Ideology and Christianity in Japan (review)

Ideology and Christianity in Japan by Kiri Paramore is an important and thought-provoking contribution to the field of Tokugawa intellectual history. It will be of interest to specialists and advanced students who are engaged in the study of Tokugawa ideology and cross-cultural exchanges between Eastern and Western philosophy and religion.

The book explores works of Christian literature from the early seventeenth century, among them Myōtei mondō by Habian (Fabian Fukansai, 1565–1621), which the author calls "the best example of indigenous Japanese Christian thought extant from this period," and Dochirina Kirishitan, an introduction to Catholic doctrine, published by the Jesuits at the turn of the seventeenth century. Comparing these two texts, the author shows that, while both are works of Christian literature, there are important theological differences, the most important being the emphasis on ethical knowledge as truth in Myōtei mondō and the prominence of the place of faith in Dochirina Kirishitan. Paramore explains that by emphasizing faith in ecclesiastical authority and doctrinal orthodoxy rather than depending on rational explanations to support the faith, the Jesuits in Japan exerted a particular influence on Habian and on Japanese Christians that was different from the thinking of Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) (p. 29). According to the author, Dochirina Kirishitan equated faith in God to faith in the Church hierarchy alone and neglected arguments that would support a positive view of human thought, knowledge, and discernment (p. 31).

Throughout the book, the author encourages his reader to grapple with important questions in the study of Christian literature, such as whether these works should be considered "Japanese Christian texts" at all, due to the preponderance of European philosophy and theology in the content. Paramore also raises the question of the ideology of the European Jesuits in Japan. He states that they were "conservative" (p. 41) and that "Habian had been told simply to believe by [this] small group of European Jesuits on the periphery of the Catholic world" (pp. 29–30). Paramore implies that the theological perspective of the European Jesuits in Japan was a minority view in the Catholic world. While the terms "conservative" and "progressive" or "traditional" and "liberal" are used today to describe differences among those who profess to be Catholic, the Church in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was not divided in the same way. Catholics viewed Church teachings and doctrines more simply as either orthodox or heterodox, giving little room for individual interpretation of the faith. One was either Catholic or not Catholic, rather than conservative or liberal. The Jesuits in Japan held the Catholic position. Trained as they were in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, they would have been faithful to Ignatius's "Rules for Thinking with the Church": "We must put aside all judgment of our own, and keep the mind ever ready and prompt to obey in all things the true Spouse of Christ our Lord, our holy Mother, the hierarchical Church."¹ This was an age long before one could dissent from the teaching of the Church and still call oneself "Catholic." Hence, Paramore's understanding of the Jesuits in Japan as being a group "on the periphery" may be somewhat anachronistic.

Paramore also writes, "what both Ricci and Habian did possess and the European leadership of the Jesuits in Japan lacked, was a real understanding of non-Christian thought…. (in particular Confucian thought)" (p. 32). While this may be true, an important difference between Matteo Ricci and the Jesuits in Japan was the manner in which they dealt with the problems of using the non-Christian religious vocabulary of Chinese and Japanese in their translations of Christian theological works. While Ricci used indigenous Chinese terms, the Jesuits in Japan used transliterated words from Latin and Portuguese. This difference in methodology did not reflect so much a lack of knowledge of the meaning of the indigenous Japanese religious terminology or of non-Christian thought on the part of Jesuits in Japan but more the fact that the study...