Category: Japan Stories

A testimony from Japan-

“I worked hard to make myself into a successful person. I even consulted a fortune teller concerning making my signature seal which I needed for business. He told me that I needed to change a number of things in my life. I did whatever he told me to do. I bought a cemetery plot, joined the Rotary Club, had my whole family say prayers to a certain goddess every morning and evening, and followed his counsel faithfully. He taught me many things, even concerning the end of the world.

“One day I heard someone talk about a great war at the end of the world. I was deeply interested and asked who the fortune teller was that predicted these things. I found out that it wasn’t a fortune teller, but was written in the Bible. So I bought a Bible and read it from morning till night. I was eager to learn more aboutthe Bible and about a life that pleases God.

“A Christian sent me a cassette tape of a sermon. I knew that if I could talk with the man on the tape, he would answer my questions about the Bible. So I got his phone number and called him. He showed me that I was a sinner and that Jesus was the Savior. As a result, I became a Christian. My wife and three daughters also became Christians after they saw the change in my life.”

(Continued from last week’s article)

Ukon was generally liked and trusted by other samurai lords. Shogun Hideyoshi even gave him promotion by granting him more land to own. Shortly after that, however, Hideyoshi issued a decree in 1587 placing restrictions on Christian activities. Missionaries were forced to leave the country within 20 days and it was stated that it was “inappropriate” to convert the Japanese to Christianity because Japan was a country of the gods. This was the first anti-Christian decree that was followed by more severe ones. Many Christian daimyo’s renounced their faith at this, but Ukon surprised others by choosing to abandon his status as a Daimyo and all his land and riches for his faith. Although he was forced to go into exile after that, there were sympathetic Daimyo’s who provided him with a decent living and protection. Some of them even made him a political and military advisor.

In 1614, with the persecution of Christians becoming as severe as ever, he was finally expelled from the country and boarded on a ship bound for the Philippines. He reached Manila in December and received a hearty welcome by Spanish priests and missionaries who had heard about his perseverance. Exhausted from the travel and the tropical climate he wasn’t used to, Ukon soon became ill in the foreign land and died at the age 64 in Manila the next year. Spanish governor Juan de Silva ordered a huge funeral for Ukon at Santa Ana Cathedral. His family went back to Japan after his death and three families directly descended from Ukon still live in three different parts of Japan today.

Since Francis Xavier first arrived in Japan as a Jesuit missionary in 1549, more Catholic missionaries followed and many Japanese converted into Christianity. Among them were many Daimyo’s, or powerful Samurai lords. This is partly because Xavier and other missionaries strategically focused on first converting the Daimyo’s in order to pave a smooth path for further ministry. And many Daimyo’s felt that it was beneficial for them to be a convert in order to gain favor with the Portuguese and Spaniard merchants who brought guns. Many of those who converted for commercial benefits soon fell away from Christianity once persecution got severe, but there were a few samurai lords who adhered to their faith throughout the persecution.

One of these “hard-core” Christian samurai’s is Ukon Takayama. He was born to a high-class Samurai family in Osaka area in 1552. His father, touched by the gospel message he heard from a former Buddhist monk who converted to Christianity after being ministered by a Jesuit missionary, became a Christian and led everyone in his family to be baptized. Ukon was 12 years old when he got baptized. In 1573, in the midst of political turmoil that involved the Takayama family and the Daimyo that they served, Ukon and his father took over Takatsuki castle and became Daimyo themselves. Ukon was seriously injured during a sword fight with the former lord of the castle, but miraculously recovered. It is said that Ukon, who was not as fervent about his faith as his father, became a very dedicated follower since this incident. His father retired around the age 50 to pursue a Christian living and Ukon became Daimyo at Takatsuki castle…. (To be continued next Thursday)

(Continued from the article on Sep. 9)

Francisco de Xavier, the first Christian missionary to Japan, encountered many difficulties including language barrier and cultural issues. Since Japanese culture didn’t have a concept of God who is the only God and the Creator, the language didn’t have a word for such a being. His interpreter Anjiro, who was still quite new to this foreign faith, translated the word “God” into “Dainichi”, which is a Buddhist figure. Because of this, Xavier was at first welcomed by some of the Buddhist monks who thought he was teaching about Dainichi. Xavier soon realized this and started using “Deusu” from the Latin “Deus (God)”, which made the monks less welcoming toward Christianity.

Another difficulty arose when Xavier met with one of the local lords in Yamaguchi area to ask for permission to evangelize in the area. He was unable to gain favor with the lord O’ouchi because Xavier criticized O’ouchi’s homosexual practices. This problem hindered his work of ministry elsewhere as well, because homosexuality or pederasty among high-class men was widely accepted in pre-modern Japan. The concept of hell and eternal damnation also presented a difficulty for Japanese people, who were deeply bothered by the idea that their ancestors were in hell.  

After Xavier first stepped on Japanese soil in 1549, many Catholic missionaries followed. However, the Japanese government started to regulate and limit Christian missionary activities from 1587 and the persecution gradually worsened. In 1613, all Christian activities were completely banned all over Japan. The persecution continued to a greater or lesser degree until 1899 when the government officially permitted Christianity.

How long has Christianity been in Japan? Even though Christian population in Japan today still lingers around 1%, Japanese people have been exposed to Christian teachings since as early as 1549.

The first Christian missionary to come to Japan was Francisco de Xavier, or Francis Xavier, who was a Spanish missionary and one of the founders of the Society of Jesus along with Ignatius de Loyola. He was born in the Kingdom of Navvare (Spain) and it is thought that his first language was Basque. He left Lisbon in 1541 on his missionary trip to Asia under the order of King John the 3rd of Portugal. He first went to Goa, a Portuguese colony in India, where he spent 3 years. He then did his missionary work in other parts of India and Indonesia. In 1547, he met a Japanese named Anjiro in the Malacca islands, who told him about Japan and later got baptized. Intrigued by Anjiro’s stories, Xavier left India and reached the western part of Japan in 1549, accompanied by Anjiro and two other Jesuits. He struggled to learn the Japanese language which was radically different than any other languages that the Europeans had encountered before, and his ministry was limited because of that. His primary means of teaching was to read the Japanese translation of cathechism aloud and he also brought many pieces of artwork such as paintings of the Madonna as complementary resources to teach about Christianity to the Japanese. He spent two years in Japan before returning to India.

Japanese mythology is like Greek mythology in many ways. It has many interesting stories about many different gods, but these stories often have a couple of different versions because of the diversity in its original texts and also because they are mixed together with various folk legends, myths, etc. The sources of the Japanese mythology are the two books written in the early AD700s called ‘Nihon shoki’ and ‘Kojiki’. Those books were written as “history” of Japan, possibly by the order of the Emperor who was gaining power and wanted something to justify his reign by deifying himself as the books identify him as the direct descendant of the gods. Here is a short summary of how the world came to be according to Japanese mythology:

The tale of the very beginning, or how the world came to be, is somewhat ambiguous in Japanese mythology. According to Nihon Shoki, the world was a chaos at first. Then the pure and impure were separated and became the heaven and the earth. And out came the gods that looked like humans. The ones that were born first were neither male nor female, and then four pairs of male and female gods were born. And the last one of these pairs, Izanagi (male) and Izanami (female), got married and started giving births to the islands of Japan and other gods. Interestingly enough, the text does not give any explanation as to how these initial gods came to be, and the other mythological text, Kojiki, has no mention of the very beginning of the world.

Here’s a little more about what happened after that.

When Izanami gave birth to a god of fire, she was burnt which caused her death. Izanagi, missing his wife so much, travels to the land of the dead, where he finds his beloved wife rotten and ugly. He screams in shock and runs away from his furious wife who chases after him. She is furious because he saw her in such a hideous state in spite of her warning not to look at her. After a long chase, Izanagi finally manages to block his wife’s pursuit by placing a huge rock in front of the pathway to the land of the dead. She curses him and says “I will kill one thousand men a day from now on” (The rock was so heavy that it called for a thousand people to be removed.) To that Izanagi replies: “Then I will make sure I get 1,500 people to be born every day.” It is explained that this incident is the reason why there are births and deaths.

After the terrible trip to the land of the dead and back, Izanagi decides to purify himself. As he took off his clothes and dunked himself in a river, many gods were born. He went on to wash his left eye and the sun goddess (Amaterasu O’omikami) was born. When he washed his right eye, the god of the moon (Tsukuyomi no mikoto), his nose, the god of the ocean (Susano’o no mikoto). Those three gods were appointed to rule over the world.

This is only some of it. Pretty interesting stuff. I (Tomo) grew up in Japan but didn’t know these stories in detail until I did research to write this article. Most Japanese people probably don’t know much about the mythology either, but it’s interesting to know them because the basic world view is still at the root of their culture and mindset.