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Nosco, Peter Early Modernity and the States Policies toward Christianity in 16th and 17th century Japan Bulletin of Portuguese - Japanese Studies, núm. 7, december, 2003, pp. 7-21 Universidade Nova de Lisboa Lisboa, Portugal

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EARLY MODERNITY AND THE STATE’S POLICIES TOWARD CHRISTIANITY IN 16th AND 17th CENTURY JAPAN

Peter Nosco University of British Columbia

Introduction

Some years ago in the course of an inquiry into the nature of life among Tokugawa Japan’s “underground” religious communities, I examined the Bakuhan 1 state’s policies toward Christianity in the context of its policies toward other faiths and religionists.2 In this paper, I revisit some concerns expressed in this earlier scholarship, in which I argued that the state’s policies toward Christianity at any time during the “Christian century” are understood better when examined in the context of the state’s policies toward other religious movements and organizations. I do so by revisiting five moments in the complex history of religious policy in Japan represented by the years 1580, 1598, 1615, 1640 and 1688, seeking to identify the Christian/Kirishitan component or dimension of that policy. I then consider these findings in terms of Japan’s transformation during the span of years extending from the late-16th to the late-17th centuries, offering a number of speculative remarks regarding Christianity’s possible contributions to aspects of Japan’s early modernity, in particular the construction of collective identity, the emergent public sphere, and the development of a sphere of individual privacy or “private-life secrecy.” 3

1 “Bakuhan state” is understood here as the collective authority of the central (Bakufu) and some 250+ domainal (Han) governments. 2 My initial findings were published as “Japanese Policy Toward Religions in the ‘Christian’ Century” in O Século Cristão do Japão (Lisbon, 1994), pp. 569-588. A revised version of this paper also appeared as “Keeping the faith: bakuhan policy towards religions in seventeenth- century Japan,” in P.F. Kornicki and I.J. McMullen, eds, Religion in Japan: Arrows to heaven and earth (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 135-155. 3 Barbara Warren and Barbara Laslett understand “private-life secrecy” as a “response to ideology: a desire to avert the full wrath of whatever powerful groups are in control of the definition of ‘undesirable elements.’ ” See their “Privacy and Secrecy: A Conceptual Comparison,” in Stanton Tefft, ed., Secrecy: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (New York, Human Sciences Press, 1980), p. 26. 8 Peter Nosco Early Modernity and the State’s Policies toward Christianity 9

1. 1580

In 1571 Oda Nobunaga’s armies overran the Tendai center on Mt. Hiei, the fountainhead of much Japanese Buddhism, and institutionally the most important center of Buddhism in Japan at that time. A comparable slaughter at the True Pure Land’s (Jódo Shin) fortress at Ishiyama was averted only by the Amidist zealots’ agreement to surrender in 1580. In these military engagements, there is nothing to suggest that Nobunaga acted out of religious or spiritual antipathy toward these or any other Buddhist denominations. Rather, the evidence suggests that Nobunaga regarded the armies of Mt. Hiei and Ishiyama Honganji, which at the time both ranked among the ten largest armies in Japan, simply as obstacles that like any others had to be overcome if he was to attain the military and political authority he sought. As Neil McMullin has observed, the power and independence that the Buddhist temples had acquired over the prior thousand years were “radi- cally reduced,” so that by “the end of the sixteenth century, the temples were weak and docile, Nobunaga having largely achieved his goal.” 4 Further, the events of 1571 and 1580 mark the end of an approximately hundred-year period following the Ónin War during which prelates like Rennyo Kenju (1415-99) of the Kyoto Honganji embraced a policy of “defense of the dharma” (gohó) against any and all challenges, thereby asserting the priority of Buddhist law (Buppó) over secular law (óbó) and authorizing the use of force in defense of the faith. This, of course, was more easily accomplished in the absence of meaningful centralized political and military authority, and thus Nobunaga’s ascendance, and more importantly his reversal of this subordination of the secular to the sacred, represented important steps in the separation of church and state. This, in turn, allowed religionists like those of the Ishiyama Honganji to uphold the spiritual principles of their creed while at the same time acknowledging the authority of the state.5 Nobunaga next sought to harness the economic and social power of the temples in service to his nascent state, demonstrating a concern for the civil and administrative dimensions of his religious policy. Remarkably for someone known principally for his military exploits, Nobunaga had begun as early as 1575 having his officials address issues of the sort that within only a few decades would be handled by the newly created position of Jisha

4 Buddhism and the State in Sixteenth-Century Japan (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 4. 5 Ibid., p. 38. See also Galen Amstutz, The Honganji Institution, 1500-1570: The Politics of Pure Land Buddhism, Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1992, p. 272. 8 Peter Nosco Early Modernity and the State’s Policies toward Christianity 9

Bugyó (Commissioner of Temple and Shrine Administration), the principal office during the Tokugawa period advising the Bakufu Elders (rójú) on religious policy. This, of course, was also the time when Christianity’s antipathy toward Buddhism made it a natural ally of Nobunaga. Christianity’s strength in Kyushu, where Nobunaga’s authority was weakest, may likewise have contributed to its allure, but whether Nobunaga’s interest in Christianity had a spiritual dimension or not, his favorable posture toward the Jesuit mission was unmistakable, and this placed Christianity in a relatively favour- able position. Nobunaga’s assassination in 1582 and the rapid ascendance of Toyotomi Hideyoshi of course destabilized this favored status, but by then the creed was sufficiently established to hold considerable promise.

2. 1598

The advantage in 1580 of not being Buddhist proved to be a disadvan- tage for the Catholics during the 1590s. By then, and owing to Nobunaga’s successful military campaigns, the major Buddhist institutions were no longer the military obstacles and rival sources of power that they had been just a decade or two earlier, and this freed them to be potential allies to the empire-building aspirations of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Despite the recent introduction of new Confucian texts – a byproduct of the otherwise disas- trous invasion of Korea – Buddhism remained the prevailing world view throughout the Momoyama years (1573-1615). Buddhism’s appreciation for the evanescent and fugacious, and its esteem of fragility and the delicate in the midst of much brutality, prevailed in the midst of much monumentality and considerable brutality. Hideyoshi redefined the relationship between the individual and the Japanese state with several measures that dramatically increased the power of the Bakufu. These included a cadastral survey and census that assessed the human and natural resources of the polity, the professionalization of the samurai class and their separation from the land, and the confiscation of swords and other metal weapons from commoners. One can discern in these the absolutist aspirations of the new state, as it sought ever-increasing control over what individuals do and say and even believe. To this end, Hideyoshi appointed Maeda Gen’i (1539-1602) as one of his Five Commis- sioners with responsibility for the administration of temples and shrines. Hideyoshi’s sack of the Shingon temple of Negoro in 1586 was at one and the same time an attack on the peasantry of that region, as well a demonstration of his intolerance of religious independence. In 1595 10 Peter Nosco Early Modernity and the State’s Policies toward Christianity 11

Hideyoshi again demonstrated this sense of religion in service to the state through his ordering through Gen’i that each of the ten major denominations contribute one hundred priests to what were intended to be monthly memorial services for Hideyoshi’s deceased mother. By not responding to these demonstrations of Hideyoshi’s policies toward religions and their institutions, Christian authorities, and especially Gaspar Coelho, refused to see the handwriting on the wall.6 Once the major Buddhist institutions ceased to be a meaningful military threat, the Christian mission no longer shared with would-be unifiers the common enemy of Buddhism, and as is well known, Hideyoshi began to suspect the Catholic missions of interference in Japanese domestic politics. Hideyoshi’s vacillation toward the missions is likewise well known: despite his non-enforcement of his own 1587 order expelling the padres, Hideyoshi in 1597 abruptly reversed his de facto tolerance of Christianity by ordering the execution by crucifixion of twenty-six martyrs in Nagasaki. Though Hideyoshi again never followed through with the most draconian of his penalties on the missions, his non-enforced proscription left the Catholics in a precariously unstable position. This instability notwithstanding, the missions in various ways showed remarkable vitality, and their prepa- rations for the worst actually served the faithful well when the worst finally came. Two other contemporary developments relevant to our inquiry include the rapd expansion of print culture from the 1590s on, with the first block printing of secular works, and the emergence of a nascent sense of “Japan” and “Japaneseness” juxtaposed against a near periphery of Ezo (Hokkaidó), the Ryúkyú Islands and Korea, and a more remote periphery of China and Europe. Both of these are significant to the construction of collective identity and the transition to early modernity, and we return later in this paper to see Christianity’s contribution to both developments.

3. 1615

Tokugawa Ieyasu accepted the title of sei-i taishógun in 1603, only to resign it in 1605 by passing it onto his son Hidetada and thereby asserting the hereditary principle in shogunal succession within a new branch of the lineage. Ieyasu was much under the influence of two Buddhist prelates,

6 I am indebted to Jurgis Elisonas for the insights contained in this paragraph and presented first in his remarks at the 1999 International Congress on the History of Christianity in Japan (Lisbon). 10 Peter Nosco Early Modernity and the State’s Policies toward Christianity 11

Tenkai and Konchiin Súden (1569-1633). Both officially entered service in 1608, and both were more prominent as advisors than their historically better known Confucian contemporary Hayashi Razan. It is likewise from 1608 that one can observe Ieyasu’s increased concern with religious policy and the place of religious institutions in a status- oriented society.7 By 1615 the new Bakufu had issued forty-four directives to specific temples or denominations as a whole as part of an effort to place the denominations and their network of main and branch temples at the service of the state. These directives were all written by Súden, though they were often drafted in collaboration with the affected temples and denominations themselves, thus contributing to their eventual acceptance. These directives ended the long-established tradition of extraterritoriality enjoyed by religious institutions in Japan, and hereafter even the conditions of priesthood were subject to definition by the state.8 Two directives issued by the Bakufu in 1615 one year before Ieyasu’s death defined the relationship between the Bakufu and its only rivals. The first, Buke sho hatto, addressed the relationship between the Bakufu and the domainal lords or Daimyo, and with amendment in 1629 remained in force until the Tokugawa period’s last decade. The second, Kinchú narabi ni shohatto, defined the narrow parameters within which the Bakufu allowed the emperor and his court to move and likewise remained the law in these matters until the end of the period. Despite the storm clouds hovering over Christianity’s future in Japan in the wake of the 1597 crucifixions, the years immediately following Hideyoshi’s death in 1598 were in some respects Christianity’s best years in Japan. The number of Christians is believed to have nearly doubled reaching some 300,000 by 1614, and these years also coincide with the only period prior to the Meiji when a Catholic Bishop was allowed sustained residence in Japan. Further, owing to the instability of the Hideyoshi years, Christian communities throughout Japan began in various ways to prepare for the eventuality of persecution, and this preparation, however uneven or belated, would work to the communities’ advantage when Christianity was eventually forced to enter its underground phase. It was within this context that Ieyasu abruptly proscribed Christianity in 1612 and ordered the expulsion of 148 foreign clergy in 1614. Rightly or

7 David Howell refers to the status system (mibunsei) as “the central institution of Tokugawa feudalism and hence to understanding the regime’s social and political order.” In “Territo- riality and Collective Identity in Tokugawa Japan,” in Daedalus 127:3 (Summer 1998), p. 106. 8 Tamamuro Fumio, Edo bakufu no shúkyó tósei (Tokyo, Hyóronsha, 1971), pp. 20-22; and Nihon Bukkyóshi: kinsei (Tokyo, Yoshikawa Kóbunkan, 1987), pp. 5, 25-26. 12 Peter Nosco Early Modernity and the State’s Policies toward Christianity 13 wrongly, Christianity appeared inseparable to Ieyasu from the trade and other intrigues that attended the European presence in Japan, and that caused him to see the creed as potentially destabilizing. Since the end of the medieval paradigm of mutual dependence of church and state had already arrived, and the sacred was now clearly subordinate to the secular, Ieyasu’s motives seem particularly difficult to discern.9 Sadly, despite the fact that not a single Christian lost her or his life in Japan for reasons of faith during the years of Tokugawa Ieyasu’s rule, Christianity began a dramatic decline which would change the fundamental character of the church in particular as well as religion generally in Japan.

4. 1640

Following Ieyasu’s death in 1616, the Bakufu renewed an intense effort to control the thoughts, words and deeds of the population. Under Tokugawa Hidetada (r. 1605-23), the Bakufu moved to expand its control over the population by licensing Kabuki theaters and such major pleasure quarters as the Yoshiwara, and also by regulating the activities of such non- denominational religious practitioners as mountain ascetics (yamabushi). Except for that with China, foreign trade was restricted in 1616 to the two ports of Nagasaki and Hirado, and from 1635 just to Nagasaki. Personal faith could now for the first time be a crime in Japan, as hundreds of Chris- tians were executed in both Kyoto (1619) and Nagasaki (1622). This inten- sification of the effort to control the private lives of individuals intensified still further under the third Tokugawa shogun, Iemitsu (r. 1623-51). Under the sankin kótai alternate attendance system phased in during the years 1635-42, Daimyo were now required to spend half of their time resident in Edo, where their families were permanent hostages under the watchful eye of the Bakufu. To enlist religious institutions in support of the effort to control individual lives, the Bakufu instituted the terauke shó mon, a policy that required everyone to register family births, deaths and marriages at local Buddhist temples, which thus became the equivalent of parish registries. In other words, despite the advances that Confucianism made in intellectual circles during the Tokugawa period, Buddhism functioned in a manner akin to that of a state religion and was instrumental in the Bakufu’s efforts to ferret out

9 Oguri Junko, “Kakure nenbutsu,” in Kataoka Yakichi, et al., comps., Kinsei no chika shinkó (Tokyo, Hyóronsha, 1974), pp. 210-213, 228-229. Ieyasu may have particularly feared addi- tional sources of instability in anticipation of his final assault in 1615 on Hideyoshi’s surviving heir Hideyori. 12 Peter Nosco Early Modernity and the State’s Policies toward Christianity 13

proscribed religious activity. Further, from 1635 the entire gamut of religious activities was placed under the supervision of the Jisha Bugyó or Commissioner(s) of Temples and Shrines, whose powers exceeded that of other Tokugawa Commissioners in that they had the authority to initiate inquiries and even to conduct trials without prior Bakufu approval. Religious organizations, however, remained sources of problems for the Bakufu even after they no longer posed military or political threats. One example concerns the manner in which the Bakufu was drawn into arbitrating a theological issue internal to the Nichiren denomination of Buddhism. The issue concerned the interpretation of an individual believer’s responsibility toward non-believers, with one faction arguing from a fundamentalist perspective that Nichiren believers should shun non-believers, and another faction arguing that under appropriate circumstances accom- modation is feasible. From a quarrel among believers, the dispute grew into a squabble between Nichiren temples and their lineages, and eventually into a contest between the Bakufu and the denomination itself. In 1630 the Bakufu proscribed the activities of the fundamentalist elements, who then took their practices “underground” where they remained almost invisible within the labyrinthine network of Nichiren temples. From there, they remained an unpleasant reminder of the limits of the Bakufu’s authority in matters of personal faith and religious practice. The Bakufu’s success was similarly uneven in its efforts to control the activities of emperors in the religious arena. Emperors had long enjoyed the prerogative of conferring highly coveted “purple robes” (shie) upon the highest ranking Buddhist prelates. This practice had evolved into an important source of revenue for the court during financially straitened times, since the conferring of the robes was inevitably accompanied by lavish donations from the recipients. In 1613, however, the Bakufu insisted that emperors receive the endorsement of the Bakufu prior to conferring the robes, with the intent being to restrict this independent source of revenue for the court. Thus, when in 1627 Emperor Gomizunoo conferred shie upon the prelates of two temples without the Bakufu’s permission, the Bakufu declared the vestments to be invalid and ordered their confiscation. Both sides were humiliated by this incident: the Bakufu because it was defied by the court; and, Gomizunoo because of the defeat of his defiance. The proscription of Christianity had comparably mixed results. There were more than 17,000 adult baptisms in Japan during the years 1614-26, when Christianity was unambiguously proscribed. European clergy con- tinued to be smuggled into Japan in defiance of the 1614 expulsion order, and from 1615-21 the number of foreign priests in Japan actually increased to twenty-six. Conversely, by 1640 the number of Christians in Japan is 14 Peter Nosco Early Modernity and the State’s Policies toward Christianity 15 believed to have dropped by nearly half from its peak of some three decades earlier. Still, it is remarkable that some 150,000 generally poorly trained Christians, who were at best partially prepared for a new spiritual life underground, chose to defy the Bakuhan state and to risk death by clandestinely continuing to practice their faith. It is in this context that we can situate the Shimabara uprising of 1637- 38, in which some 37,000 disaffected individuals across all classes rebelled under Christian banners against the Tokugawa state. The Bakufu’s armies were initially insufficient to the task of quelling the rebellion, and a coali- tion army of as many as 100,000 assembled from five neighboring han had considerable difficulty before it eventually won a total victory over the insur- gents, all of whom perished. Immediately following the rebellion, the Bakufu issued its harshest anti-Christian edicts and established what became in some areas an annual anti-Christian inquisition (shûmon aratame no yaku). Portuguese vessels were excluded from Japanese ports after 1639, restricting contact with Europeans to the Dutch who were transferred from Hirado to Deshima in 1641. Under Japanese law, convictions for violation of its religious policies depended principally upon confession, and secondarily on the corroborated testimony of informants. This mode of jurisprudence contributed to the growing skill in dissembling and prevarication on the part of defendants, of which the experience of Antonio Ishida in 1631 is illustrative. Called before the Nagasaki Commissioner Takenaka Shigeyoshi, Ishida was informed that if he will only acknowledge his primary allegiance and obedience to the shogun, he may “continue to believe what he pleased in his own heart.” 10 This is clearly an acknowledgement by a representative of the Bakuhan state of a new realm of privacy in the area of personal belief and faith, and later in this paper we shall reexamine this development in terms of its possible contribution to the creation of a public sphere in early modern Japan.

5. 1688

The Japan of 1688, the first year of the Genroku (1688-1704) era, was a very different place from the Japan of 1640. Edo had surpassed Kyoto as Japan’s – and perhaps even the world’s – most populous city, and enjoyed a vibrant popular culture, including best-selling works of fiction, a lively and excellent theater, striking advances in poetry, and manifestations of

10 George Elison, Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan (Cambridge, Harvard University, 1973), p. 1989; and Herbert Cieslik, Krishitan jinbutsu no kenkyû (Tokyo, Yoshikawa Kóbunkan, 1963), pp. 98-107. 14 Peter Nosco Early Modernity and the State’s Policies toward Christianity 15

an expansive print culture. The communications and transportation infra- structure was such that foot traffic on the Tókaidó rivaled that on the main boulevards of Europe, and the regnant shogun Tsunayoshi (r. 1680-1709) prided himself less on military accomplishments, of which he had none, than on his knowledge of Neo-Confucian texts and his love of animals. The illiberal tendencies of earlier decades in religious matters reached something of a high point during the 1650s and the early 1660s when one could be imprisoned for being named without corroboration as either a Nichiren (fufu fuse) fundamentalist or a Christian, and followers of both traditions had of necessity by this point become practiced in the initial stages of maintaining an “underground” existence. The Inquisition official (shûmon aratame no yaku) Inoue Masashige (1585-1661) acknowledged as much in 1658 when in reference to uncovered Christians, he wrote that, “The suspects, when questioned whether they were Christians, at first hid nothing at all and responded that they were. Nowadays, however, they hide their religion as best they can.” 11 But if the 1650s and early 1660s represent something of a peak of religious repression in Japan, they likewise signal the start of a decline in the state’s efforts to assert its authority in religious matters, and there is ample evidence to support the conclusion that the Bakuhan state was rapidly retreating from enforcement of its anti-Christian policies. For example, whereas some two-thirds of the 600 Christians from Ômura who were discovered in 1657 and refused to disavow their faith were executed, a decade later in 1668 not one of some thirty Christians discovered in Usuki was executed, though three eventually died in prison while awaiting sentencing.12 That even in a former hotbed of Christian activity like Nagasaki, the state had become almost indifferent to the enforcement of its anti-Christian policies by the 1690s is confirmed by the observations of Engelbert Kaempfer, a German physician assigned to the Dutch factory in Deshima. Kaempfer wrote in his History of Japan how in 1688 there were upwards of 50 “Bungoso” or “Rabble of Bungo,” i.e. Christians, imprisoned in Nagasaki:

“The … so-called bungo só… [the Rabble from Bungo, are] the Christians, of whom they still keep fifty souls imprisoned here, counting wives and children. Occasionally still more arrive

11 Anesaki Masaharu, Krishitan shómon no hakugai to senpuku, second reprint (Tokyo, Kokusho Kankókai, 1987), p. 86. 12 Murai Sanae, Bakuhansei seiritsu to Kirishitan kinsei (Tokyo, Bunken Shuppan, 1987), pp. 71-72. 16 Peter Nosco Early Modernity and the State’s Policies toward Christianity 17

(in 1688 a further three people). They do not know anything about the Christian faith except the name of our true savior, but much prefer to die in their simple belief than to gain their freedom, as they could, by renouncing their redeemer… Because of their simplemindedness, and since such severity is no longer required, they are spared execution and have to spend the rest of their lives in this temporal hell on very poor food and water.”13

For our purposes, the most significant of Kaempfer’s observations are that: arrests for violations of the anti-Christian policy have become infrequent; that those arrested are those who would rather perish than apos- tatize; that Christians imprisoned in Nagasaki seem to have poor knowledge of Catholic doctrine; and that execution is rarely invoked as punishment. All of these indicate that both the state and the “underground church” had arrived at a new, more practical relationship. Indeed, in various ways, underground Christianity and Christians seem to have been in various ways “left behind” by the rapidly changing society of Genroku Japan. In a society in which a vast array of cultural practices – the writing of fiction and plays, woodblock printing, private academies offering instruction in previously exclusive subjects, and so on – had become commodicized and broadly appropriated, Christianity itself had become fossilized and in some cases distressingly incoherent by virtue of its separation from the Church in Europe. If this is true, it is ironic since, as I wish to suggest in the sections that follow, Christianity may have contributed meaningfully to precisely the kinds of social changes that now rendered Christianity and its adherents marginal.

6. Speculation regarding possible influences and contributions

That Japan was a very different place in 1688 than in, say, 1570 is certainly unarguable, but the nature of the change and the factors behind it remain the subject of lively debate among historians and social scientists, particularly as they relate to the emergence of “early modernity” in Japan. In a recent article, Schmuel Eisenstadt and Wolfgang Schlucter have written that early modernity “refers to the period from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, when territorial states became major vehicles for resource mobilization and for the construction of collective identities…

13 Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey, ed., trans. and annot., Kaempfer’s Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed (Honolulu, Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1999), p. 144. 16 Peter Nosco Early Modernity and the State’s Policies toward Christianity 17

bound up with the nation-state but embedded in a cultural program that entailed different modes of structuring the major arenas of social life.” 14 It is in this sense that early modernity is meaningfully linked to both identity and nation-state formation. Despite its foreignness – in fact precisely because of its alterity – Chris- tianity likely contributed in a variety of ways to identity formation in Japan during the years under question. Identity formation requires positing a sense of self in juxtaposition against an other, and while Japan’s traditional other had for over a thousand years been China, it was during the “Christian century” that a far more expansive sense of what lay overseas came to be embraced by Japanese elites. In recent years a number of scholars 15 have written regarding the creation during the Tokugawa period of a sense of Japan’s place at the center of a geographic space bounded by a near periphery comprised of Korea, Hokkaidô and the Ryûkyû Islands. This imagined terrain resembled a series of concentric circles which had Japan at its center, northeast Asia as its periphery, and Christian Europe as its perimeter, and it thus represents one aspect of Christianity’s contribution to the construction of a sense of “Japan” and “Japaneseness.” In his Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson writes of the nation as an imagined community because, “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep horizontal comradeship,” 16 and his phrasing has particular relevance for our inquiry, since this is also the way in which Christianity conceives of the community of the faithful. From an evangelist’s perspective, the spiritual terrain of Japan – its class distinctions and stratification notwithstanding – was just such a potential “horizontal comradeship,” and numerous students of Christianity in Japan have observed that part of Christianity’s appeal lay in its high regard for women, the dignity it accorded to the individual person, and its attendant sense of charity. Furthermore, from the early perspective of the foreign evangelist, and as one can see in the initial assessments of St. Francis Xavier, Japan was viewed as a singular entity with a singularly propitious population, and one of the tasks of this mission was to educate and raise the understanding of its evangelists regarding the Japanese mission field. This, of course, required training in history and culture, language and litera-

14 “Introduction: Paths to Early Modernities – A Comparative View,” in Daedalus 127:3 (Summer 1998), special issue on “Early Modernities,” pp. 1-3. 15 See, for example, David L. Howell, op. cit., esp. pp. 129-133. 16 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition (New York, Verso, 1991), p. 7. 18 Peter Nosco Early Modernity and the State’s Policies toward Christianity 19 ture, customs and mores, but observe how each of these requires to some extent the effacement of regional and individual distinction and variation. Though the mission was always small and short of the resources it needed, it was at the same time sufficiently large and exotic enough for persons in Japan to wish to learn the visitors’ novel perspectives on “Japan,” and from these perspectives there emerged a more richly multifaceted “gaze” which Japanese persons in Japan could in turn focus upon themselves. Two important elements in the formation of the Jesuits’ “gaze” were their language study and their printing press. It is believed that as many as one hundred separate titles were printed by the Jesuits, of which fewer than forty survive, but among these were the first printed work of Japanese literature (Heike monogatari), and a dictionary and grammar of Japanese compiled by Rodrigues (1561-1633).17 Dictionaries and grammars by their very nature homogenize language in an arbitrary and inevitably artificial manner, effacing regionalisms and dialects, and at the same time deliber- ately proposing the notion of a static national language. Similarly, the publi- cation of works of literature is an important step in the formation of a canon of classics, and such canons are themselves integral to the construction of an imagined cultural patrimony shared both horizontally and universally. Another possible contribution of Christianity to Japan’s early modernity relates to the construction of both public and private spheres. As we have already observed, Christianity entered Japan at precisely the moment when the relationship of secular authority to spiritual authority – a distinction which Christianity sharpened by virtue of its being outside the ôbô/Buppô paradigm – was being contested by Japan’s Sengoku unifiers. One conse- quence of this contestation was the increased sense of “religion” as a distinc- tive and important sphere of human activity, as confirmed by the increasing importance of the Office of Shrine and Temple Affairs, and since religious activity generally has both a private and a public character, Christianity may likewise be regarded as a form of voluntary association that contributed to the eventual creation of both private and public spheres in early modern Japan. Let me explain. One feature of medieval Japanese spirituality was the impressive variety of religious options available to the questing soul. Indeed this variety is often regarded as the hallmark of so-called Kamakura Buddhism, and it far surpassed the range of options available in Europe at the same time.

17 Peter Kornicki, The Book in Japan: A Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century (Leiden, Brill, 1998), pp. 125-127. And, Johannes Laures, Kirishitan bunko: a manual of books and documents on the early Christian mission in Japan (Tokyo, Sophia University Press, 1940), pp. 55-60. 18 Peter Nosco Early Modernity and the State’s Policies toward Christianity 19

Attendant to this variety was a new measure of human agency as the individual enjoyed first, remarkable freedom in choice in religion, and second, within several of these religious options – the Amidist, Lotus and Zen movements representing the most obvious – an impressive capacity to nego- tiate one’s eschatological consequences in a manner consistent with what St. Paul spoke of as “working out one’s salvation” (Phil 2:12). Both this religious pluralism and new confidence in personal salvation contribute to the sense of agency so fundamental to an early modern understanding of the integrity of the individual, and both were unquestionably enhanced by the addition of Christianity 18 to the spiritual field. And, of course, with the rise of yet more “new” religions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, religious affiliation came increasingly to have the character of the sort of voluntary association that represents the limited civil society in Tokugawa Japan.19 Finally, I wish to revisit the issue of the persecution of Christians and its relationship to the creation of a sphere of privacy in Tokugawa Japan. Again, since enforcement of the state’s religious policies, including the proscription of Christianity, required either confession on the part of those suspected, or the condemning testimony of members of one’s own community, Christians, Nichiren fujufuse Buddhist and other religious criminals became skilled in prevarication and dissembling as defensive strategies against the wrath of the state. When the state came to understand in mid-17th-century Japan that there was nothing to be gained from executing violators of religious policies – individuals who were generally in other respects model citizens – and thereby retreated from enforcement of its religious policies, an unintended result was the creation of a sphere of private-life secrecy.20 Though much has been written regarding the importance of a “public sphere” (as distinct from either an “official sphere” or a “private sphere”) as a condition of early modernity, the possible – I am inclined to write probable – requirement of an attendant sense of individual privacy is no less important. I would argue that it is not possible to have a meaningful public sphere in a society which does not recognize meaningful individual privacy. If I

18 One is tempted to write Christianities in response to the presence in Japan of competing missions. 19 See my “Confucian Perspectives on Civil Society and Government,” in Nancy L. Rosenblum and Robert Post, eds., Civil Society and Government (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2002) pp. 334-359. 20 See above, n. 2, and also my “Secrecy and the Transmission of Tradition: Issues in the Study of the “Underground” Christians, in Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 20:1 (March 1993), pp. 3-29. 20 Peter Nosco Early Modernity and the State’s Policies toward Christianity 21 am correct in this, then here again Christianity may be regarded as having made an important contribution to Japan’s early modernity through its unintended role of nurturing the sort of private-life secrecy in the 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century Japan that proved consistent with participation in the emergent public sphere.

Conclusion

The effort to contextualize the state’s policies toward Christianity within the state’s policies toward religions generally represents an approach that has been embraced neither by those who would seek to efface Christianity’s importance and contributions to this age, nor by those who would argue Christianity’s centrality to the culture of the early-Edo period. Nonetheless, the approach has much to commend it, particularly in terms of arriving at a more balanced assessment of the achievements and contributions of Chris- tianity, particularly Catholicism, during the so-called “Christian Century” in Japan. In representations of 15th-, 16th- and 17th-century European history, Catholicism is often characterized as a regressive element, invoking its authority and exercising its considerable influence to frustrate social change, especially any change that would privilege the position of the individual vis a vis the Church. These negative representations tend to emphasize the Catholic Church’s control over vast amounts of land, and its adherence to relationships rooted in feudalism as opposed to relationships involving movements of capital. An examination of the experience and influence of Catholicism in Japan, however, may help to balance this view, distinguishing the insti- tutional impact of the Church in Europe from its social and intellectual influence elsewhere. When we examine Catholicism’s contributions and influences in this light, we find that in a variety of ways which I have tried to suggest above, Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular may be credited with a range of direct and indirect contributions to early modernity which have heretofore been generally under-appreciated. Belief in the eternal and universal validity, and salvific properties of Catholicism is of course fundamental to Catholic doctrine, though theologians have often had to battle with historians who cite contrarian examples in support of a less affirmative perspective. Perhaps, however, it is this negative contrarian view which is in need of reassessment, and it is hoped that my examination of the historical experience of Christianity in Japan – speculative, to be sure – will nonetheless contribute to the task. 20 Peter Nosco Early Modernity and the State’s Policies toward Christianity 21

Abstract

The details of the reception and persecution of Christians in Japan are relatively well known and are not repeated here. This article instead tries to place these matters into the broader context of Japanese state policy toward religions in Japan. Obviously, because of the “foreignness” of Christianity and the political/economic factors that attended its introduction, Christianity’s reception in Japan was meaningfully different from that of other religions. But, in some ways our understanding of Christianity’s fate in Japan can be enhanced by examining the nascent state’s policies toward other religious movements and practitioners, such as the Nichiren-shu and Jodo Shin Buddhists, divination specialists, and so on. This article makes a prelimi- nary attempt at such analysis.

Resumo

Os pormenores da admissão e perseguição dos cristãos no Japão são relati- vamente conhecidos, por isso não são aqui repetidos. Este artigo procura, antes, inserir esses acontecimentos no contexto mais amplo da política estatal japonesa face às religiões no Japão. Obviamente, devido à sua origem estrangeira, bem como aos factores políticos e económicos que assistiram à sua introdução, o Cristianismo teve uma recepção significativamente diferente das outras religiões. Todavia, o nosso entendimento do destino do Cristianismo no Japão, pode beneficiar de uma análise das políticas deste estado emergente para com outros movimentos religiosos e os seus praticantes como, por exemplo, os budistas Jodo Shin e Nichiren-shu, especialistas de divinização, etc. Este artigo é uma tentativa inicial para realizar uma tal análise.

要旨

本稿は、一般的に知られている日本におけるキリスト教徒に対しての容認と迫害の詳しいことについてではなく､これらの事を宗教に関する日本国家政策という、より広い視点から考察しようとしたものである。確かに、キリスト教の“外来性”、または、その伝来と絡んだ政治的､経済的な要因のため、キリスト教に対しての容認が他の宗教と比べ、かなり異質なものだと考えられる。しかし、本稿では、他の宗教運動及び日蓮宗と浄土真宗の仏教信者、占い師などの宗教実践者に対する初期の国家政策を考察することによって、日本におけるキリスト教の盛衰を一層明らかにすることができると提案し､その分析を試みた。