I remember when I was a boy, I asked my father for permission to be baptized. He objected very much to it and said it is too early for you to decide on and commit to a religion. I thought it a strange answer but did not inquire further. Looking back now, I suppose it was because he was culturally Buddhist and Shinto and sees Christianity as something outside of Japanese social norms. I think the idea of something foreign also comes from how many Japanese sees Japanese-ness as being unique, such that anything foreign is quickly tagged as such. This is not surprising in a society where conformity is taught by parents and at school to be the norm, and standing out as different attracting attention can be frowned upon. There is also a stereotype image of Christianity which the Japanese media often projects as either innocent people who are victims of atrocity or something which weak people rely on. But this observation is just from what I can recall from the my top of mind, which therefore can be very different from a response you may get from another Japanese.
I used to live in a small town in America with many Japanese families (Japanese car factory there, they would send men and their families to make sure it matched quality in Japan, etc). Almost all of them came to church every Sunday, even sent their kids to the church’s preschool. None ever got baptized though.
I believe they thought about all the things you brought up here as well. Unfortunately, I think they suspected conversion would be a bait and switch (almost certainly they’d be correct!) where, pre baptism, the ministers would praise their culture and native ways as good, but, post baptism, would constantly be cautioning them against participation in any Shinto or Buddhist on grounds of idolatry. I think that’s almost certainly what would happen
Well yeah growing up in a Chinese family in the US, my grandparents didn't want me converting to any religion be it Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism etc until I was 55 years old.
I later figured it was because that's the standard protocol for Communist party members which they were, to postpone religious involvement until retirement, but you basically said the same thing.
My dad said he didn't raise me in any sort of eastern religion because it "kills your ambition". Meanwhile I was jealous that my classmates got to have Bar Mitzvahs and later on have Catholic weddings, etc.
I like to be aware of the shape of the church, both virtuous and failing aspects, across the full range from Orthodox to Protestant evangelist. I'm not going to move out of the Anglican-Episcopal (NSKK) viewpoint, however; I'm simply trying to mark out my boundaries.
There's a movement to plant churches in Japan, with people who are better-prepared than those in the 1950's... RJC, Reaching Japanese for Christ, has a platform, and its educational arm of Reaching Japanese for Christ Academy.
I was curious about the church-planting approach, and was recommended "Jesus for Japan", which has the subtitle"Bridging the Cultural Gap to Christianity". The author, Mariana Nesbitt finished up a 20-year career as an OMF International* missionary in Japan, and in 2017 self-published this book, which has excellent contents but is in serious need of a strong editor. It is available as a free PDF download from more than one platform, and is used in some RJC Academy platform courses of study for evangelising in Japan. There may be an article on the book in the Japan Mission Journal upcoming issue from Oriens Institute for Religious Research that I wrote/prompted.
The final chapter in the book, Christian Identity, is a good guide to what Japanese people may struggle to navigate in their path to baptism. There is awareness of the very real spiritual needs in Japanese society.
*OMF: Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF), renamed and reorganized in 1964 from the earlier China Inland Mission when work in China became impossible, then again renamed to OMF International in 1993.
The contents of "Jesus for Japan" might be more of what you are looking for. Marianna Nesbitt has done a good job of unearthing issues and solutions, a series of discussions on them with the right group of people would be verrry interesting, and probably fruitful.
Effectively an atheist at the time, I was married in a Shinto ceremony and one of the things that subsequently rekindled my Christianity was my seeing my wife quietly pray every day. And I often wonder why day-to-day Japanese society is in many ways more Christian than countries with a Christian heritage. We have much to learn from the local culture, and God is at work here every bit as much as elsewhere.
I was hanging out with a colleague from Kyoto in my early years in Japan, and one day he launched into a very effective argument that Japanese cultural norms (in his environment) were a better reflection of Christianity than mine were. He felt it was part of the Japanese attitude of listening to outsiders, and adopting anything they felt useful and true, while rejecting the rest (He recognized that current day-to-day culture is not what it was pre-WWII.) That argument hit home in ways that prompted changes in my life & attitudes.
Thank you for this and your other most helpful comment, Meg. This strikes me as quite right. I can understand the attitude of Japanese who look at (post-)Christian countries in the West and do not want to emulate them. However, I can also see how a return to Christianity is helping many in the West to resist the dehumanising, utilitarian mores which have replaced what came before, and as things stand, I do not see Japanese Buddhist schools putting up much of a fight. I think that Japanese and more broadly East Asian attitudes towards machines, not least AI, have been formed by the considerably less anthropocentric, pantheistic assumptions behind Buddhism, Shinto and Taoism. The taboo, or at least suspicion, of man-machine synthesis (also man-animal synthesis) is less pronounced than in those countries where the primary religious culture posited a radical difference between creator and creation, and further between human and all non-human beings. While this might allow for freer creative developments in one sense, in another, it could risk increasing alienation between humans, as human-machine relationships are seen on a par with inter-human ones, and bring any number of unintended negative consequences. I think that Christianity offers intellectual and spiritual resources to resist those consequences, and that the challenge we can offer against the dystopia which looms in Japan as much as anywhere else will become ever more urgent.
I've been really into worldview/ epistemology books of late. I think in the same way reformed-evangelical christians and say eastern orthodox christians see the world and religion in vastly different ways, the same could be said for the Japanese. I've attended a dozen or so baptisms of Japanese friends here in Australia but only a handful of them had continued practicing the faith communally when they returned home.
I think because many Japanese people know little about Australia and even less about christianity, they conflate evangelical church community with australian community and see baptism as a means of joining the church "bukatsu". I think the evangelical tendency is to try and be very propositional and puritanical to make sure "they are truly saved" before Japanese students get baptised, but again I see my Japanese friend's practicing faith in communal orthopraxy more than understanding points of doctrine.
One paradox I can think of is that the non christian japanese students at my church did far more cleaning, serving and setting up than the western christians and in some ways embodied the ethos of Acts better than those who had professed faith. Over the past years I've really moved away from my reformed-evangelical roots to something more rooted in sacramentality and incarnationalism that i think has made a lot more sense of what i've observed in my japanese friends and japan more broadly
It was the mystical and ritual elements I vaguely discerned in Japanese spiritual practice which attracted me, and when I found analogies in an Anglo-Catholic church back in England, that rather than any propositional assent was what lures me into the Christian faith. The dogma came later and was something I came to embrace incrementally through testing by prayer, study, and active participation in the life and mysteries of the Church. Only rather later did I come to concede, with relief, that the spiritual life is fully coherent only with the full embrace of orthodox apostolic teaching. But I owe the faith which has given such meaning and joy to my life to Japan and the Japanese.
[I'm an Anglican clergyman currently living on a sugar cane plantation in the Philippines, and I've traveled widely in SE Asia, including Japan, China, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia.]
The Philippines, for instance, is not a "historically Buddhist country with native shamanic and pagan traditions analogous to Japan’s Shinto." And this might help explain why Christianity has thrived more here than in Japan.
The Philippines was colonized by Spain and then the USA. Those centuries of colonization transformed the culture to a point where Filipino identity became organically Christian instead of pagan. It had more to do with the commitment of Roman Catholic (under Spain) and Protestant (under the US) missionaries than anything to do with Buddhism or Shinto, which are far more foreign today than Christianity, and with a much smaller number of adherents.
Such a cultural and identity transformation has not yet occurred in Japan, where Christianity is still very much a foreign import.
You are of course quite right about the Philippines. I’ve had the pleasure of visiting the Igorot people twice. Christian colonialism has indeed been part of both the solution and the problem in the Far East, as elsewhere - but not really in Japan.
I remember when I was a boy, I asked my father for permission to be baptized. He objected very much to it and said it is too early for you to decide on and commit to a religion. I thought it a strange answer but did not inquire further. Looking back now, I suppose it was because he was culturally Buddhist and Shinto and sees Christianity as something outside of Japanese social norms. I think the idea of something foreign also comes from how many Japanese sees Japanese-ness as being unique, such that anything foreign is quickly tagged as such. This is not surprising in a society where conformity is taught by parents and at school to be the norm, and standing out as different attracting attention can be frowned upon. There is also a stereotype image of Christianity which the Japanese media often projects as either innocent people who are victims of atrocity or something which weak people rely on. But this observation is just from what I can recall from the my top of mind, which therefore can be very different from a response you may get from another Japanese.
I used to live in a small town in America with many Japanese families (Japanese car factory there, they would send men and their families to make sure it matched quality in Japan, etc). Almost all of them came to church every Sunday, even sent their kids to the church’s preschool. None ever got baptized though.
I believe they thought about all the things you brought up here as well. Unfortunately, I think they suspected conversion would be a bait and switch (almost certainly they’d be correct!) where, pre baptism, the ministers would praise their culture and native ways as good, but, post baptism, would constantly be cautioning them against participation in any Shinto or Buddhist on grounds of idolatry. I think that’s almost certainly what would happen
Well yeah growing up in a Chinese family in the US, my grandparents didn't want me converting to any religion be it Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism etc until I was 55 years old.
I later figured it was because that's the standard protocol for Communist party members which they were, to postpone religious involvement until retirement, but you basically said the same thing.
My dad said he didn't raise me in any sort of eastern religion because it "kills your ambition". Meanwhile I was jealous that my classmates got to have Bar Mitzvahs and later on have Catholic weddings, etc.
I like to be aware of the shape of the church, both virtuous and failing aspects, across the full range from Orthodox to Protestant evangelist. I'm not going to move out of the Anglican-Episcopal (NSKK) viewpoint, however; I'm simply trying to mark out my boundaries.
There's a movement to plant churches in Japan, with people who are better-prepared than those in the 1950's... RJC, Reaching Japanese for Christ, has a platform, and its educational arm of Reaching Japanese for Christ Academy.
I was curious about the church-planting approach, and was recommended "Jesus for Japan", which has the subtitle"Bridging the Cultural Gap to Christianity". The author, Mariana Nesbitt finished up a 20-year career as an OMF International* missionary in Japan, and in 2017 self-published this book, which has excellent contents but is in serious need of a strong editor. It is available as a free PDF download from more than one platform, and is used in some RJC Academy platform courses of study for evangelising in Japan. There may be an article on the book in the Japan Mission Journal upcoming issue from Oriens Institute for Religious Research that I wrote/prompted.
The final chapter in the book, Christian Identity, is a good guide to what Japanese people may struggle to navigate in their path to baptism. There is awareness of the very real spiritual needs in Japanese society.
*OMF: Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF), renamed and reorganized in 1964 from the earlier China Inland Mission when work in China became impossible, then again renamed to OMF International in 1993.
The contents of "Jesus for Japan" might be more of what you are looking for. Marianna Nesbitt has done a good job of unearthing issues and solutions, a series of discussions on them with the right group of people would be verrry interesting, and probably fruitful.
You should go full Matteo Ricci, including the part where the sending church starts worrying that you've gone full native.
Effectively an atheist at the time, I was married in a Shinto ceremony and one of the things that subsequently rekindled my Christianity was my seeing my wife quietly pray every day. And I often wonder why day-to-day Japanese society is in many ways more Christian than countries with a Christian heritage. We have much to learn from the local culture, and God is at work here every bit as much as elsewhere.
It was the experience of Aikido, Buddhism and to some extent Shinto here in the early 2000s which led me from atheism to Christianity, too.
I was hanging out with a colleague from Kyoto in my early years in Japan, and one day he launched into a very effective argument that Japanese cultural norms (in his environment) were a better reflection of Christianity than mine were. He felt it was part of the Japanese attitude of listening to outsiders, and adopting anything they felt useful and true, while rejecting the rest (He recognized that current day-to-day culture is not what it was pre-WWII.) That argument hit home in ways that prompted changes in my life & attitudes.
Thank you for this and your other most helpful comment, Meg. This strikes me as quite right. I can understand the attitude of Japanese who look at (post-)Christian countries in the West and do not want to emulate them. However, I can also see how a return to Christianity is helping many in the West to resist the dehumanising, utilitarian mores which have replaced what came before, and as things stand, I do not see Japanese Buddhist schools putting up much of a fight. I think that Japanese and more broadly East Asian attitudes towards machines, not least AI, have been formed by the considerably less anthropocentric, pantheistic assumptions behind Buddhism, Shinto and Taoism. The taboo, or at least suspicion, of man-machine synthesis (also man-animal synthesis) is less pronounced than in those countries where the primary religious culture posited a radical difference between creator and creation, and further between human and all non-human beings. While this might allow for freer creative developments in one sense, in another, it could risk increasing alienation between humans, as human-machine relationships are seen on a par with inter-human ones, and bring any number of unintended negative consequences. I think that Christianity offers intellectual and spiritual resources to resist those consequences, and that the challenge we can offer against the dystopia which looms in Japan as much as anywhere else will become ever more urgent.
Monism, as opposed to dualism, is also a big thing, along with the instruction to listen carefully a lot more than we talk.
I've been really into worldview/ epistemology books of late. I think in the same way reformed-evangelical christians and say eastern orthodox christians see the world and religion in vastly different ways, the same could be said for the Japanese. I've attended a dozen or so baptisms of Japanese friends here in Australia but only a handful of them had continued practicing the faith communally when they returned home.
I think because many Japanese people know little about Australia and even less about christianity, they conflate evangelical church community with australian community and see baptism as a means of joining the church "bukatsu". I think the evangelical tendency is to try and be very propositional and puritanical to make sure "they are truly saved" before Japanese students get baptised, but again I see my Japanese friend's practicing faith in communal orthopraxy more than understanding points of doctrine.
One paradox I can think of is that the non christian japanese students at my church did far more cleaning, serving and setting up than the western christians and in some ways embodied the ethos of Acts better than those who had professed faith. Over the past years I've really moved away from my reformed-evangelical roots to something more rooted in sacramentality and incarnationalism that i think has made a lot more sense of what i've observed in my japanese friends and japan more broadly
It was the mystical and ritual elements I vaguely discerned in Japanese spiritual practice which attracted me, and when I found analogies in an Anglo-Catholic church back in England, that rather than any propositional assent was what lures me into the Christian faith. The dogma came later and was something I came to embrace incrementally through testing by prayer, study, and active participation in the life and mysteries of the Church. Only rather later did I come to concede, with relief, that the spiritual life is fully coherent only with the full embrace of orthodox apostolic teaching. But I owe the faith which has given such meaning and joy to my life to Japan and the Japanese.
Has Part 2 come out?
Not yet - I am sorry!
Ah. That is alright. I look forward to reading it! Part 1 was excellent.
[I'm an Anglican clergyman currently living on a sugar cane plantation in the Philippines, and I've traveled widely in SE Asia, including Japan, China, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia.]
The Philippines, for instance, is not a "historically Buddhist country with native shamanic and pagan traditions analogous to Japan’s Shinto." And this might help explain why Christianity has thrived more here than in Japan.
The Philippines was colonized by Spain and then the USA. Those centuries of colonization transformed the culture to a point where Filipino identity became organically Christian instead of pagan. It had more to do with the commitment of Roman Catholic (under Spain) and Protestant (under the US) missionaries than anything to do with Buddhism or Shinto, which are far more foreign today than Christianity, and with a much smaller number of adherents.
Such a cultural and identity transformation has not yet occurred in Japan, where Christianity is still very much a foreign import.
You are of course quite right about the Philippines. I’ve had the pleasure of visiting the Igorot people twice. Christian colonialism has indeed been part of both the solution and the problem in the Far East, as elsewhere - but not really in Japan.
Amazon review done. King Oswald's Heirs is is a great heroic read, Christ was no wimp.
I greatly appreciate it. Thank you. The Anglo-Saxons wouldn't follow a wimp, and nor would the samurai!