Christianity Made in Japan: A Study of Indigenous Movements

Chapter 6. Japanese Versions of Apostolic Christianity

CHAPTER SIX Japanese Versions of Apostolic Christianity C HRISTIANITY IN JAPAN has long had the reputation of being a dif³cult and demanding religion, one primarily for intellectuals and the educated white-collar middle class. In stark contrast to the scores of other New Religions that have emerged in Japan’s modern century, Christianity has rarely been regarded as a viable alternative for the general population.1 This image is no doubt related to the decision of the earliest Protestant missionaries to concentrate their attentions on Japanese from the samurai class, for whom popular folk religiosity was of little concern. In the Meiji period the samurai class, the most literate and intellectual class of Japanese society of the time, was overrepresented in the churches: the mere 5 percent of the total Japanese population in the 1880s and 1890s who were of samurai origins accounted for approximately 30 percent of total membership in the Protestant churches.2 The image of Japanese Christianity as an intellectual’s religion is further reµected in the 95 CHRISTIANITY MADE IN JAPAN 96 fact that the greatest majority of church leaders were drawn from these same samurai families, where they had received a Confucian education that set them apart from the rest of the population. Taken together, then, the preferences of the missionaries and the native orientation of those singled out for proselytization made it dif³cult for the new religion to appeal to the ordinary masses of Japanese. Ariga Tetsutarõ describes persuasively the dominant place of this “elite” in the ³rst Protestant churches and their disdain for the religiosity of the common people: Christian leaders of the Meiji period, being of samurai origin, had shared the samurai prejudice against Buddhism and Shinto. For precisely because these were the religions of the lower classes upon which the samurai looked down, they were bound to be more important factors of the society where all the former classes were mixed. This point they seemed to have missed. And here perhaps should be sought the chief reason why Japanese Protestantism has neither been able to extend its inµuence widely beyond the educated middle classes nor to answer successfully the challenges made by Buddhism, Shinto, and more recent popular sects.3 The similarly elitist indigenous versions of Christianity articulated by Uchimura, Matsumura, and Kawai—as we have seen in the preceding chapters —did little to remedy the imbalance. Like the majority of the foreign missionaries and the early Japanese Christian leaders, they tended to underestimate the strength and persistence of traditional and popular religious concerns, and hence failed to come to terms theologically with the needs of the broader population . This was to be the role of a second wave of indigenous movements organized in the 1930s and 1940s. Critical of both the mission churches and existing indigenous forms, these movements have succeeded in responding most directly to the needs of ordinary people and to the concerns embodied in folk religiosity. Carlo Caldarola’s study of Japanese Christianity included a worthy analysis of one of these movements, the Original Gospel (or Makuya, Tabernacle Movement), whose roots go back to Nonchurch movement, but concluded with a misleading generalization: Makuya is the only movement to indigenize Christianity—traditionally an upper-class religion—in the Japanese lower classes. By emphasizing its pentecostal aspects, the Makuya has ingeniously succeeded in fostering the continuity of a Japanese folk-religious tradition dominated by shamanism, magic, and miracles.4 JAPANESE VERSIONS OF APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY 97 The fact is, however, there are a number of other indigenous movements that have made similar cultural adaptations and attracted members from among the less educated layers of society. They include the Glorious Gospel Christian Church (1936), the Living Christ One Ear of Wheat Church (1939), Christian Canaan Church (1940), Japan Ecclesia of Christ (1940), the Spirit of Jesus Church (1941), Holy Ecclesia of Jesus (1946), and the Sanctifying Christ Church (1948). All of these movements show a common concern with recovering an “apostolic faith” that they consider missing in the transplanted mission churches. This chapter focuses on two of the larger movements from this second period, the Spirit of Jesus Church and the Holy Ecclesia of Jesus, and brieµy reconsiders the Pentecostal version of the Nonchurch Christianity that was introduced in Caldarola’s study. MURAI JUN AND THE SPIRIT OF JESUS CHURCH The founder of the Spirit of Jesus Church, Murai Jun, was born in 1897...