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Christian Samurai

Saifullah Samurai

Samurai for Allah
26 Feb 2007
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For more than 50 years Christianity was a leading religion in feudal Japan. Along with the muskets brought by Portuguese traders in the mid-1500s came Jesuit missionaries, who spread the Christian word to the poorest farmers as well as samurai barons eager to gain access to foreign guns and trade. In 1559 a Jesuit father traveled to Kyoto , the capital, and convinced Shogun Ashikaga Yoshiteru to grant protection and freedom from taxes to the missionaries throughout the country. Christianity thrived under Oda Nobunaga, one of Japan's great samurai leaders, and by 1580 there were an estimated 150,000 converts. Churches and seminaries sprang up in the larger towns, and samurai were seen carrying rosaries in the streets. In battle, the Christian warlords wore crosses on their helmets and, as swords clashed, cries of "Jesu" and "Santa Maria" echoed over the battlefield.

Those cries were dampened in 1587 when Nobunaga's successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, ordered the Jesuit fathers out of the country within 20 days and banned their religion outright. The reason for his sudden edict is unclear. He may have felt threatened by powerful Christian warlords. Although many Jesuit priests did leave, the ban was largely unenforced. Dozens of fathers continued to quietly preach to as many as 300,000 followers, including some of Hideyoshi's most trusted lieutenants. This look-the-other-way attitude continued until 1611, when officials of Tokugawa Ieyasu denounced the Christian faith again. Within three years churches were destroyed, missionaries jailed, and Christian warlords exiled. Many Christian samurai lost their lands and their status, though their faith endured until the Shimabara Revolt in 1637-38. A group of landless Christian samurai joined in a peasant rebellion against a harsh overlord in western Japan. About 20,000 held out for months in an abandoned castle against a government force thought to be 100,000 strong. After losses in the thousands, the government was forced to ask Dutch warships to fire on the castle. Christian banners imprinted with the names of saints and "praise to the blessed sacrament" fell, the rebels were slaughtered, and the Christian samurai were finally defeated.
 
Dude.
Stop quoting random sites and posting it on this forum. If you want to start a discussion you can post the link, or/and quote just a few sentences, write your view/opinion on the subject, and encourage other forum members to reply and discuss.
 
well dude ive yet to reach 20 posts till i can post a link, so until then this will have to do, besides its just 2 paragraphs theres no need to make a mountain of a molehill on this particular post. But thanks for posting the link anyway.
 
Damn, I thought that was a really good post until I read your reply, leonmarino. What a shame Saifullah Samurai didn't source it.
 
Well...if you post reports/quotes from other sites, post a link to it and give some feedback yourself, else it'll end up in the trashcan :)
 
well dude ive yet to reach 20 posts till i can post a link, so until then this will have to do, besides its just 2 paragraphs theres no need to make a mountain of a molehill on this particular post. But thanks for posting the link anyway.
Just because you can't post a link doesn't mean you can't source a document. At least write the author's name.
 
now that we've brought up the dos and donts, maybe we can move on to talk about the intended topic of this post, anyone else have any information about christian samurai?
 
Posting other people's writings as your own is simply plagiarism. If you wish to generate discussion on a given topic, try writing your own opinion on the subject, and be sure to cite your sources. Cut-and-paste does not make for good discussion.

The other weakness of this thread is there is no actual spark for discussion or question included in the original post. Just a short paraphrased history of Christians in Japan. What exactly did you want us to talk about here?
 
The reason for his sudden edict is unclear.
One of the reasons was to prevent slave trade in Japan.
Not only Europeans, but Japanese also involved in the trade, esp. in Kyushu area. That made Hideyoshi upset.
 
well obviously anyone who has some knowledge on this area or interest can contribute what they know, as the title says christian samurai, its quite a concentrated topic itself. It will spark those interested just to read the information.

Anyway im on my to 20 posts so bear with me please, i will then be able to post a link or 2.

i also read of how the Catholic Church officially recognised 3,125 'martrys' between the years 1597 and 1660.
 
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Related thread William Adams, first foreign samurai in Japan

In the Edo, some Buddhism schools also were prohibited, however I cannot say the era was a horrible one considering the culture then.
C. Marx described something like "Japan was the geunine feudalism then", and some still believe the Edo was the darkest time in history.

It took 7 days from Tokyo to Kyoto, though.
 
i wonder how it was possible to be both truly Christian and Samurai at the same time or vice verca. Since the philosophies of Buddhism, Shinto, Zen, Confucianism all had influence on the Samurai culture and then theres the teachings of the Bushido code.....And on the other end u have an Abrahamic faith teaching to love ones neighbour and to turn the other cheek in the face of violence etc.
 
i wonder how it was possible to be both truly Christian and Samurai at the same time or vice verca. Since the philosophies of Buddhism, Shinto, Zen, Confucianism all had influence on the Samurai culture and then theres the teachings of the Bushido code.....And on the other end u have an Abrahamic faith teaching to love ones neighbour and to turn the other cheek in the face of violence etc.
Abrahamic faiths are hypocritical in their teachings. One moment God is saying love thy neighbour and turn the other cheek, the next committing genocide in Canaan, killing an entire family just to test some mans faith (Job). I should also point out that the phrase "Love thy neighbour" originally meant your neighbour as in people of your own faith, not everyone. Anyone not of your faith was fair game.
 
Well when according to the NT (not that i myself believe totally in the Bible as we know it today) Jesus was asked once to define who one's neighbour is after he quoted the OT on loving ones neighbour as oneself. So he then responded with the well known parable of the 'Good Samaritan'

And about "One moment God is saying love thy neighbour and turn the other cheek, the next committing genocide in Canaan" that 'genocide' was in the OT which was first and Im sure any Christian would tell u that love n compassion is to do with NT and the violence etc is in the OT, at least thats somthing i hear a lot.

And sure Abrahamic faiths all have a lot in common and obviously a common root thru Abraham. But it isnt that easy to generalise them all together. Which is why in the post you quoted i described it as 'an Abrahamic faith.." not Abrahamic faiths. I can tell u that Islam doesnt teach one to suffer peacefully or turn the other cheek, and im sure everyone knows that only too well these days.
 
REPRESENTATIVE MEN OF JAPANツ by Kanzo Uchimura
He was a Christian and born in a samurai family. In the early Meiji, there still remained lots of samurai atmosphere in Japan and some Japanese wrote books which still give us insight on Japan such as Bushido by Nitobe or the book of tea by Okakura.
Probably J. F. Kennedy read this essay. He answered "Yozan", when he asked who he thought was the most respected Japanese politician.

Image of samurai differs. If you read documents by early Christian missionaries in the 16 century, the essence of samurai was nothing but betrayal and force.
 
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