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Redalyc.Early Modernity and the State S Policies Toward Christianity In Bulletin of Portuguese - Japanese Studies ISSN: 0874-8438 [email protected] Universidade Nova de Lisboa Portugal 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 Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=36100701 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative BPJS, 2003, 7, 7-21 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 collec- tive 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 defi- nition 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 reli- gious 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 denomina- tions 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 mili- tary 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
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