Download or read book A History of Christianity in Japan Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox missions written by Otis Cary and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Christian in the Land of the Gods written by Joanna Reed Shelton and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2016-01-05 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In November 1877, three months after Emperor Meiji's conscript army of commoners defeated forces led by Japan's famous "last samurai," the Reverend Tom Alexander and his new wife, Emma, arrived in Japan, a country where Christianity had been punishable by death until 1868. A Christian in the Land of the Gods offers an intimate view of hardships and challenges faced by nineteenth-century missionaries working to plant their faith in a country just emerging from two and a half centuries of self-imposed seclusion. The narrative takes place against the backdrop of wrenching change in Japan and Great Power jockeying for territory and influence in Asia, as seen through the eyes of a Presbyterian missionary from East Tennessee. This true story of personal sacrifice, devotion to duty, and unwavering faith sheds new light on Protestant missionaries' work with Japan's leading democracy activists and the missionaries' role in helping transform Japan from a nation ruled by shoguns, hereditary lords, and samurai to a leading industrial powerhouse. It addresses universal themes of love, loss, and the enduring power of faith. The narrative also proves that one seemingly ordinary person can change lives more than he or she ever realizes.
Download or read book In Search of Japan s Hidden Christians written by John Dougill and published by SPCK. This book was released on 2016-09-15 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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?
Download or read book The Invention of Religion in Japan written by Jason Ānanda Josephson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-10-03 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Handbook of Christianity in Japan written by Mark Mullins and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-12-24 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A History of Japanese Religion written by 笠原一男 and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seventeen distinguished experts on Japanese religion provide a fascinating overview of its history and development. Beginning with the origins of religion in primitive Japanese society, they chart the growth of each of Japan's major religious organizations and doctrinal systems. They follow Buddhism, Shintoism, Christianity, and popular religious belief through major periods of change to show how history and religion affected each-and discuss the interactions between the different religious traditions.
Download or read book The Beginning of Heaven and Earth written by Christal Whelan and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1996-09-01 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Ideology and Christianity in Japan written by Kiri Paramore and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2009 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume recasts the history of anti-Christian discourse in Japan showing its influence on modern thought and politics.
Download or read book Essays on the Modern Japanese Church written by Aizan Yamaji and published by U of M Center For Japanese Studies. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Christian Century in Japan 1549 1650 written by Charles Ralph Boxer and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1967 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Christianity in Early Modern Japan written by Ikuo Higashibaba and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides a new history of Christianity in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Japan by depicting the world of ordinary Japanese Christians. It examines their religious expressions, as well as textual expositions given to them, within the context of Japanese religious culture.
Download or read book Christianity Made in Japan written by Mark R. Mullins and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 1998-10-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A History of Christianity in Japan Protestant missions written by Otis Cary and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Deus Destroyed written by George Elison and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-17 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Japan’s “Christian Century” began in 1549 with the arrival of Jesuit missionaries led by Saint Francis Xavier, and ended in 1639 when the Tokugawa regime issued the final Sakoku Edict prohibiting all traffic with Catholic lands. “Sakoku”—national isolation—would for more than two centuries be the sum total of the regime’s approach to foreign affairs. This policy was accompanied by the persecution of Christians inside Japan, a course of action for which the missionaries and their zealots were in part responsible because of their dogmatic orthodoxy. The Christians insisted that “Deus” was owed supreme loyalty, while the Tokugawa critics insisted on the prior importance of performing one’s role within the secular order, and denounced the subversive doctrine whose First Commandment seemed to permit rebellion against the state. In discussing the collision of ideas and historical processes, George Elison explores the attitudes and procedures of the missionaries, describes the entanglements in politics that contributed heavily to their doom, and shows the many levels of the Japanese response to Christianity. Central to his book are translations of four seventeenth-century, anti-Christian polemical tracts."
Download or read book Japan and Christianity written by John Breen and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-27 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much has been written of the 'success' of the early missions to Japan during the decades immediately following the arrival of the first Jesuits in 1549. The subsequent 'failure' of the faith to put down roots strong enough to survive this initial wave of enthusiasm is discussed with equal alacrity. The papers in this volume, born of a Conference marking the centenary of the Japan Society of London, represent an attempt to reassess the contact between Christianity and Japan in terms of a symbiotic relationship, a dialogue in which the impact of Japan on the imported religion is viewed alongside the more frequently cited influence of Christianity on Japanese society. Here is a dynamic cultural encounter, examined by the papers in this volume from a series of political, literary and historical perspectives.
Download or read book Rediscovering Japan Reintroducing Christendom written by Samuel Lee and published by Government Institutes. This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Rediscovering Japan, Reintroducing Christendom Japan's unvoiced Christian history and cultural roots are examined from an alternative perspective. It is commonly believed that Christianity was introduced to Japan by the Spanish and Portuguese missionaries during the 1500s; however, Samuel Lee draws on various forms of cultural, religious and linguistic evidence to argue that Christianity was introduced to Japan through the Lost Tribes of Israel, who were converted to Christianity through the missionary efforts of the Assyrian Church of the East around A.D. 500. Much of the evidence he discusses has become submerged into many Japanese folkloric songs, festivals and is to be found in temples. There are, for example, approximately 300 words in Japanese and Hebrew/Aramaic that are similar. Further, Dr. Lee outlines the history of Catholicism in Japan during the 1500s, the systematic persecution of Christians from 1600s to the 1800s, and the rise of Protestant Church in Japan. The historical portion of the book ends with an analysis and discussion of 21st century Japanese society. Lastly, in Rediscovering Japan, Reintroducing Christendom, Samuel Lee questions the missiological methods of Western Christianity and advocates an approach based in dialogue between Christianity and other cultures.
Download or read book Christ s Samurai written by Jonathan Clements and published by Robinson. This book was released on 2016-04-07 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sect was said to harbour dark designs to overthrow the government. Its teachers used a dead language that was impenetrable to all but the innermost circle of believers. Its priests preached love and kindness, but helped local warlords acquire firearms. They encouraged believers to cast aside their earthly allegiances and swear loyalty to a foreign god-emperor, before seeking paradise in terrible martyrdoms. The cult was in open revolt, led, it was said, by a boy sorcerer. Farmers claiming to have the blessing of an alien god had bested trained samurai in combat and proclaimed that fires in the sky would soon bring about the end of the world. The Shogun called old soldiers out of retirement for one last battle before peace could be declared in Japan. For there to be an end to war, he said, the Christians would have to die. This is a true story.
