, which lies between 1530 and 1545, has not been established, and the names of the first Europeans to visit the country are equally doubtful. The date usually adopted is 1543. If the Portuguese Fernando Mendez Pinto observed any chronological sequence in the narrative of his adventures—though he is known as the "father of lies" his story is none the less deserving of serious historical examination—he at any rate can no longer claim the honor of being one of the first three foreigners to enter Japan. In any case, these early visitors, whatever their names may have been, belonged to that class of adventurers who then harassed the seas and coasts of Eastern Asia, working either on their own account or in the company of Chinese freebooters. Shortly after the discovery of Japan, and the announcement of a good opening for trade existing in that country, a much stronger influx of foreigners took place.

The trade was followed by the missionary. In 1549 Francis Xavier arrived at Kagoshima; there he met with a hostile reception, as the Prince (or "King", as he is termed in the chronicles) of Satsuma was enraged at the fact that the Portuguese ships had failed to appear off his coasts during the previous year; Xavier therefore proceeded to Nagato and Bungo, and thence to Kioto, where he met with equally little success on account of the prevailing disturbances. In 1531, he left with the intention of returning to India to enlist missionaries for Service in Japan, but died during the voyage. However, the new field was not long without labourers. As early as 1564 seven churches and chapels existed in the suburbs of Kioto, and a number of smaller Christian communities was established in the south­west of Japan, especially in the island of Kyushu. In 1581 there were more than 200 churches in Japan, and the number of native Christians had risen to 130,000. The conversion of the population continued peacefully until the death of the Shogun Nobunaga in the following year; he had openly favoured the Christians, possibly because he hoped to find in them a counter­influence to the Buddhist priesthood, which was hostile to himself. In the year 1583 the Christian princes of Bungo, Arima, and Omura, in the island of Kyushu, sent an embassy, consisting of four nobles, to declare their subjection to Rome. The ambassadors were received by Pope Sixtus V and King Philip II of Spain, and returned to Japan in 1591, bringing seventeen Jesuit missionaries with them.

However, in the year 1587 the first clouds began to gather above the heads of the foreign missionaries; a decree of banishment was issued against them, probably inspired by the desire of the Prime Minister, Hideyoshi, to secure the support of the Buddhists in his struggle for the supremacy of the country. The Jesuits, who in the Far East have always understood how to avert the dangers that threatened them and their work, by an outward show of submission, closed their churches and ceased their public preaching; the process of conversion, however, continued without interruption or disturbance, and was attended with such success that during the three years succeeding this edict 30,000 Japanese were baptised. The Taiko Sama Hideyoshi seemed at first to be satisfied with this formal submission to his will; he may also have feared that the exercise of greater severity would result in the loss of the advantage which accrued to him from foreign trade, or would induce the Christian princes of Kyushu to abandon his cause. But further measures were necessitated by the appearance of the Spanish mendicant friars, who came over in great numbers from the Philippines and defied his orders by preaching and wearing their priestly robes in public. The decree of banishment was revived; some churches and the houses belonging to the missionaries were destroyed, and, finally, in 1596, six Franciscan monks, three Jesuits, and seventeen Japanese Christians were crucified at Nagasaki.

Even now, however, the prudent behaviour of the Jesuits seemed to have obviated any immediate danger. Upon the death of the Taiko Sama, Iyeyasu, the most powerful of the leaders who were struggling for the supremacy, seemed inclined to favour the missionaries; he even attempted to use the Spanish monks as a means of initiating commercial relations between the Philippines and his own domain of the Kwanto (the district near Yedo). Soon, however, he found himself obliged to oppose the foreign missionaries and the native Christians.

For this change of policy the latter had only themselves to blame. The Spanish mendicant friars continued to defy the orders of the Government and to inspire their converts with a refractory spirit; and the insubordination displayed by the native Christians in many places occasioned serious forebodings in the Government. During the period when the work of conversion was at its height, cruel persecution of the Buddhists had been instituted in many of the districts governed by Christian princes, and in particular in Kyushu. If these were not instigated by the missionaries, they were at any rate countenanced by them, as is plain from their narratives. For example, in Omura, after the conversion of the prince in 1562, troops were sent out to destroy all the temples and images in the district. In Amakusa, in 1577, the prince offered his subjects the choice between conversion and exile, and in many other places anyone who hesitated to embrace the new religion was driven forth from house and home, no matter what his position. The victory of the Taiko Sama and Iyeyasu over the south, where their chief opponents were settled, was followed by a redistribution of the principalities among new rulers. The heathen princes then began to persecute their Christian subjects, as their predecessors had persecuted the heathen. At this moment, a refractory spirit of resistance was manifested by the peasant population—a spirit unprecedented among the peasant class of Japan. A natural result was the issue of further edicts against missionaries and Christians, and, in short, against all foreigners.

In the year 1606 Christianity was prohibited, and was declared in 1613 to be a danger to the constitution, perhaps in consequence of a conspiracy thought to have been discovered in 1611 in the gold­mines of the island of Sado, where thousands of native Christians had been transported to undergo convict labour. It was resolved to destroy all the churches and expel all the missionaries, and the decision was carried into effect. In the year 1614 twenty-two Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustine monks, 117 Jesuits, and several hundred Japanese priests and catechists were forcibly placed on board three junks and sent out of the country, so that the 600,000 native Christians of Japan (2,000,000 according to Japanese historians) were thus at one blow deprived of their spiritual pastors. Their position became even more serious after the battle of Sekigahara, when Iyeyasu defeated Hideyori, the son of the Taiko Sama, as in that battle the Christian princes were on the losing side.

The main reason which drove the Japanese Government to severer measures is to be found in the continual attempts of foreign priests to return to the country by stealth. Hidetada, the son of Iyeyasu, who had succeeded him in 1616 (or 1613), issued a decree in 1617 that all foreign priests found in Japan should be put to death, a penalty to which they had been previously subjected upon one occasion only (in 1596). In the year 1617 foreign trade was limited to Hirado and Nagasaki; in 1621 the Japanese were prohibited from leaving their country, and in 1624 all strangers, with the exception of the Dutch and Chinese, were sentenced to expulsion, though the latter edict was not fully carried out until fifteen years later. Meanwhile the persecution against the native Christians continued. Thousands were crucified, burnt, drowned, or otherwise martyred, but, as was to appear more than two hundred years later, Christianity was never entirely stamped out in Japan. In December, 1637, a revolt broke out in Kyushu, which, though but indirectly connected with the Christian movement, resulted in a renewal of the persecution with increased severity. The revolt began with a rising of the peasants of Arima, who had been driven to despair by the repeated imposition of fresh taxation and by other oppressive measures; they were soon joined by all the Christians who remained in the neighbourhood. According to the Dutch narratives written at the time, the rebels wore linen clothes, shaved their heads, and destroyed the heathen temples, and had chosen "Santi Dago" (Spanish and Portuguese for St. Jago) as their war-cry.

After a vain attempt to storm the castle of the Daimiyo, or Prince, of Amakusa, they established themselves in the peninsula of Shimabara, and there offered a heroic defence, both against the forces of their overlords, the princes of Arima and Amakusa, and against the troops of the Government, until they succumbed to superior numbers, after a desperate struggle, on April 16th and 17th, 1638. Seventeen thousand heads are said to have been exposed as tokens of victory, and probably very few escaped of the 35,000 men who are said to have taken part in the revolt. On April 25th, the overseers of the Portuguese "factories" were imprisoned, as they were considered to blame for the revolt. On August 22nd, the Portuguese galleons were forbidden to approach Japan under pain of death for all on board, and on September 2nd the last Portuguese were banished from the country, and took with them their overseers, who had remained in imprisonment up to that time. On May 11th, 1641, the Dutch, the only Europeans remaining in Japan, were ordered to remove their settlement to Nagasaki, whither the Chinese were also sent. Thus the first period of contact between Japan and European Christianity came to an end; it had lasted for nearly a century.

The conditions of Japanese life during the second half of the sixteenth century and the first fifteen years of the seventeenth century are the best explanation of the rapidity with which the pioneers of Western religion and trade succeeded in gaining a footing in the country. The land was torn by dissension and war, which had utterly destroyed the economic prosperity of the middle and lower classes of the population. From the two native religions no consolation could be derived. Shinto had become a mere mythology, and, in any case, had never taken a hold on the sympathies of the people; Buddhism had lost its vitality, and had replaced it by the doctrine that prayer and priests alone could provide help and salvation from the dangers which threatened the soul in its wanderings after death.

Moreover, the priests were far too busily concerned with the political questions of the day to bestow attention and sympathy on the sufferings of the lower classes, hence the Christian missionaries found numerous converts from the very outset; to the poor and miserable they promised immediately upon their death the joys of that paradise of which the Buddhists only held out a prospect after long trials and vicissitudes. By the splendour of its services, by its numerous and mystic ceremonies, in which the converted were themselves allowed to take a part, Roman Catholic Christianity defeated its adversaries on their own ground.

A material reason for the first success was also the fact that the introduction of Christianity was entrusted to the Jesuits; some have blamed the mendicant orders for the ultimate collapse of the work of conversion. Pope Gregory XIII, in a Bull of January 28th, 1585, gave the Jesuits the exclusive right of sending out missionaries to Japan. On December 12th, 1600, Clement VIII extended this permission to include the mendicant orders, upon the condition that they should take ship in Portugal and go to Japan by way of Goa. On June nth, 1608, Pope Paul V amended this permission so as to include friars going by way of the Philippines. In most cases, the members of the mendicant orders had not waited for the Pope to grant them the permission which they had requested; they went to Japan without it, although by so doing they incurred the major excommunication.

This proceeding gave rise to unseemly quarrels among the missionaries themselves, and further contributed to undermine their prestige in the eyes of unfriendly Japanese. Moreover, the procedure of the mendicant orders during their work of conversion in Japan differed greatly from that followed by the Jesuits. The latter did their best to accommodate themselves to the views, wishes, and orders of the Japanese authorities, whereas the Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustines continually defied the authorities, and declined to make any such sacrifice of the external or the non-essential as might have enabled them to attain their object.

At the same period political dissensions broke out between the Portuguese and the Spaniards, which were rather increased than lessened by the union of the two kingdoms (1580). Since the date of the first entry of the Portuguese into Japan the power of Portugal and the prestige of her emissaries had steadily declined; the revolt of the Spanish Netherlands, the wars between England and Holland, and the downfall of the Spanish power under Philip II and Philip III, enabled the Japanese authorities to attempt during the seventeenth century what they would not have dared in the sixteenth. Moreover, the behaviour of the foreign merchants and mariners was not calculated to arouse the respect or the good-will of the Japanese.

The foreign trade certainly brought a great increase of wealth to the provinces of the country, but this again was a continual source of jealousy and of friction between them, as each was anxious to secure the lion's share for himself, and to use it for the purpose of gaining some advantage over his neighbours. After a strong central government, the Shogunate of Iyeyasu, had been set up, it naturally attempted, to secure control of the trade, and to exclude those who had previously been its rivals and were now its subjects. The different nationalities who traded with Japan—the Portuguese, Spaniards, Dutch, and English—damaged their reputation by continually accusing and slandering one another to the Japanese, and by lodging complaints with them concerning goods and ships of which they had deprived one another. The continual quarrels between the foreigners in Japan, and the condescension with which they treated the natives, are sufficient explanation of the dislike which the proud Japanese conceived for them in the course of a few years.

An additional and a justifiable reason for dissatisfaction was the slave trade, carried on by all the foreigners in japan, particularly by the Portuguese. Civit war, the expedition against Korea, and the growing poverty of the lower classes had brought so many slaves into the market that, as Bishop Cerqueira relates, even the Malay and negro servants of the Portuguese traders were able to buy Japanese or Korean slaves upon their own account, with the object of selling them afterwards at Macao. Both the civil and ecclesiastical authorities at Macao (Bishop Cerqueira in 1598 and his predecessors) had made vain attempts to suppress this trade in human flesh, which was undoubtedly the strongest ground of complaint possessed by the Japanese; in 1641 the Government of Japan forbade the export of hired or bought natives without spec al permission, and prohibited it altogether at a later period under the severest penalties.

The unprecedented enthusiasm of the Japanese converts became a serious anxiety to the rulers of the country, and inclined them to suspect some political object behind the religious zeal of the missionaries; hence their determination to put an end to foreign intercourse by the destruction of Christianity was received with approval by the whole of the country. Moreover, the Government had taken special care to lower the prestige of the foreigners in the eyes of the population, and to deprive them of their influence by a series of regulations extending over a number of years.

In 1635 the Portuguese were forbidden to walk under an umbrella carried by a Japanese servant, or to give alms beyond a minimum sum. At the same time they were ordered to take off their shoes upon entering the council chamber; and in that year all of them except the overseers were forbidden to carry arms, and were obliged to dismiss their old servants and to take new ones. The Dutch were forbidden to employ Japanese servants for the future, except within their houses. In 1638 a Dutch ship-captain was beheaded. In 1639 all Japanese women living with Dutch or English were banished, and Japanese women were forbidden to contract marriages with the Dutch. In 1640 a steward was executed for adultery with a Japanese woman. Two white rabbits found on a Dutch ship called the Gracht did not appear upon the list of living animals which had to be provided, and the captain was consequently deprived of his office. The Dutch factories in Hirado were searched for ecclesiastical articles, and the Dutch were ordered to pull down all buildings which bore a date upon their walls. The decree ran : "His Imperial Majesty [that is, the Shogun, who had no right to any such exalted title] has reliable information that you are Christians, even as the Portuguese. You celebrate Sunday, you write the date 'Anno Domini' on the roofs and gables of your houses, you have the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the Cup and the Breaking of Bread, the Bible, the Testament, Moses and the Prophets, and the Apostles—in short, everything. The main points of resemblance are there, and the differences between you seem to us insignificant. That you were Christians we have known long since, but we thought that yours was another Christ. Therefore his Majesty gives you to know through me," etc.

In 1641 the decree was issued that the Dutch were no longer to inter their dead, but to bury them at sea four or five miles away from the coast. This decree was executed for the first time on August 29th, "because a Christian corpse is not worthy of burial in the earth". In the next year the Dutch cemetery in Hirado was destroyed. The Dutch and Chinese were indeed allowed to remain at Nagasaki; but this permission was given because they were the sole medium for the importation of certain necessary goods, and had also made themselves useful by providing timely information of the schemes that other Powers might concoct against Japan. In other respects the members of both nations were treated little better than prisoners.

When Japan was reopened to foreign trade during the years 1854 to 1838, the Roman Catholic missionaries, who once again had followed in the wake of the trader, found remnants of a Christian community existing near Nagasaki in the village of Urakami, though it was thought that Christianity had long been destroyed by cruel and continued persecution. The attention of the Japanese Government was drawn to this case by the imprudent action of the missionaries. In the year 1867, seventy-eight of these native Christians were imprisoned, and an attempt was made to induce them, by threats, to abjure their faith. Owing to the efforts of foreign representatives, especially those of the French Minister, M. Roches, the prisoners were set free on the understanding that proselytising would cease outside the settlement.

Hardly, however, had the Mikado returned to power under the reconstituted Government of 1868 than the persecution of these people and of their co-religionists was resumed, and the prohibitions against this "evil Christian sect" were again enforced. More than four thousand native Christians were imprisoned, and, notwithstanding all the efforts of the foreign representatives, were sent in small bodies to hard labour upon the estates of different territorial princes. It was not until 1873 that it became possible to procure their liberation, and the removal of the prohibitions issued against Christianity. From that date missionaries have been allowed a free hand within those limits of residence imposed, until August, 1899, upon all foreigners. The chief obstacle, however, to their efforts is the strongly-developed national feeling of the Japanese; besides this, there is undoubtedly a widespread dislike of the foreign missionaries, who are often considered merely as the political agents of the country which sent them out.

In particular, Japanese chauvinism, even under the form of the new Shinto, has found a useful lever against Christianity in the elevation by the missionaries of God, Jesus, the Pope, the Church, and the Bible above the Mikado. In any case, this "Japanese self-concentration", however modified by individual feelings and opinions, has hitherto proved the greatest obstacle to the spread of Christianity; the various successful attempts even of the Japanese Christians to break away from the influence of foreign missionaries, and from connection with them, are to be ascribed to this source. If there be any hope for the Christianising of Japan, the movement must be upon a Japanese basis.

 

 

KAGOSHIMA, WHERE THE FIRST EUROPEANS LANDED IN JAPAN, AND FRANCIS XAVIER ATTEMPTED TO INTRODUCE CHRISTIANITY This is a seventeenth century picture of the city in which Francis Xavier, the great apostle of the Jesuits and associate of Ignatius Loyola, landed in 1549 on his mission to carry Christianity to the island empire. It was here that the Portuguese, the first Europeans to enter Japan, are said to have landed in 1543. The beacon was erected by the Portuguese at that time.

Kagoshima Bay (today)

Kagoshima Bay (today)

THE ISLAND PRISON OF THE DUTCH IN JAPAN FOR TWO HUNDRED YEARS On this island of Deshima, at Nagasaki, the Dutch traders were cooped up from 1650 to 1856. They were the only Europeans allowed to visit the Japanese during that period, and were subject to great restrictions.

 

 

JAPAN IN CONTACT WITH THE WEST: A RECEPTION OF DUTCH OUTSIDE THE CAPITAL AS PICTURED BY A TRAVELLER IN 1657

 

A JAPANESE CHRISTIAN PASTOR AND HIS FAMILY

Since the establishment of religious freedom in Japan, Christianity has made notable progress, which figures can only faintly suggest. There are said to be 150,000 Japanese converts to Christianity. The Protestant, Greek, and Catholic Churches have altogether nearly fifteen hundred licensed preachers, with nearly twelve hundred "stations", and there are four dioceses of the Anglican Church under the Archbishop of Canterbury, with a staff of about seventy clergy.

 

 

THE NIHONGI :

THE AGE OF THE GODS

 

 

 

 

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