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Christianity In Japan Research Paper

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Christianity is the largest religion in the world making up 2.1 billion people out of the whole world’s population. Out of those 2.1 billion Christians, only 2,769,272 reside in Japan which means that only about 0.1% of Christians in the world are in Japan. (Joshua Project) This may be quite surprising to people because of the various missionaries that have travelled there in hopes of converting the native people to Christianity. It might also be surprising because countries such as China have around 100 million Christians within their nation, and 30% of the people in South Korea are Christian (Joshua Project) This poses the question of why Christianity is not popular in Japan, a country that can often be compared to China and Korea. Japan’s …show more content…
Although the Meiji Restoration, which took place in the 1800s, gave Christianity a small breath of life, it was never enough to ignite a massive flame to set Christianity into massive growth. The reason for this is due to the fact that the Christians were constantly denounced in Japanese society and were often faced with political opression by the government. The first instance of Christianity being brought into Japan was from a Jesuit missionary named Saint Francis Xavier who first landed in Japan in 1549 (Holocombe). At first the Jesuit missionaries and the Japanese were able to coexist peacefully. And through this, Japanese converts reached numbers as high as three hundred thousand. However, this was under Oda Nobunaga, and the Jesuits were able to continue their work and strive to convert many Japanese people to Christianity (Tofugu). Jesuits enjoyed the ability to minister under the rule of the shogunate, however, the tides turned when Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a warlord, came to power and he expressed his suspicions and opinions against …show more content…
Language barriers are always a problem when missionaries have to go to foreign countries to minister. The Japanese language barrier is a prime example of how these differences in languages can lead to misconceptions and misunderstandings in religion. One example of how this difference can effect the intended meaning is in the word ‘sin’. When missionaries were preaching, the translation of sin that they used was the word “tsumi” (project japan). In Japan this word referred to crime, or being a criminal, so consequently, when missionaries claim that “we have all sinned”, they Japanese would hear it as “we are all criminals”. This also poses a problem because the Japanese people believed that from birth, everyone is good and does not need to be cleansed, but when Christians claim that we are all born with sin, it can cause conflicts and misunderstandings (project japan). As a result of these teachings, the Japanese people immediately felt as if they needed to be cleansed, and that they had to constantly work for salvation. The movie Silence demonstrates this through the village people because they were constantly looking for the Jesuits to confess their sins, otherwise they felt uncleansed. The misunderstanding that comes from this is that you need to work for your salvation, however, since Jesus died for everyone’s

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