Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan

Description

Japan's "Christian Century" began in 1549 with the arrival of Jesuit missionaries led by Saint Francis Xavier, and ended in 1639 when the Tokugawa regime issued the final Sakoku Edict prohibiting all traffic with Catholic lands. "Sakoku"―national isolation―would for more than two centuries be the sum total of the regime's approach to foreign affairs. This policy was accompanied by the persecution of Christians inside Japan, a course of action for which the missionaries and their zealots were in part responsible because of their dogmatic orthodoxy. The Christians insisted that "Deus" was owed supreme loyalty, while the Tokugawa critics insisted on the prior importance of performing one's role within the secular order, and denounced the subversive doctrine whose First Commandment seemed to permit rebellion against the state. In discussing the collision of ideas and historical processes, George Elison explores the attitudes and procedures of the missionaries, describes the entanglements in politics that contributed heavily to their doom, and shows the many levels of the Japanese response to Christianity. Central to his book are translations of four seventeenth-century, anti-Christian polemical tracts. Acknowledgments Contents Introduction Part I Problems in the Acceptance of Christianity in japan 1. Attitudes of Entry 2. The Christian Attempt at an Ethical Synthesis 3. The Accommodative Method 4· The Donation of Bartolomeu Part II Forms of the Rejection of Christianity in japan 5. Hideyoshi and the Sectarians 6. Pilgrim's Progress: Fabian Fucan 7· The Final Solution 8. The Effects of Propaganda: epitaph to an encounter Conclusion Translations Deus Destroyed Deceit Disclosed Kirishitan Monogatari Christians Countered Abbreviations Notes to the Text Notes to the Translations Bibliography Glossary Index