Uchimura Kanzo's Use of Japanese Thoughts and Ideas in his Faith (original) (raw)
2008, Journal of the Graduate School of Letters
Japanese individuals who became Protestant Christians during the Meiji era (1867-1912) did so at a time when their traditional lifestyle was undergoing a transition. The samurai background along with a quest for a new foundation for society and lifestyle was an ...
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ジャーナル オブ グローバル メディア スタディーズ, 2010
in this paper mainly derived from Shibasaki (1999a). 2 In Japan, the number of Christian has never been over the 1% of the population. Japan is the only G8 country whose religious majority is not Christian. Majority of the people believe both Buddhism and Shinto almost indiscriminately. This syncretism stems from mixture of traditional belief towards gods traditionally in Japan and towards Budda introduced from China. Today, the number of the Protestant and Catholic are almost the same. In the prewar period the Catholic were far fewer than Protestant (the ratio was about 1:2). 3 Nonchuch Movement maintained that they don't need to depend on church as an institution of Christianity. Instead they focus on the interpretation of the Bible. Uchimura Kanzo was influenced by W. S. Clark (a teacher in Sapporo Agriculture School and influenced many students through Christianity). His friend was Nitobe Inazo, who is also famous as an Undersecretary General of the League of Nations. 4 He published over 90 books and wrote over 700 articles. 5 On his life and career, see Suzuki (1977).
Confucianism and Christianity in Meiji Japan: the case of Kozaki Hiromichi
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain Ireland, 1988
The path followed by Protestant Christianity in Meiji Japan (1868-1912) has frequently been viewed as an index to the general process of Japanese development up to World War II. The beginnings seemed promising. According to the accepted picture, the early converts included a significant number of young ex-samurai whose clan had not supported the winning side in the Meiji Restoration. The new regime dismantled the feudal order which had given their lives purpose and meaning, and they felt alienated and rejected as a result. They first came into contact with Christianity from a desire to study Western learning and thus make a new start in life; they were indifferent, or even hostile, to the Western religion itself. The early missionaries and foreign teachers who led them to Christianity in spite of such initial attitudes seem to have been, if not men with actual military experience, people of strong personality and puritanical ideals. Matching samurai stereotypes of courage and single-minded determination as they therefore did, they attracted the admiration and loyalty of their lordless pupils, who pledged themselves, through their teachers, to Christ. Conversion was often accompanied by the discovery of a new purpose in life, the task of spreading the new religion. This was a restatement of the samurai obligation to set a spiritual example to others, and also represented a patriotic mission to save the nation both morally and materially, through providing the proper basis for the adoption of Western civilization.1 Missionaries were both surprised and delighted by the appearance of such educated and high-ranking converts, for in other parts of Asia, such as India and China, it was primarily the low-ranking and uneducated who showed interest in Christianity.2 More recently, scholars of Meiji Christianity have made similar observations and linked this phenomenon to the general early Meiji openness to change. Just as Christians in the West had been in the vanguard of movements for individual freedom and social welfare, they have portrayed early Meiji 1 For an English-language description of this picture, see Irwin Scheiner, Christian Converts and Social Protest in Meiji Japan, Berkeley, 1970, pp. 21-30, 41-66, 82-99. F. G. Notehelfer emphasizes "moral dislocation" rather than a sense of lost status. See Notehelfer,
An Analysis of Mukyōkai (Non-Church) through the Life and Influences of Her Founder, Kanzo Uchimura
Kanzo Uchimura (1861-1930) was a Japanese author, a Christian evangelist, the founder of the indigenized Christian movement, known as Mukyōkai and a famous pacifist before the World War II. He was regarded as one of the foremost thinker and practitioner of indigenized Christianity amongst the Japanese Christian since Protestantism entered Japan in 1859. Yet for that reason in trying to make Christianity more indigenized as compared to being Western, Uchimura has become one evangelical Christian that was being “hated by my countrymen…disliked by foreign missionaries” for Jesus’ sake.
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