Christian Converts and Social Protests in Meiji Japan

Christian Converts and Social Protests in Meiji Japan PDF Author: Irwin Scheiner
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472901931
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
Nowhere has there been a discussion of the confusion necessarily generated by the rapidity of the change or of the agony created in the lives of many whose attitudes, expectations, and even success depended on the continuance of now abolished institutions. Historians have ignored the settled conditions of most samurai and instead concentrated on the study of the minority of activist samurai leaders who, with the backing of only a few Han (feudal domains) sought to overthrow the old order and whose success in doing so has made the study of the modernization of Japan the prime concern of historians. The history of the Meiji period may have been an overall political and industrial success story, but for a fuller understanding of the conditions of that success it is also necessary to understand "what it was really like" for the members of the old elite to be estranged from the proponents of revolution and what many members did to assure their own social and psychological position in a world they had not expected. In this book the author attempts to show that the impact of the Meiji Restoration destroyed the meaningfulness of the Confucian doctrine for these declasse samurai. Through Christianity, the samurai attempted to revive their status in society by finding a doctrine that offered a meaningful path to power. But in doing so, they had to accept a new theory of social relations. Ultimately, as the convert's understanding of society became totally informed by the Christian doctrine, they accepted a transcendent authority that brought them into conflict with society about them. Therefore, to understand the development of a Christian opposition in Meiji society we must begin with the conversion experience itself. [intro]

Christian Converts and Social Protests in Meiji Japan

Christian Converts and Social Protests in Meiji Japan PDF Author: Irwin Scheiner
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472901931
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
Nowhere has there been a discussion of the confusion necessarily generated by the rapidity of the change or of the agony created in the lives of many whose attitudes, expectations, and even success depended on the continuance of now abolished institutions. Historians have ignored the settled conditions of most samurai and instead concentrated on the study of the minority of activist samurai leaders who, with the backing of only a few Han (feudal domains) sought to overthrow the old order and whose success in doing so has made the study of the modernization of Japan the prime concern of historians. The history of the Meiji period may have been an overall political and industrial success story, but for a fuller understanding of the conditions of that success it is also necessary to understand "what it was really like" for the members of the old elite to be estranged from the proponents of revolution and what many members did to assure their own social and psychological position in a world they had not expected. In this book the author attempts to show that the impact of the Meiji Restoration destroyed the meaningfulness of the Confucian doctrine for these declasse samurai. Through Christianity, the samurai attempted to revive their status in society by finding a doctrine that offered a meaningful path to power. But in doing so, they had to accept a new theory of social relations. Ultimately, as the convert's understanding of society became totally informed by the Christian doctrine, they accepted a transcendent authority that brought them into conflict with society about them. Therefore, to understand the development of a Christian opposition in Meiji society we must begin with the conversion experience itself. [intro]

Christian Converts and Social Protest in Meiji Japan

Christian Converts and Social Protest in Meiji Japan PDF Author: Irwin Scheiner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Christian converts from confucianism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description


Christian Converts and Social Protests in Meiji Japan

Christian Converts and Social Protests in Meiji Japan PDF Author: Irwin Scheiner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
Nowhere has there been a discussion of the confusion necessarily generated by the rapidity of the change or of the agony created in the lives of many whose attitudes, expectations, and even success depended on the continuance of now abolished institutions. Historians have ignored the settled conditions of most samurai and instead concentrated on the study of the minority of activist samurai leaders who, with the backing of only a few Han (feudal domains) sought to overthrow the old order and whose success in doing so has made the study of the modernization of Japan the prime concern of historians. The history of the Meiji period may have been an overall political and industrial success story, but for a fuller understanding of the conditions of that success it is also necessary to understand "what it was really like" for the members of the old elite to be estranged from the proponents of revolution and what many members did to assure their own social and psychological position in a world they had not expected.In this book the author attempts to show that the impact of the Meiji Restoration destroyed the meaningfulness of the Confucian doctrine for these declasse samurai. Through Christianity, the samurai attempted to revive their status in society by finding a doctrine that offered a meaningful path to power. But in doing so, they had to accept a new theory of social relations. Ultimately, as the convert's understanding of society became totally informed by the Christian doctrine, they accepted a transcendent authority that brought them into conflict with society about them. Therefore, to understand the development of a Christian opposition in Meiji society we must begin with the conversion experience itself.

A World of Crisis and Progress

A World of Crisis and Progress PDF Author: Jon Thares Davidann
Publisher: Lehigh University Press
ISBN: 9780934223430
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book Here

Book Description
American YMCA missionaries reacted with their own sense of nationalism, recognizing that failure to enact the American Protestant vision of Christianity in Japan would represent a setback for their role as God's "chosen people.".

Christianity and Imperialism in Modern Japan

Christianity and Imperialism in Modern Japan PDF Author: Emily Anderson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472507681
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331

Get Book Here

Book Description
Christianity and Imperialism in Modern Japan explores how Japanese Protestants engaged with the unsettling changes that resulted from Japan's emergence as a world power in the early 20th century. Through this analysis, the book offers a new perspective on the intersection of religion and imperialism in modern Japan. Emily Anderson reassesses religion as a critical site of negotiation between the state and its subjects as part of Japan's emergence as a modern nation-state and colonial empire. The book shows how religion, including its adherents and the state's attempts to determine acceptable belief, is a necessary subject of study for a nuanced understanding of modern Japanese history.

American Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi, and Japan, 1859-73

American Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi, and Japan, 1859-73 PDF Author: Hamish Ion
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774858990
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 443

Get Book Here

Book Description
Japan closed its doors to foreigners for over two hundred years because of religious and political instability caused by Christianity. By 1859, foreign residents were once again living in treaty ports in Japan, but edicts banning Christianity remained enforced until 1873. Drawing on an impressive array of English and Japanese sources, Ion investigates a crucial era in the history of Japanese-American relations the formation of Protestant missions. He reveals that the transmission of values and beliefs was not a simple matter of acceptance or rejection: missionaries and Christian laymen persisted in the face of open hostility and served as important liaisons between East and West.

Imagining Prostitution in Modern Japan, 1850–1913

Imagining Prostitution in Modern Japan, 1850–1913 PDF Author: Ann Marie L. Davis
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498542158
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the winter of 1913, a small crowd gathered on the streets of a famous red-light district on the outskirts of Tokyo. Curious patrons, journalists, and onlookers formed a steady procession to see the prostitute, Wada Yoshiko, and celebrate the release of her new book. A Prostitute’s Tale divulged inner secrets about her co-workers, patrons, and difficult confinement in a government-run syphilis hospital. According to the press, the author was a literary prostitute, a new expert, and a compelling version of Japan’s new woman. Soon widely acclaimed, her literary work heralded a growing public desire for inside knowledge about the lived experiences of pleasure workers. Wada’s success was the product of more than half-a-century of high-stakes conversations about the future of Japan. Her fame as an author simultaneously challenged and complemented previous discussions about the role of the female prostitute in the modern nation-state. However, while her perspective was new, the information she shared invoked key themes that had proliferated about her in prior decades. Since the 1850s, when Japan was forced to sign the “unequal” commercial treaties with the Western imperial powers, wide-ranging debates had taken place that linked the prostitute to national security and international prestige in imperative new ways. Imagining Prostitution in Modern Japan traces the symbol of the prostitute as a project of nation- and empire-building from the 1850s to 1913, ending one year after the death of the Meiji emperor, and coincidentally, the year of Wada’s publication. It untangles how ideas about pleasure work intersected with Japan’s transformation into a modern nation according to Western models. It asserts that the figure of the prostitute was a powerful symbolic resource that wide-ranging interest groups deployed, variously, to negotiate and define shifting distinctions of status, identity, and power. Each of the debates about the prostitute was in turn central to and mutually constitutive of the emergent social order in Meiji Japan.

Treacherous Women of Imperial Japan

Treacherous Women of Imperial Japan PDF Author: Helene Bowen Raddeker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134696191
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Get Book Here

Book Description
An inspiring analysis of events surrounding two women's attempted assassination of the Emperor of Japan, and the separate penalties faced by these women both in terms of their death sentences and the wider context surrounding their lives.

The Cross and the Rising Sun

The Cross and the Rising Sun PDF Author: A. Hamish Ion
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 0889207607
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
Drawing on both Canadian and Japanese sources, this book investigates the life, work, and attitudes of Canadian Protestant missionaries in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan (the three main constituent parts of the pre-1945 Japanese empire) from the arrival of the first Canadian missionary in East Asia in 1872 until 1931. Canadian missionaries made a significant contribution to the development of the Protestant movement in the Japanese Empire. Yet their influence also extended far beyond the Christian sphere. Through their educational, social, and medical work; their role in introducing new Western ideas and social pursuits; and their outspoken criticism of the brutalities of Japanese rule in colonial Korea and Taiwan, the activities of Canadian missionaries had an impact on many different facets of society and culture in the Japanese Empire. Missionaries residing in the Japanese Empire served as a link between citizens of Japan and Canada and acted as trusted interpreters of things Japanese to their home constituents.

Religion on the Move!

Religion on the Move! PDF Author: Afe Adogame
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004242287
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 479

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Religions on the Move, Afe Adogame and Shobana Shankar present essays on religious expansion beyond Christian missions, focusing on activities of migrants from Africa, Asia, and Latin America spreading their faiths in Europe, North America, and within the “South.”