Week 180: Medieval Japanese Response to Christianity + Aesthetic
05/29/2023 - Modern Hindu Content
Welcome to Eternal Path! This week we feature: The Medieval Japanese Response to Christianity and an aesthetic!
History Highlight: The Medieval Japanese Response to Christianity
Following on the footsteps of our article covering Shivaji Maharaj’s invasion of Goa in last week’s issue (Week 179), we figured we would explore how another sister civilization, the Japanese, responded to aggressive Christian proselytization in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Japanese response was far superior in terms of preserving the vitality and power of their native religious traditions.
Christianity came to Japan in the 1500s, as a result of Portuguese explorers and proselytizers. During the late 1500s, Japan went through a period of warring warlords, which Christian missionaries used to their advantage, converting a few warlords in key coastal cities, and conducting business in selling guns to many other warlords.
Francis Xavier, the famous Portuguese preacher came to Japan from India and attempted to speed up the Christianification of the population. Xavier, of course, is famous for his time in Goa in administering some of the most brutal punishments to Hindus who refused to convert to Christianity, unleashing a reign of terror in the Portuguese colonies (read more here).
Gaspar Coelho followed in the Xavierian footsteps; he became Superior and Vice-Provincial of the Jesuit mission in Japan in the mid-1500s. He began by aggressively promoting conversions to Christianity in coastal and trading towns and courting Christian warlords to rebel against the Japanese state. Later on in his tenure, he oversaw attacks on Buddhist and Shinto shrines. All throughout this time, the Portuguese were also kidnapping Japanese men and women and sending them as slaves throughout their empire. Some more specific writing on this is provided below (s/o @rjrasva) :
Concurrently, Toyotomi Hideyoshi emerged as the pre-eminent warlord. His military prowess was accompanied by strong clarity of thought. Hideyoshi met with Coelho, both plying each other with wine and other luxury goods, when Hideyoshi turned the mental screws on Coelho asking him:
As an aside, number 3, shows the historical Japanese aversion to beef-eating and beef-eaters. Unsatisfied with Coelho’s answers and the continued slave-trading, temple destruction, intrigue, and aggressive proselytization, Hideyoshi issued two anti-Christian edicts in 1587 (1) Limitation on the Propagation of Christianity, and (2) Expulsion of Missionaries.
The former concerns the conduct of the daimyo (vassals of the shogun). The latter is depicted below:
Note 1-3 as direct challenges to Christianity’s attacks on Buddhism and Shinto.
Later on, Hideyoshi undertook a disastrous invasion of Korea, and passed away in 1598. Tokugawa Ieyasu seized power in 1600 and soon after became shogun. He maintained the same wariness of Christian missionary activity, as evidenced by this letter to the Spanish (s/o @rjrasva)
The clarity of thought of Christianity as a tool of destruction of native cultures remained centuries after, even while Japan at this point being famously closed off for hundreds of years, with Aizawa Seishisai writing the below text in 1825 (s/o @rjrasva).
What is the lesson here? Its to understand Hinduphobic forces and to otherize them immediately. It is to understand that forces will emerge that want to destroy Hindu temples, traditions, and society and to stay vigilant, and to learn from the success of a sister civilization.
Aesthetic: Delhi Temple
