Author: Mark R. Mullins
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824821326
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
For centuries the accommodation between Japan and Christianity has been an uneasy one. Compared with others of its Asian neighbors, the churches in Japan have never counted more than a small minority of believers more or less resigned to patterns of ritual and belief transplanted from the West. But there is another side to the story, one little known and rarely told: the rise of indigenous movements aimed at a Christianity that is at once made in Japan and faithful to the scriptures and apostolic tradition. Christianity Made in Japan draws on extensive field research to give an intriguing and sympathetic look behind the scenes and into the lives of the leaders and followers of several indigenous movements in Japan. Focusing on the "native" response rather than Western missionary efforts and intentions, it presents varieties of new interpretations of the Christian tradition. It gives voice to the unheard perceptions and views of many Japanese Christians, while raising questions vital to the self-understanding of Christianity as a truly "world religion." This ground-breaking study makes a largely unknown religious world accessible to outsiders for the first time. Students and scholars alike will find it a valuable addition to the literature on Japanese religions and society and on the development of Christianity outside the West. By offering an alternative approach to the study and understanding of Christianity as a world religion and the complicated process of cross-cultural diffusion, it represents a landmark that will define future research in the field.
Christianity Made in Japan
Author: Mark R. Mullins
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824821326
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
For centuries the accommodation between Japan and Christianity has been an uneasy one. Compared with others of its Asian neighbors, the churches in Japan have never counted more than a small minority of believers more or less resigned to patterns of ritual and belief transplanted from the West. But there is another side to the story, one little known and rarely told: the rise of indigenous movements aimed at a Christianity that is at once made in Japan and faithful to the scriptures and apostolic tradition. Christianity Made in Japan draws on extensive field research to give an intriguing and sympathetic look behind the scenes and into the lives of the leaders and followers of several indigenous movements in Japan. Focusing on the "native" response rather than Western missionary efforts and intentions, it presents varieties of new interpretations of the Christian tradition. It gives voice to the unheard perceptions and views of many Japanese Christians, while raising questions vital to the self-understanding of Christianity as a truly "world religion." This ground-breaking study makes a largely unknown religious world accessible to outsiders for the first time. Students and scholars alike will find it a valuable addition to the literature on Japanese religions and society and on the development of Christianity outside the West. By offering an alternative approach to the study and understanding of Christianity as a world religion and the complicated process of cross-cultural diffusion, it represents a landmark that will define future research in the field.
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824821326
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
For centuries the accommodation between Japan and Christianity has been an uneasy one. Compared with others of its Asian neighbors, the churches in Japan have never counted more than a small minority of believers more or less resigned to patterns of ritual and belief transplanted from the West. But there is another side to the story, one little known and rarely told: the rise of indigenous movements aimed at a Christianity that is at once made in Japan and faithful to the scriptures and apostolic tradition. Christianity Made in Japan draws on extensive field research to give an intriguing and sympathetic look behind the scenes and into the lives of the leaders and followers of several indigenous movements in Japan. Focusing on the "native" response rather than Western missionary efforts and intentions, it presents varieties of new interpretations of the Christian tradition. It gives voice to the unheard perceptions and views of many Japanese Christians, while raising questions vital to the self-understanding of Christianity as a truly "world religion." This ground-breaking study makes a largely unknown religious world accessible to outsiders for the first time. Students and scholars alike will find it a valuable addition to the literature on Japanese religions and society and on the development of Christianity outside the West. By offering an alternative approach to the study and understanding of Christianity as a world religion and the complicated process of cross-cultural diffusion, it represents a landmark that will define future research in the field.
Christianity Made in Japan
Author: Mark R. Mullins
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824861906
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
For centuries the accommodation between Japan and Christianity has been an uneasy one. Compared with others of its Asian neighbors, the churches in Japan have never counted more than a small minority of believers more or less resigned to patterns of ritual and belief transplanted from the West. But there is another side to the story, one little known and rarely told: the rise of indigenous movements aimed at a Christianity that is at once made in Japan and faithful to the scriptures and apostolic tradition. Christianity Made in Japan draws on extensive field research to give an intriguing and sympathetic look behind the scenes and into the lives of the leaders and followers of several indigenous movements in Japan. Focusing on the "native" response rather than Western missionary efforts and intentions, it presents varieties of new interpretations of the Christian tradition. It gives voice to the unheard perceptions and views of many Japanese Christians, while raising questions vital to the self-understanding of Christianity as a truly "world religion." This ground-breaking study makes a largely unknown religious world accessible to outsiders for the first time. Students and scholars alike will find it a valuable addition to the literature on Japanese religions and society and on the development of Christianity outside the West. By offering an alternative approach to the study and understanding of Christianity as a world religion and the complicated process of cross-cultural diffusion, it represents a landmark that will define future research in the field.
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824861906
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
For centuries the accommodation between Japan and Christianity has been an uneasy one. Compared with others of its Asian neighbors, the churches in Japan have never counted more than a small minority of believers more or less resigned to patterns of ritual and belief transplanted from the West. But there is another side to the story, one little known and rarely told: the rise of indigenous movements aimed at a Christianity that is at once made in Japan and faithful to the scriptures and apostolic tradition. Christianity Made in Japan draws on extensive field research to give an intriguing and sympathetic look behind the scenes and into the lives of the leaders and followers of several indigenous movements in Japan. Focusing on the "native" response rather than Western missionary efforts and intentions, it presents varieties of new interpretations of the Christian tradition. It gives voice to the unheard perceptions and views of many Japanese Christians, while raising questions vital to the self-understanding of Christianity as a truly "world religion." This ground-breaking study makes a largely unknown religious world accessible to outsiders for the first time. Students and scholars alike will find it a valuable addition to the literature on Japanese religions and society and on the development of Christianity outside the West. By offering an alternative approach to the study and understanding of Christianity as a world religion and the complicated process of cross-cultural diffusion, it represents a landmark that will define future research in the field.
Christianity Made in Japan
Author: Mark Mullins
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Book Description
For centuries, the accommodation between Japan and Christianity has been an uneasy one. Compared with other Asian countries, the churches in Japan have never counted more than a small number of believers resigned to a pattern of ritual and belief transplanted from the West.
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Book Description
For centuries, the accommodation between Japan and Christianity has been an uneasy one. Compared with other Asian countries, the churches in Japan have never counted more than a small number of believers resigned to a pattern of ritual and belief transplanted from the West.
Handbook of Christianity in Japan
Author: Mark Mullins
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047402375
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 435
Book Description
This volume provides researchers and students of religion with an indispensable reference work on the history, cultural impact, and reshaping of Christianity in Japan. Divided into three parts, Part I focuses on Christianity in Japanese history and includes studies of the Roman Catholic mission in pre-modern Japan, the 'hidden Christian' tradition, Protestant missions in the modern period, Bible translations, and theology in Japan. Part II examines the complex relationship between Christianity and various dimensions of Japanese society, such as literature, politics, social welfare, education for women, and interaction with other religious traditions. Part III focuses on resources for the study of Christianity in Japan and provides a guide to archival collections, research institutes, and bibliographies. Based on both Japanese and Western scholarship, readers will find this volume to be a fascinating and important guide.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047402375
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 435
Book Description
This volume provides researchers and students of religion with an indispensable reference work on the history, cultural impact, and reshaping of Christianity in Japan. Divided into three parts, Part I focuses on Christianity in Japanese history and includes studies of the Roman Catholic mission in pre-modern Japan, the 'hidden Christian' tradition, Protestant missions in the modern period, Bible translations, and theology in Japan. Part II examines the complex relationship between Christianity and various dimensions of Japanese society, such as literature, politics, social welfare, education for women, and interaction with other religious traditions. Part III focuses on resources for the study of Christianity in Japan and provides a guide to archival collections, research institutes, and bibliographies. Based on both Japanese and Western scholarship, readers will find this volume to be a fascinating and important guide.
A History of Christianity in Japan: Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox missions
Author: Otis Cary
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 450
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 450
Book Description
In Search of Japan's Hidden Christians
Author: John Dougill
Publisher: SPCK
ISBN: 0281075530
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253
Book Description
In Search of Japan's Hidden Christians is a remarkable story of suppression, secrecy and survival in the face of human cruelty and God’s apparent silence. Part history, part travelogue, it explores and seeks to explain a clash of civilizations—of East and West—that resonates to this day. For seven generations, Japan’s ‘Hidden Christians’ preserved a faith that was forbidden on pain of death. Just as remarkably, descendants of the Hidden Christians continue to practise their beliefs today, refusing to rejoin the Catholic Church. Why? And what is it about Japanese culture that makes it so resistant to Western Christianity?
Publisher: SPCK
ISBN: 0281075530
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253
Book Description
In Search of Japan's Hidden Christians is a remarkable story of suppression, secrecy and survival in the face of human cruelty and God’s apparent silence. Part history, part travelogue, it explores and seeks to explain a clash of civilizations—of East and West—that resonates to this day. For seven generations, Japan’s ‘Hidden Christians’ preserved a faith that was forbidden on pain of death. Just as remarkably, descendants of the Hidden Christians continue to practise their beliefs today, refusing to rejoin the Catholic Church. Why? And what is it about Japanese culture that makes it so resistant to Western Christianity?
The Invention of Religion in Japan
Author: Jason Ānanda Josephson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226412342
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402
Book Description
Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept of what we call “religion.” There was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning. But when American warships appeared off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country had to contend with this Western idea. In this book, Jason Ananda Josephson reveals how Japanese officials invented religion in Japan and traces the sweeping intellectual, legal, and cultural changes that followed. More than a tale of oppression or hegemony, Josephson’s account demonstrates that the process of articulating religion offered the Japanese state a valuable opportunity. In addition to carving out space for belief in Christianity and certain forms of Buddhism, Japanese officials excluded Shinto from the category. Instead, they enshrined it as a national ideology while relegating the popular practices of indigenous shamans and female mediums to the category of “superstitions”—and thus beyond the sphere of tolerance. Josephson argues that the invention of religion in Japan was a politically charged, boundary-drawing exercise that not only extensively reclassified the inherited materials of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto to lasting effect, but also reshaped, in subtle but significant ways, our own formulation of the concept of religion today. This ambitious and wide-ranging book contributes an important perspective to broader debates on the nature of religion, the secular, science, and superstition.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226412342
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 402
Book Description
Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept of what we call “religion.” There was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning. But when American warships appeared off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country had to contend with this Western idea. In this book, Jason Ananda Josephson reveals how Japanese officials invented religion in Japan and traces the sweeping intellectual, legal, and cultural changes that followed. More than a tale of oppression or hegemony, Josephson’s account demonstrates that the process of articulating religion offered the Japanese state a valuable opportunity. In addition to carving out space for belief in Christianity and certain forms of Buddhism, Japanese officials excluded Shinto from the category. Instead, they enshrined it as a national ideology while relegating the popular practices of indigenous shamans and female mediums to the category of “superstitions”—and thus beyond the sphere of tolerance. Josephson argues that the invention of religion in Japan was a politically charged, boundary-drawing exercise that not only extensively reclassified the inherited materials of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto to lasting effect, but also reshaped, in subtle but significant ways, our own formulation of the concept of religion today. This ambitious and wide-ranging book contributes an important perspective to broader debates on the nature of religion, the secular, science, and superstition.
Essays on the Modern Japanese Church
Author: Aizan Yamaji
Publisher: U of M Center For Japanese Studies
ISBN: 047203829X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 207
Book Description
Essays on the Modern Japanese Church (Gendai Nihon kyokai shiron), published in 1906, was the first Japanese-language history of Christianity in Meiji Japan. Yamaji Aizan’s firsthand account describes the reintroduction of Christianity to Japan—its development, rapid expansion, and decline—and its place in the social, political, and intellectual life of the Meiji period. Yamaji’s overall argument is that Christianity played a crucial role in shaping the growth and development of modern Japan. Yamaji was a strong opponent of the government-sponsored “emperor-system ideology,” and through his historical writing he tried to show how Japan had a tradition of tolerance and openness at a time when government-sponsored intellectuals were arguing for greater conformity and submissiveness to the state on the basis of Japanese “national character.” Essays is important not only in terms of religious history but also because it highlights broad trends in the history of Meiji Japan. Introductory chapters explore the significance of the work in terms of the life and thought of its author and its influence on subsequent interpretations of Meiji Christianity.
Publisher: U of M Center For Japanese Studies
ISBN: 047203829X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 207
Book Description
Essays on the Modern Japanese Church (Gendai Nihon kyokai shiron), published in 1906, was the first Japanese-language history of Christianity in Meiji Japan. Yamaji Aizan’s firsthand account describes the reintroduction of Christianity to Japan—its development, rapid expansion, and decline—and its place in the social, political, and intellectual life of the Meiji period. Yamaji’s overall argument is that Christianity played a crucial role in shaping the growth and development of modern Japan. Yamaji was a strong opponent of the government-sponsored “emperor-system ideology,” and through his historical writing he tried to show how Japan had a tradition of tolerance and openness at a time when government-sponsored intellectuals were arguing for greater conformity and submissiveness to the state on the basis of Japanese “national character.” Essays is important not only in terms of religious history but also because it highlights broad trends in the history of Meiji Japan. Introductory chapters explore the significance of the work in terms of the life and thought of its author and its influence on subsequent interpretations of Meiji Christianity.
The Beginning of Heaven and Earth
Author: Christal Whelan
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824818241
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 156
Book Description
In 1865 a French priest was visited by a small group of Japanese at his newly built church in Nagasaki. They were descendants of Japan's first Christians, the survivors of brutal religious persecution under the Tokugawa government. The Kakure Kirishitan, or "hidden Christians," had practiced their religion in secret for several hundred years. Sometime after their visit the priest received a copy of the Kakure bible, the Tenchi Hajimari no Koto, "Beginning of Heaven and Earth," an intriguing amalgam of Bible stories, Japanese fables, and Roman Catholic doctrine. Whelan offers a complete translation of this unique work accompanied by an illuminating commentary that provides the first theory of origin and evolution of the Tenchi. Today, the few Kakure Kirishitan communities still in existence view the Tenchi as strange and flawed, expressing a distorted form of Christianity. It is, however, the only text produced by the Kakure Kirishitan that depicts their highly syncretistic tradition and provides a colorful window through which to examine the dynamics of religious acculturation.
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824818241
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 156
Book Description
In 1865 a French priest was visited by a small group of Japanese at his newly built church in Nagasaki. They were descendants of Japan's first Christians, the survivors of brutal religious persecution under the Tokugawa government. The Kakure Kirishitan, or "hidden Christians," had practiced their religion in secret for several hundred years. Sometime after their visit the priest received a copy of the Kakure bible, the Tenchi Hajimari no Koto, "Beginning of Heaven and Earth," an intriguing amalgam of Bible stories, Japanese fables, and Roman Catholic doctrine. Whelan offers a complete translation of this unique work accompanied by an illuminating commentary that provides the first theory of origin and evolution of the Tenchi. Today, the few Kakure Kirishitan communities still in existence view the Tenchi as strange and flawed, expressing a distorted form of Christianity. It is, however, the only text produced by the Kakure Kirishitan that depicts their highly syncretistic tradition and provides a colorful window through which to examine the dynamics of religious acculturation.
Ideology and Christianity in Japan
Author: Kiri Paramore
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134067658
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
Ideology and Christianity in Japan shows the major role played by Christian-related discourse in the formation of early-modern and modern Japanese political ideology. The book traces a history development of anti-Christian ideas in Japan from the banning of Christianity by the Tokugawa shogunate in the early 1600s, to the use of Christian and anti-Christian ideology in the construction of modern Japanese state institutions at the end of the 1800s. Kiri Paramore recasts the history of Christian-related discourse in Japan in a new paradigm showing its influence on modern thought and politics and demonstrates the direct links between the development of ideology in the modern Japanese state, and the construction of political thought in the early Tokugawa shogunate. Demonstrating hitherto ignored links in Japanese history between modern and early-modern, and between religious and political elements this book will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese history, religion and politics.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134067658
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
Ideology and Christianity in Japan shows the major role played by Christian-related discourse in the formation of early-modern and modern Japanese political ideology. The book traces a history development of anti-Christian ideas in Japan from the banning of Christianity by the Tokugawa shogunate in the early 1600s, to the use of Christian and anti-Christian ideology in the construction of modern Japanese state institutions at the end of the 1800s. Kiri Paramore recasts the history of Christian-related discourse in Japan in a new paradigm showing its influence on modern thought and politics and demonstrates the direct links between the development of ideology in the modern Japanese state, and the construction of political thought in the early Tokugawa shogunate. Demonstrating hitherto ignored links in Japanese history between modern and early-modern, and between religious and political elements this book will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese history, religion and politics.