Aaron Tay continues our series on Japanese mission history, taking us from 1640 to the present day...
A government office was established in 1640 to institute a kind of permanent religious inquisition - Office for Investigation of Christians. One of its principal responsibilities was the detection and prosecution of hidden Christians. Its policy was to offer substantial monetary rewards for information leading to the apprehension of a Christian.
The gonin-gumi or 5-family structure, the old Japanese communal device for mutual help, helped the Shogun government to control and supervise the activities of all Japanese, down to the smallest details of family and personal living. Families were encouraged to spy on one another - because if a Christian were found in a kumi, all the other members were liable to similar punishments. In consequence, Christians could exist only if all members of a kumi were of their faith.
The practice of fumi-e or ebumi was another device developed by the inquisition office. The term literally means "picture treading". As early as 1631, Christians under torture were urged to trample on a crucifix, or a picture of Christ or of the Madonna. The act was also demanded of apostates or suspected Christians. In Kyushu, fumi-e actually became a regular ceremony as part of the New Year celebrations. Throughout the country governmental officials went from house to house compelling all members of the family to place their foot on the plaque. More than anything, it symbolised the government's hostility towards Christianity, from which, in turn, an abhorrence of the faith as an evil thing developed among the general populace.
Even with the coming of the Meiji period, when Japan once again slowly began to open to the outside world, the Anti-Christian Edict remained in force. The signboards weren't removed until February 19, 1873.
On the basis of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce between the United States and Japan concluded at Edo on July 28, 1858, the first protestant missionaries were able to enter Japan.
During the first 10 years, the missionaries experienced the most difficult conditions of living, physical, mental and spiritual - enduring suspicions of government and people, ignorance of the language, etc. They felt responsible to provide those linguistic aids which could enable subsequent workers to learn the language more rapidly than they themselves.
An important area of service in which the missionaries could engage almost from the beginning was education. Growing numbers of Japanese were anxious to learn English, and the missionaries could provide suitable books in this language as well as teach them personally and thus facilitate personal interaction.
In the single year 1873, a larger number of Protestant missionaries arrived than in any one year of the 19th century. - the number of Japanese Protestant Christians at the end of 1882 was 4987,
the New Testament was published in April 1880, progress was being steadily made in the translation of the Old Testament.
During the 1880's, in place of the old, divisive loyalties to feudal lords, the nation had come to develop a patriotism focused on the emperor, a patriotism which, for the first time in Japanese history, embraced the whole country. A new constitution in 1889, occasioned a new cultural confrontation with the transcendent claims of Christianity.
The strong opposition from outside the church weakened many within. Some Christians in fact left the church and returned to older forms of Japanese religious practice or gave themselves to the new cultural nationalism. And within the church there developed movements toward liberal theology.
Following the retardation of growth and enthusiasm in the 1890's, the Protestant Church was able to recoup and organised two massive nation wide evangelistic campaigns between 1900-1904 and 1914-1916. The latter of these included perhaps 90% of the entire protestant movement. Yet the membership of churches grew little.
In 1923 the National Christian Council (Nihon Kiristo Kyo Remmei), was formed and included Christian schools, social institutions, the YMCA, YWCA, etc. This constituted a further step in ecumenical relationships.
In 1931 military leadership began to take the initiative in national affairs. In 1933 Japan withdrew from the League of Nations. From 1936, the hostility of the military state began to be felt in various ways by the Christians. The NCC continued to maintain a posture consistent with their historic positions and at the same time show themselves as patriotic Japanese, an increasingly difficult task.
In 1938 one of the first examples of direct theological confrontation occurred when a questionnaire was sent from the head of the military police in Osaka to Christian pastors in the area - questions regarding Christian attitudes toward the emperor, imperial prescripts, shrine worship, etc.
The Osaka pastors formulated a corporate reply that was accepted as satisfactory, but they were then informed that the tablets issued by the great Shrine of the Imperial Family at Ise should be placed upon an appropriate shelf in every home.
In 1940 a nation-wide Christian laymen's conference was held to celebrate 2600th year of the imperial throne. During the war, officials of the Kyodan and other Christian churches visited the Ise Shrine and offered prayers for the well-being of the emperor.
The policy of the national government was to bring the Christian churches under the ideological as well as the physical control of the military state without a direct theological confrontation so as to not create martyrs.
The Religious Bodies Law passed in 1939 served to place all state Shinto shrines outside the category of religious bodies and therefore not subject to the other provisions of the act. By this, shrine worship, the "Peoples' Rite" and the like could be made constitutionally legal and compulsory for all Japanese.
Another provision was that to qualify for Ministry of Education approval, a denomination had to comprise a minimum of 50 congregations and 5000 members. Because the churches are usually small, it became at once apparent to all Protestants that church union was the one indispensable means to save Japanese Protestantism from eventual disintegration. Hence was formed the United Church of Christ in Japan (Nihon Kirisuto Kyodan).
The government's concept of the role of every religious organisation was to serve unreservedly as an instrument to further the war effort. The government's understanding of the role of religious teaching was primarily that it should strengthen popular conviction of military victory, affirm the moral rightness of the war, nourish the spirit of determination and perseverance, and encourage every kind of personal economy and generous contribution.
The People's Rite, at first a simple moment of silence with head bowed in memory of the war dead, came to include a turning toward the imperial palace in Tokyo, singing of the national anthem and the reading of the imperial prescripts. It was a compulsory ceremony for every worship service or public religious meeting.
On October 23 1945, a deputation of 4 men arrived in Japan representing the Foreign Missions Conference of North America and the National Council of Churches in the USA. They met with the Kyodan, and from this, developed the magnificent program of post-war Christian relief and reconstruction in Japan which was largely made possible by the generosity of the churches of North America.
On January 1, 1946, the emperor denied any quasi-divinity in himself or special superiority in the Japanese people. He stated that the ties binding him and the nation were those of mutual trust and affection. By this statement, the traditional spiritual basis of Japanese government and society, the doctrine of the divinity of the emperor, which had been developed with increasing explicitness for over half a century, was at one stroke demolished.
It left millions to reconstruct their spiritual foundations and standards of value, a task for which most Japanese were hardly prepared by previous experience.
This was the context which from 1945 to 1951 led to what was called the "Christian Boom". In the physical devastation and spiritual confusion of those years, large numbers of people who had lost their spiritual moorings visited the churches. The church schools of congregations across the land were filled to overflowing, and many of those who came were earnest seekers after faith.
The year 1951 was the high-water mark of the "Christian Boom", and from this time Christians had to return to more "laborious" methods of witness.