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JAPAN'S HISTORY LIBRARY |
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RELIGION IN JAPAN
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.
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.
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.
2THE 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.
THE NIHONGI :THE AGE OF THE GODS
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