Japan’s Modern Prophet: Uchimura Kanzô, 1861 – 1930 (review)

Prophet is used in the first sense given in the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, ‘a teacher or interpreter of the supposed will of God.’ Definitely not in the second sense, ‘one who foretells the future.’ Uchimura Kanzô never knew what was coming up.

Professor Howes has foreclosed discussion of Uchimura Kanzô, though he thinks there is more to be done. Anyone who wants to fight his interpretations or conclusions will be in trouble, because Howes has done research on the subject for fifty years, and there is nothing he does not know. I have some bones to pick, but there is no space.

Uchimura, who spent time in the United States, was a Christian in an increasingly inhospitable Japan. The 1870s had been a wild and free time, with Western ideas pouring into the country. But in the 1880s things narrowed down, and in 1889 the government produced a constitution that defined the emperor as sovereign, and as sacred and inviolable. Accordingly the government set about establishing customs of observance and respect for the emperor, especially in schoolrooms, where his portrait was enshrined. In 1894 Uchimura Kanzô, then a schoolteacher, declined full observance of a piece of writing by the emperor bearing his signature, and eventually resigned or was dismissed. All Japan knew about it, and most condemned Uchimura.

Many Western observers, including myself, are always looking for a spark of resistance to developing emperor-centred nationalism and the increasingly authoritarian state, and Uchimura Kanzô seems to fit the bill. He has been hailed as a man of principle by many, including John Howes. But the situation becomes less clear the more we learn about it. Uchimura caved in and bowed, and then either resigned or was dismissed (Howes uses both terms). A translation of the letter of resignation or dismissal would have helped.

The matter was incidental to his neurotic Christian life. There was one more incident of public principle, when he and two others had to resign from the newspaper Yorozu Choho, for opposing the war against Russia in 1904. Thereafter Uchimura’s main concern was with Western imperialism and the condescending attitudes of missionaries. In reaction he worked towards founding Mukyokai, a non-church church. His primary emphasis became the individual and his or her relation to God, and he wrote voluminously on the subject in both Japanese and English. He became well known throughout the country and in the United States.

John Howes’s book is well written and well polished, and few words are wasted.