In Shusaku Endo’s 1966 novel Silence, the apostatised priest Cristóvão Ferreira tells a Portuguese compatriot a bitter truth about Japanese Christianity. “The Japanese till this day have never had the concept of God,” he proclaims, “and they never will.” For a book set in the 17th century, it’s a fair point. Wary of colonisation by Western powers, the ruling shogunate banned Christianity in 1614, a policy aimed at isolating Japan from the rest of the world. As for those Japanese Catholics who remained, many were tortured and killed, with some crucified in an ironic play on the fate of their saviour.
In a sense, Ferreira’s argument remains true today. Barely 1% of Japanese people now identify as Christian, and if you asked the average Tokyo commuter to explain the Eucharist, they’d likely just stare. Yet if Japan is unique among the East Asian countries for remaining almost devoid of Christians, this is also a society where people wear their faith lightly, and where Buddhism and Shintoism have coexisted for centuries. That surely explains why modern Japanese now wallow in the symbols and traditions of Christmas, even as they twist outside customs to their needs. No less striking, those few Japanese who do embrace Jesus tend to do remarkably well — hinting at its long associations with Western sophistication.
Much as Catholicism is the assumed religion of every Italian — a faith, at the very least, to be embraced at birth, marriage and death — Buddhism and Shintoism in Japan are chiefly cultural institutions. The typical Japanese will visit a temple or shrine at the beginning of the new year out of tradition, and get married in one, but whether or not they literally believe in gods or spirits is harder to answer. When it comes to the God of the Western monotheistic religions, in fact, most Japanese would likely be considered agnostic. Given how different the Japanese attitude to faith is from Western monotheism — original sin and scriptural dogma are unknown — Shusaku Endo may have had a point when he wrote that his fellow countrymen “cannot think of an existence that transcends the human.”
Yet ever since the Portuguese arrived during the Age of Discovery, there have always been Christians here. The first mass on Japanese soil is said to have occurred in 1552, at the behest of Jesuits based at Yamaguchi. The Portuguese had landed in the Land of the Rising Sun less than a decade prior, being the first Europeans to do so. Francis Xavier led the first Christian mission to Japan in 1549, with his successors to learning Japanese and converting as many natives as possible. Prefectures like Yamaguchi and Nagasaki still have the highest concentrations of Christians in Japan — partly because of the work of these hardy Catholic pioneers.
It’s debatable how many of these early Japanese Christians actually understood Christianity: most initially interpreted the religion as simply another sect of Buddhism. During his early proselytising, in fact, Xavier used “Dainichi” (“Great Sun”) as a Japanese translation for the Christian God, borrowing the name of a major Buddha. Yet if this subtle approach led to the conversation of several high-ranking daimyo (lords), with aristocrats keen to embrace the faith of the prosperous and musket-wielding outsiders, it also pushed the shogunate to crush Christianity and expel all foreigners from the country.
The artificial island Dejima, off Nagasaki, was the only port where Dutch traders were permitted to do business, and they skirted the ban on Christianity by framing their Christmas celebrations as marking the New Year. Some high-ranking Japanese officials occasionally attended these “Dutch New Year” festivities. Their European hosts did their best under the circumstances, cooking lavish feasts including sweet bread and pies, both unusual sights when the journey back to Amsterdam took six months.
Christmas proper would not be celebrated again for over 200 years, when the Emperor Meiji abandoned centuries of isolation and re-embraced Western culture. With the ban on Christianity fully lifted in 1873, Japanese writers like Inazo Nitobe converted to Christianity, received Western educations, and helped shape modern Japanese society. Like the daimyo of old, this was often an upper-class movement. By 1933, one in 2,000 white-collar Japanese had embraced Christ, compared to one in 55,000 farmers. At the same time, the number of foreigners entering Japan increased sharply. Diplomats and their families, oceans away from home, celebrated Christmas at their embassy postings.
That foreignness helps explain the spread of Christianity among the Japanese elite, with lawyers and doctors keen to both showcase their Western credentials and distinguish themselves from their more humble peers. You might say something similar about the spread of Christmas as a secular celebration. It’s telling that festivities became popular around the turn of the century, and the arrival of Western multinationals: Coca-Cola started selling its products in Japan in 1919, with the company famously associated with all things Santa. By the Thirties, Christmas imagery could be found in school textbooks, magazines, shops, restaurants, and cafes nationwide.
Ultimately, though, it would be the post-war American occupation that permanently embedded Christmas into Japanese culture. Little wonder Japan’s most famous Christmas tradition involves families chowing on Kentucky Fried Chicken. Similar to Coca-Cola and Santa, KFC Japan has made Christmas a signature part of its brand at the end of each year. Takeshi Okawara, the manager of the first KFC restaurant to open in Japan, supposedly heard foreigners talking about how they missed eating turkey, and wondered if his chicken could work instead. It did: KFC Japan now sells limited-edition buckets every Christmas. A cut above the usual fare, options include barbecue chicken legs and chocolate cake, even as diners must book tables.
The Japanese would absorb, or anyway distort, other festive Western customs — an echo of Dainichi and a mark of how adept they’ve become at shaping foreign influences to their tastes. One good example is the way many Japanese now view Christmas Eve to be the most romantic time of the year, even rivalling Valentine’s Day. It’s not entirely clear when this tradition started. As far back as the Thirties, magazine articles featured stories about young Japanese on romantic festive dates. Most likely, businesses wanted to take full advantage of consumer revenue before closing for New Year’s. At any rate, couples now plan lavish dinner dates weeks in advance: expect the classiest restaurants and hotels to be fully booked through the end of December.
No less striking, Japan now has a range of totally new Christmas traditions, together blending East and West. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” — composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto for a film of the same name starring David Bowie — is a universal favourite. The holiday also regularly features in manga and anime storylines. Directed by Satoshi Kon, Tokyo Godfathers is perhaps the most famous example. The visually stunning animated film is set during Christmas and centres around the country’s homeless community: a perspective rarely seen in Japanese animation. There are even Christmas-themed Japanese video games. Published in 1996, Nights into Dreams has players exploring a vivid dream world. The standard version was beautiful enough, but the Christmas edition adds winter scenery, and a cover of “Jingle Bells” as background music.
While most Japanese aren’t Christians, in short, the Christmas spirit is now a permanent fixture here. But what of that tiny minority that really do convert? In certain ways, the faithful in Tokyo are similar to their counterparts in Paris or Berlin. Churches hold Christmas masses each December, often featuring Japanese-language hymns. In a nod to the country’s relaxed attitudes to faith, non-Christians regularly join their religious friends in celebration.
And if Japanese Christians manage to carve out a place for themselves this December, amid the Bowie and the lights, it’s also true that they occupy a distinct place in wider society. Over the years, Japan has boasted a remarkable nine Christian prime ministers, or 14% of the total. That includes Shigeru Ishiba, the current incumbent. Each found God differently. Takashi Hara was baptised Catholic after studying at a French parochial school in Tokyo. Taro Aso, for his part, seems to have inherited his faith from family.
But while religion here is basically private — unlike the US, politicians aren’t expected to invoke their faith in public — this political preponderance again speaks to the popularity of Christianity among the Japanese elite. The numbers, once more, are clear: one study, from after the Second World War, found that 40% of Japanese Protestants had gone to university, compared to barely 15% of the population at large. That’s dovetailed by more personal examples, like the Hattoris, a prominent Catholic family that owns the Seiko watch company. Of course, these success stories don’t wear their faith on their sleeves. That wouldn’t be the Japanese way. Yet amid the gentle universality of Buddhism and Shintoism, Christians in Japan are clearly doing well. Not that the public at large, busy with their chicken and date nights, really know or care.
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Source: UnHerd Read the original article here: https://unherd.com/